Not far-fetched now

A TV series for your consideration: The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime. The series shows us an alternate reality in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan have won the war and divided America between them— the West to Japanese and the East to the Nazis. While interesting as sci-fi, the show is more notable for its realistic portrayal of life under two different authoritarian regimes.

The Japanese are depicted as brutal occupiers who believe in the inherent superiority of their highly ritualized, emperor-worshiping culture, but who are satisfied with keeping their inferior American subjects meek and subdued. By contrast the Nazis have found enough trustworthy Americans of the Aryan variety to fully staff their American Reich without having to field an occupying force. In the American Reich, Nazi ideology has found fertile ground, and the devastating psychological effects of that ideology on the individual freedom of all—even for those who run the Reich—are fully explored.

When the series kicked off in 2015, we did not yet have as president a wannabe dictator who fanned the flames of racial and ethnic hatred to gain and maintain power. We did not have a Republican Party that cowered in fear of offending its boss or his newly recruited red-hatted storm troopers. So High Castle’s depiction of how quickly and completely people give up both their moral compass and their freedoms to dictators seemed a bit far-fetched. It doesn’t anymore.

ALEX MIRONOFF

Fayetteville