Voting makes me feel good, as though I’m part of something meaningful, part of a community of like-minded humans; as though I’m grown-up and responsible and informed. Last week I voted. It felt good—for an hour or two.

I’ve been thinking about me and politics a lot lately. Probably because my treadmill time at the gym has been consumed with the audiobook of An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s by Doris Kearns Goodwin. This is easily one of the best political books of all times, a big claim I know, but since it combines the best efforts of Goodwin as historian in a personal and political memoir, and because it covers the decade I became politically knowledgeable (naturally leading to life as a Democrat!) and active, it’s obviously important to me. More about this in another post.

My obsession with this country’s present political life seems to grow, even as I become ever more skeptical of meaningful long-term change. We are humans and our nature really hasn’t changed much, not at all really, even as we’ve moved further and further from the cave. Oh sure, there’s a good century or two with promises of equality and improved living conditions here, there, the next continent to the east, west, or down under, but it always goes up in smoke (so to speak) doesn’t it?

It’s possible to put together an excellent line-up of news sources with a little research. And with my handy dandy smart phone, there they are in my news aps just waiting for me to get up. I still miss my morning papers but I could never have made it through, nor afforded, the array of up-to-date events at my fingertips, available to me on line. But I’ll talk about them in another post also. All of this is related. Absolutely related, but first things first—a TV show.

Right now, it’s one of Albuquerque’s rarest of occurrences, a rainy morning, which is making me feel energetic enough to be seriously pissed off—I want to write about Nazis. All of those excellent news sources mentioned above, don’t usually get to the matter quite as pointedly as the series I’m streaming on a channel called MHz right now (MHz carries only international series, almost entirely drama or murder mystery). Babylon Berlin is a German series, and it’s both cop show and political drama. In my mind, extraordinarily well done. In addition, to being an above average murder mystery/cop show (you should trust I’m something of an expert on this), it’s a better than average look at the rise of fascism and the Nazis as it and they proceeded to divide the country, divide families, and make widespread political violence the norm. I watched the first three seasons a few years ago, thought it very fine, but somehow re-watching (in anticipation of a fourth season) is proving even more frightening and more pertinent (in anticipation of our next election).

I’m one of the crowd that’s been mouthing fascist alarms but, honestly, not really thinking we’d go that far. Some of our most thoughtful journalists and thinkers have known better for a while…but at this age, I just wanted to cast a few more votes without feeling like my grandchildren’s lives depended on it—and since I don’t believe voting is likely to help at this stage, that’s no longer the happy act it once was.

Obviously, now that I’m retired there’s the danger I’ll begin posting endless lengthy tirades on multiple subjects that already occupy too much of our word time.

Forgive me—but if you’re into political drama do consider Babylon Berlin.