Insert Foot getting misty-eyed over “Masters of the Air.”

I finished “Masters of the Air” last week and need to get a few things out of the way.

Yes, it’s schmaltzy.

No, the real flyers in the “Bloody Hundredth” didn’t look anything like Austin Butler. Especially Major Gale “Buck” Cleven, the guy Butler played. But the only human who was ever that good looking was young Elvis, and, well …

Yes, Butler still talks with the Elvis accent.

Yes, it’s fun to pretend he was Elvis fighting the Nazis.

But that said, “Masters of the Air” is wonderfully done. For the first time since I don’t know when (probably when Princess Leia hugged Chewbacca in “The Force Awakens”) I got a little teary-eyed at something on the screen.

From noted World War II worshippers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks (no criticism; I’m a fanboy, too), the unbelievable story of the U.S. trying to relentlessly bomb fascist Germany out of World War II was just that: unbelievable. Nevertheless, the Apple miniseries is, for the most part, true.

That just made me angrier at the current state of U.S. politics, where an obvious fascist wannabe dictator is running for a second term in the White House, and a wing of a political party that flunked high school history supports imperialist Russia.

Right; Russia was our “ally” in World War II. It was also Adolph Hitler’s official ally first and invaded Poland with him to kick off the war, only coming to our side once Hitler turned on them. Technically, the Soviets and Germany signed a nonaggression pact and didn’t actually invade together as much as they just met in the middle, but simplifying seems necessary these days.

But this mini-series, the follow-up to “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” was pretty magnificent. Of course it was over-dramatized, but the fact was that when they started flying missions out of England to bomb Germany, the flyers of the 100th Bomb Group were more likely to get shot out of the sky than to return after a successful mission.

Yet they kept going up, because fascism had to be stopped.

According to Smithsonian magazine, “The 100th’s high casualty rate mirrored that of its parent division, the Eighth Air Force, which suffered more fatalities—26,000—than the entire Marine Corps over the course of World War II.”

Yet they kept going up.

There were times I thought, “OK; fun story but they’re laying it on a bit thick here.” I was just watching, but hadn’t done any research and wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t all made up. Because it sure seemed made up.

Then I finished it last week and Apple immediately sent me to the documentary “The Bloody Hundredth,” about the real guys, and I was pretty stunned. And not just because they got away with casting Butler as Cleven once I saw interviews with the real Cleven.

The story was just insane. It made me wish my grandfather, an island-hopping flight mechanic in the Pacific, was here to watch with me. Or my grandma, who knew John Hicks all of two weeks before marrying him and almost immediately watching him get shipped out to fight the Japanese. I missed her encyclopedic knowledge of the war, and I had questions.

Then I thought how disgusted she, an Eisenhower Republican, would be with her old party in 2024.

The bravery of these men was insane, and their determination to put down the fascists/Nazis for good was inspiring.  I’m terrified just riding in big safe airplanes with my headphones on and my complimentary peanuts without having an open hatch, minus-30 degree temperatures and, oh yeah, being shot at while having to wear an oxygen mask so I won’t suffocate.

When humans band together, we’re capable of so much. That’ why watching the self-serving bullshit happening all over the world now is so frustrating.

Yes, we should be pushing for peace and democracy. We should be doing what it takes to keep Russia out of Central Europe. And, yes, we should be denouncing fascism with everything we have (denouncing imperialism in the U.S. or U.K., with our histories, is a little dicier). That either is being so widely embraced in this country, considering what we sacrificed beating down the fascists in the 1940s, is shameful.

As far as the real dictator still menacing Central Europe, I recently saw an interview with someone wearing MAGA gear at a Trump rally, who said killing all those civilians in Ukraine is fine by her because Vladimir Putin just wants back what’s his.

That’s why we don’t ban books and must allow the professionals to educate our children. That’s EXACTLY why.

Putin really does interfere with elections. He kills political opponents. The LGBT movement is illegal. He stands for Russia’s past, ugly glory, which included plans to divide up large swaths of Europe with Hitler. Then they went and tried on their own.

How quickly some of us forget. Or never knew. Either way, the more people watching “Masters of the Air,” the better.