It happens here
By Bruce Lloyd of dumb shyster-lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates ? ,? said Windrip in Zero Hour .
Meanwhile , out in the Vermont sticks , Doremus Jessup , lovable old small town newspaper editor , is watching developments with growing dread . His candidate isn ? t the real life President Franklin Delano Roosevelt , but a Republican , ?? that loyal yet strangely honest old-line Senator , Walt Trowbridge ? ?
Jessup agonizes in a familiar liberalish way as he listens to radio sermons supporting Windrip by the politicized Bishop Peter Paul Prang and observes the thuggish and increasingly armed ? Minute-Men ? supporters of Windrip at campaign rallies . But he doesn ? t or can ? t do much to stop Windrip ? s ascent .
Late in last year ? s presidential campaign , remarks by candidate Donald Trump stirred memories of a novel read long ago and I ordered a copy on line . Weeks later , following the Trump triumph , a battered , contemporary ( 1935 ) copy of Sinclair Lewis ? It Can ? t Happen Here , arrived .
Meanwhile , without my notice , Lewis ? s 80-year-old best seller had become one once again in 2017 , this time on Amazon . com , along with George Orwell ? s 1984 and other dystopian titles from the past .
Anyone familiar with the work of Lewis would recognize that this one was a quickie job , driven by circumstances of the day and a little light in plot and lacking slick editing . But given that it was the middle of America ? s worst depression , that Hitler and Mussolini were on the rise , proto-fascist Louisiana Senator Huey Long ( shortly to be assassinated ) was riding high and that the 1936 presidential election was coming up , it understandably won a lot of readers in its day .
Lewis chronicles the rise of a Trump-like anti-establishment candidate : ? Few men doubted that the Democratic candidate would
Illustration by Trinity Feliciano
be that sky-rocket Senator Berzelius ? Buzz ? Windrip ? that is to say , Windrip as the mask and bellowing voice , with his satanic secretary , Lee Sarason , as the brain behind .? In the present day , Sarason , a former journalist , bears more than a little resemblance to Trump ? s ? chief strategist and senior counselor ,? Stephen K . Bannon .
Sarason is the ghostly author of Windrip ? s supposed autobiography , Zero Hour ? Over The Top . Lewis has a lot of fun with this tome , fabricating quotes that are a mish-mash parody of Hitler ? s Mein Kampf and the Dale Carnegie-style inspirational and sales literature that was popular at the time . Clearly , those who voted for Windrip could not say they weren ? t warned in advance , but as with Trump , the message worked ? in the short run .
? I want to stand right up on my hind legs and not just admit but frankly holler right out that we ? ve got to change our system a lot , maybe even change the whole Constitution ? The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency , and not be tired down by a lot
When Windrip wins and takes office , things happen fast , very fast , starting with the Commander in Chief ? s immediate move to equip his Minute-Men with the latest in machine guns and other weapons and attach them to the U . S . Army .
On day two of his administration , the U . S . Congress refuses to grant the executive ? s demand for unlimited personal authority over the entire government .
? Before six , the President had proclaimed that a state of martial law existed during the ? present crisis ,? and more than a hundred Congressmen had been arrested by Minute Men , on direct orders from the President . The Congressmen who were hot-headed enough to resist were cynically charged with ? inciting to riot ?; they who went quietly were not charged at all .?
Of course you say , the real U . S . courts wouldn ? t ever stand for this . But in Lewis ? s fictional world , there wasn ? t much all those judges could do after being shortly thereafter jailed by the President ? s armed followers .
President Windrip relies on a varied bag of tricks , as he distracts from these developments with high paid patronage positions for supporters , milking revenue from corporate leaders and a vast military buildup in support of war plans for conquering all of Mexico and other countries .
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