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 .
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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 .
Things proceed to go downhill even faster as the once ? United ? States descends into a morass of military-zoned districts and concentration camps for dissidents . Justice under law becomes a joke as law books are literally thrown out the window while uniformed pseudo-judges take over the courts .
This is of course bad news for editor Jessup and the vaunted American principle of freedom of the press as his newspaper is taken over by the government and he is forced to preside over a new-born propaganda sheet . Jessup and other former establishment figures shortly run afoul of the new government and are locked up in the new camps , guarded and often tortured by former friends and neighbors .
Of course , resistance begins early , with underground cells and secretly printed newspapers . In an eerie foreshadowing of the Vietnam era , a vast number of resisters eventually cross into Canada , making it a base for their protest and eventually wearing out their welcome with their northern neighbors .
As one would expect , things get even worse as the resistance proceeds slowly and the Windrip administration implodes , leading to political murders , exiling of opponents and a succession of coup d ? etats .
In his alarming first weeks , President Trump has made this clunky old novel startlingly relevant again .
Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough has insisted that fears that Trump ? is an autocratic tyrant capable of unraveling America ? s elaborate system of checks and balances [ are ] laughable . Madison and Hamilton ? s constitution is alive and well nearly 230 years after its adoption , and you can bet your last dollar that it will still be thriving the day Trump leaves office .
After watching Trump ? s 31-year-old senior policy adviser Stephen Miller proclaim on national TV that his boss is always 100 percent right and that , " The end result of this ? is that our opponents , the media and the whole world will soon see , as we begin to take further actions , that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned ," I ? m not laughing .
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