It Can't Happen Here

Sorry this one is so long.  Believe it or not, I have tried to be concise.

Last year, a respected friend of mine mentioned that she was reading a book titled It Can’t Happen Here, by Sinclair Lewis.  She recommended it, so I read it.  Even then I was amazed at parallels between this book, published in October 1935, and current events.  As time has gone by, I have only become even more amazed, and frightened.  Clifton Fadiman wrote in a review when the book was published, “This is a book that all Americans should read to help save the country from impending political failures and potential tyrannies.”

The plot of the book revolves around the actions and reactions of Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor from Vermont, and his family and neighbors.  So if you decide to read the book, my exposition of the situation portrayed won’t be too much of a spoiler.  But I have been wanting and wanting to share this.

In the fictitious Presidential election of 1936, one of the candidates is a man named Berzelius Windrip.  The U.S. is still in the grip of the Depression, and Windrip campaigns on a platform to create more economic security.    “He had thoroughly tested (but unspecified) plans to make all wages very high and the prices of everything produced by these same highly paid workers very low; that he was 100 per cent for Labor, but 100 per cent against all strikes; and that he was in favor of the United States so arming itself, so preparing to produce its own coffee, sugar, perfumes, tweeds, and nickel instead of importing them, that it could defy the World . . . and maybe, if that World was so impertinent as to defy America in turn, take it over and run it properly.”  He is supported by a group called the “League of Forgotten Men.”  

The one main difference between Windrip and a certain Presidential candidate I was concerned about last year is that Windrip had been a politician for many years before running for President.  He was a U.S. Senator at the time of the book.  Earlier he had been the power behind the throne in his home state (never specified), controlling a series of governors rather than running for the office himself.  Under his influence, the state militia was quadrupled in size and the State University was the first in the country to offer a course in Russian!  His opinion of the media was expressed in the words, “I know the Press only too well . . . plotting how they can put over their lies.”

Windrip’s campaign was managed by Lee Sarason, described as his “satanic secretary” who “believed now only in resolute control by a small oligarchy.”  Windrip also formed a “marching club” of men wearing military-type uniforms and calling themselves Minute Men.

Windrip was elected by:  most of the mortgaged farmers; most of the white-collar workers who had been unemployed for 3 years, or 4, or 5; most of those on relief, wanting more relief; most of suburbanites not able to make their installment payments on electric washing machines; and the remnant of the Ku Klux Klan.

Immediately after his inauguration, Windrip proposed a measure allowing the President to govern by executive action with the legislature having only an advisory role and the judiciary no role at all.  When his measure was roundly defeated by Congress, Windrip sent his Minute Men to arrest a good number of Congressmen.  He also arrested prominent religious leaders who thereafter disappeared from public view.  When a troop of Minute Men were reluctant to arrest a convent of nuns, Windrip sent another troop to arrest those rebellious M.M.s and had 1 in every 3 executed to enforce discipline.

He appointed to his cabinet:  Secretary of State – his former secretary Lee Sarason, who also took the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Minute Men; Secretary of the Treasury – Webster R. Skittle, president of a St. Louis bank, who had once been indicted on a charge of defrauding the government on his income tax, but he had been acquitted, more or less; Secretary of War – Colonel Osceola Luthorne, whose title came from his position on the honorary staff of the Governor of Tennessee, and a friend and fellow campaigner of Windrip.

He then declared martial law, although only for the duration of the “crisis.”

All of this happened in the first 8 days of his administration.

“Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip’s power in Washington was maintained.  The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name.  A number of Congressmen were still being ‘protected’ in the DC jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol.”

He then proceeded to reorganize the nation into 8 administrative provinces, each with districts, counties, and townships.  Doremus was now living in the Northeast Province, District 3, County B, township of Beulah, and over him were a provincial commissioner, a district commissioner, a county commissioner, and assistant commissioner for Beulah, all appointed by Windrip, with their Minute Men guards and emergency military judges.

Most of the National Guard was taken into the Minute Men.  As unemployment continued to be serious, the M.M. was paying well and their numbers and power grew and grew.

By August, the League of Forgotten Men was disbanded along with all political parties except the American Corporate State and Patriotic Party.  Labor camps were established for confinement of criminals, rebels, and various undesirable minorities.  Inmates were sent out to work for $1 a day, which allowed employers to fire the workers who had to be paid real wages.  Many of whom ended up in the labor camps.

That may be enough, although it is not the end by a long shot (go read the book).  Am I overreacting to find this book frightening?  Let me tell you – when I read that Trump might increase the Border Patrol by 5,000 and immigration officers by 10,000, what immediately came to my mind was Windrip’s Minute Men.

All I hope is that people of good will -- in reality, not in a novel – really can “save the country from impending political failures and potential tyrannies.”  Thanks for “listening.”  Comments always welcome.