BuzzFlash Reviews

November 2004

It Can't Happen Here (2005 Signet Classics Paperback Edition)
by Sinclair Lewis, Introduction by Michael Meyer

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Oh, yes, it can happen here -- as we noted in a recent BuzzFlash Editorial, "The Republican Party Loyalty Oath, Courtesy of Kim Jong Il of North Korea."

This 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, like George Orwell's "1984," indicates, once again, that novels from the past may be the best predictors of the future -- and, as they say in French (John Kerry knows what we're talking about), "on est arrivé": we have arrived.

Maureen Farrell, BuzzFlash columnist who is on sabbatical, ruminated on the importance of Sinclair's book in her 2004 BuzzFlash commentary, "It Can Happen Here":

In 1935, Sinclair Lewis penned the cautionary tale, It Can't Happen Here, chronicling the fictional rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who becomes President against the protests of Franklin D. Roosevelt and America's saner citizens.

A charismatic Senator who claims to champion the common man, Windrip is in the pocket of big business (i.e. Corpos), is favored by religious extremists, and though he talks of freedom and prosperity for all, he eventually becomes the ultimate crony capitalist. Boosted by Hearst newspapers (the FOX News of its day), he neuters both Congress and the Supreme Court, before stripping people of their liberties and installing a fascist dictatorship....

America is haunted by past sins, to be sure, and Sinclair Lewis craftily presents a series of them as a primer for what the "land of the free" is capable of. "Why, there's no country in the world that can get more hysterical-yes, or more obsequious!-than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch over Louisiana. . . Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio-divine oracles, to millions. Remember how casually most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting and Chicago gangs and the crookedness of so many of President Harding's appointees?. . . Remember the Kuklux Klan?. . . Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares. . .and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children?. . .Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition-shooting down people just because they MIGHT be transporting liquor-no, that couldn't happen in AMERICA! Where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!"

Just a few weeks ago, "It Can't Happen Here" was reissued, after being out of print, as a Signet paperback classic.

One online reviewer wrote: The book "starts with the highly contested election of an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who talks like a 'reformer' but is really in the pocket of big business, who claims to be a home-spun 'humanist,' while appealing to religious extremists, and who speaks of 'liberating' women and minorities, as he gradually strips them of all their rights. One character, when describing him, says, 'I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic.'.... The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and possibly unconstitutional laws, e.g. punishing universities when they don't permit military recruiting or are not vociferous enough in their approval of his policies. Eventually, he takes advantage of the crisis to convene military tribunals for civilians, and denounce all of his detractors as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous."

Buy "It Can't Happen Here" before the book burning starts. It sounds like Karl Rove's playbook.

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