The major problem with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here isn’t that it’s a long 381 pages; the real problem, IMHO, is that the protagonist isn’t touched by any of the horror surrounding him until close to page 200. Before that point the book is pure political satire as the United States elects and becomes controlled by a fascist government. And that's a problem because? OK, it's my fault. Satire works better when the reader recognizes the names being used. Frequently I didn't know, the novel being set in the 1930s. Still, It Can't Happen Here eerily relates to events here and now, and that makes it interesting. Parallels, oh-nos and boy-he-got-that-wrongs:
1) World War I has ended and parades of soldiers—injured or not—were common. Doremus, the protagonist, mulls, "When Buzz (the fascist) gets elected, he won't be having any parade of wounded soldiers. That'll be bad Fascist psychology. All those poor devils he'll hide away in institutions …" (page 55) Advice from George W. Bush: don't let the public see the coffins, either.
2) Buzz is elected and promptly puts into effect his 15-point plan. The last point: "(15) Congress shall, immediately upon our inauguration, initiate amendments to the Constitution providing, (a), that the President shall have the authority to initiate and execute all necessary measures for the conduct of the government during this critical epoch, (b), the Congress shall serve only in an advisory capacity, calling to the attention of the President and his aides and Cabinet any needed legislation, but not acting upon same until authorized by the President to act, and (c), the Supreme Court shall have immediately removed from its jurisdiction the power to negate, by ruling them unconstitutional or by any other judicial action, any or all acts of the President, his duly appointed aides, or Congress." (page 64) OK. Our executive leader is sneakier. He's not calling it point 15.
3) "… those spirituals in which Negroes express their desire to go to heaven, to St. Louis, or almost any place distant from the romantic old plantations …" (page 72) I laughed.
4) Buzz's advice to speakers: Speakers "will learn fairly early that it is not fair to ordinary folks—it just confuses them—to try to make them swallow all the true facts that would be suitable to a higher class of people." (page 181) Now I understand why Bush and his cronies are secretive. They don't want to confuse us. And here I thought they might be hiding something. Silly Martha!
5) Of course under Buzz's rule education changes. And his administration handles those changes much better than Germany and other fascist regimes. "Where these amateurs in re-civilization had merely kicked out all treacherous 'intellectuals' who mulishly declined to teach physics, cookery, and geography according to the principles and facts laid down by the political bureaus, and the Nazis had merely added the sound measure of discharging Jews who dared attempt to teach medicine, the Americans were the first to start new and completely orthodox institutions, free from the very start of any taint of 'intellectualism.'" (page 208) But, boy, could (can?) those institutions train CEOs!
6) About a highly regarded learning institution: "And no scholastic institution, even West Point, had ever so richly recognized sport as not a subsidiary but a primary department of scholarship." (page 209) Go, 'Bama!
7) Doremus, our protagonist reads the newspapers, but "could find no authentic news even in the papers from New York or Boston, in both of which the morning papers had been combined by the government into one sheet, rich in comics, in syndicated gossip from Hollywood, and, indeed, lacking only any news." (page 210) And what is Brittany up to these days?
8) Regarding continuation of the race: "But if people have gone so soft and turned the world over to stuffed shirts and dictators, they needn't expect any decent woman to bring children into such an insane asylum! Why, the more you really do love children, the more you'll want 'em not to be born, now!" (page 214) Things that make you go "hmmm."
9) Doremus thinks about editors, publishers and their employees who have vanished, probably into concentration camps. Then: "Few writers for Hearst were arrested, however." (page 219) Guess Hearst was the Fox News of the day. Buh-bye, Rosebud.
10) After Doremus's experience, he believes there'll be no return to "government of the profits, by the profits, for the profits." (page 366) hahahahahahahaha
11) No quote on this one, but by the end of the book the government has declared war on Mexico based on manufactured events. For real.
How can some writers just know?
