It can happen here - Democratic Underground

BobcatJH

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Fri May-12-06 07:54 AM
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It can happen here

I wrote this in January, but, with yesterday's revelation, I think what I said bears repeating.

Though published in 1935, "It Can't Happen Here," Sinclair Lewis's brilliant cautionary tale, rings true today, when its lessons should be heeded most.

In the book, populist Sen. Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, wins the 1936 presidential election on a plan meant to stoke the fears of the common man, whom he champions. He wins on the promise of sharing the wealth, of peace through strength and of the return of religious and values to Washington. His right-hand man is a crafty wheeler-dealer, an imagemaker thought to be Buzz's brain.

Windrip, despite his promises, soon reverses course, setting his sights on a fascist dictatorship. His pro-prosperity message is replaced by crony capitalism favoring Big Business. His administration forces the media into its back pocket. His policies lead to a police state where people fear being spied upon, labeled as traitors and hurt for not toeing the line.

Sound familiar?

In the book, the faith-based backers of the president grew increasingly hostile over time, often resorting to violence though Windrip's amateur army, the vigilante Minute Men. Lewis's narrative is proving prophetic today, as the religious right, whose statements often mirror those made by the "terrorists" they hate, is lashing out at its opposition. Fueled by his own faith and distrust of an educated "elite" over "folks," Buzz installs state-run schools across the country. One wonders whether today's intelligent design backers would support such a move in the hopes that their closed-minded views could more quickly take hold.

And is the atmosphere prevalent in Buzz's America really that far from what we're seeing now? Bush has willingly, repeatedly admitted to an illegal domestic spying program, then lied about it. A program that may be being used as a means by which to spy on the administration's political enemies. Or journalists. Or Muslims. Peaceful groups, including gay rights and environmental activists, were spied on. The courts and Congress, as they were in Lewis's fictional account, are largely behind Bush. And to challenge Bush, dare criticize this self-styled king, is to support our enemies, to be soft on terror, to be a freedom-hating traitor. Buzz would be proud.

Buzz would be equally proud of how Bush treats America's enemies. In the book, Windrip put his opponents into domestic concentration camps, where they were deprived of their freedoms, held without due process or sentence and tortured. It pains me to write that, in reality and more than 70 years later, little has changed. Bush, in prosecuting his never-ending war on terror, has operated secret prisons, tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib and held "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo Bay. In "It Can't Happen Here," a struggling Windrip wages war against Mexico in the hopes of improving his fortunes. Needless to say, a chest-thumping Buzz would support our costly war in Iraq. He probably would have used chemical weapons, too.

Interesting to me, as a trained journalist, was that Lewis's protagonist, Doremus Jessup, was a small-town newspaperman keenly aware of his field's creeping slide into servility. Slowly, but surely, the Fourth Estate became an official mouthpiece of the Windrip regime, as outspoken editors were threatened, arrested - including Jessup - and forced to parrot the administration's views. This, to a great extent, is happening today. As I've said before, modern-day journalism, ridden with laziness, incuriosity and sensationalism, means more and more repackaging of Bush administration spin as reality, failing to search for truth. Why? Because, quite often, the media's corporate, Bush-backing bosses would rather toe the line than rock the boat.

The overriding lesson of "It Can't Happen Here," one we must heed now, is that, no matter what you think, it can happen here. In many ways, it is happening here. Buzz and Bush, if you read the book and pay attention to what's going on today, really aren't that far apart. The line between Bush's "compassionate conservatism" and Buzz's rise to power is nearly as thin as that between the former's exchange of freedom for safety and the latter's totalitarian regime.

Jessup, before fighting for the resistance, bemoans his and his peers' indifference and acceptance of Buzz's ascent. Though the latter-day Buzz is already in power, we must never forget that even the most oppressive states often begin on the backs of honest people swayed by charismatic leaders with big rhetoric, empty promises and a scared electorate. Nor must we forget Lewis's final words in the book, written about his citizen-hero:

So Doremus rode out, saluted by the meadow larks, and onward all day, to a hidden cabin in the Northern Woods where quiet men awaited news of freedom.

And still Doremus goes on in the red sunrise, for a Doremus Jessup can never die.