Books of Interest
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“It Can’t Happen Here”
By: Sinclair Lewis
Narrated By: Grover Gardener
Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951, American novelist and playwright, first American to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.)
“It Can’t Happen Here” was published in 1935. It is a novel about the election of a fascist to the American Presidency. Lewis was a recovering alcoholic who died at the age of 65 from advanced alcoholism. Though divorced in 1942, he was a father of a son who died in WWII in 1944. There is a sad irony in his son’s death when “It Can’t Happen Here” was written before America’s entry into war against the fascist nations of Germany and Italy.
Lewis describes a view of the 1930s in America when Roosevelt was dealing with the Great Depression and Hitler was martialing a nascent Nazi party in Germany.
Some Americans viewed Roosevelt as a fascist because of his centralization of power in the government. Famous people of that time, like V.P. John Nance Garner, Journalist Walter Lippmann, and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy turned against Roosevelt’s early administration. On the one hand, “It Can’t Happen Here” may be interpreted as a critique of the Roosevelt Administration.
Benito Mussolini (1883-1945, WWII Italian dictator who founded the National Fascist Party.)
However, historians suggest Lewis wrote “It Can’t Happen Here” as a warning to Americans that a reaction to Roosevelt’s interventionist economic policies could lead to a fascist American President’s election.
A fascist President’s policies would promote rich white Americans at the expense of the poor, particularly women and racial minorities. Lewis had reservations about extending Roosevelt’s New Deal policies but recognized it had alleviated much of the Depression’s suffering.
That control and influence hugely increased in the Roosevelt administration and roosted in the 1950s with Eisenhower’s mandated Interstate Highway System, and signature Civil Rights Legislation. Some would argue it blossomed with John Kennedy’s election, expanded in Johnson’s administration, and changed direction with Reagan’s election. Between 1789 and today, American political parties have increased federal government control on, and influence of, American society. Those controls changed human’ and economic’ rights of Americans.
Humans are naturally motivated by self-interest. In a capitalist economy, money and power are synchronized influences on freedom. Those influences are concentrated in an election process largely dependent on Americans who have money and power. Without money, one is unlikely to be elected to a political office. The consequence is a distortion of equality of opportunity. Corporations legally recognized as individuals carry greater influence on electability than “one person, one vote”.
In 2025, the American election process may allow an adjudicated felon become President.
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