![\"cover](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/en\/b\/bf\/ItCantHappenHere.jpg\")
Over lunch this week, Madeleine Robins and I discussed a book we\u2019ve both read more than once: Sinclair Lewis\u2019s It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/i>.<\/p>\nOver lunch this week, Madeleine Robins and I discussed a book we\u2019ve both read more than once: Sinclair Lewis\u2019s It Can\u2019t Happen Here<\/i>.<\/p>\n
We have not re-read it recently, and neither of us is willing to do so right now, but as we know the story pretty well, we see the parallels all around us.<\/p>\n
The title says a lot about American Exceptionalism, in that we in the United States really believe all kinds of its can\u2019t happen here.<\/p>\n
For those of you who haven\u2019t read it, here\u2019s a brief summary. In 1936, U.S. voters, apparently dissatisfied with Roosevelt\u2019s reforms, elect a so-called populist (modeled on Huey Long of Louisiana) as president. The government is handed over without a fuss (sound familiar?) and the new president, Buzz Windrip, quickly establishes a fascist government.<\/p>\n
Our hero is Doremus Jessup, editor and publisher of a small town paper, a man who ends up an active part of the resistance.<\/p>\n
If you don\u2019t know how strong fascism was in the United States in the 1930s and how much the oligarchs of the time hated Roosevelt, this might seem like fantasy to you, but there were good reasons for Lewis to write this book when he did. Lewis is not the most elegant writer and his satire was always a little heavy handed, but he really understood this country, or at least the white people of it.<\/p>\n
I recommend it, though I\u2019m not doing a re-read right now because I know the end of the book and the themes of many other resistance stories. I want stories about how we win, not just how we persevere.<\/p>\n
As we cope with real life, there are two pieces of advice that I keep seeing over and over in the wake of the new presidential administration.<\/p>\n
One is a reminder that the firehouse of nonsense from the grifter is intended to freak us all out and we should stay calm and not let it get to us.<\/p>\n
And the other is we need to support institutions. History professor Timothy Snyder, whose studies focus on authoritarianism, included that in his latest newsletter of things to do and Marc Elias, who has been suing over voting rights in particular, included in his list of things to do \u201cHelp Democrats.\u201d<\/p>\n
While I certainly think it\u2019s important not to let all these assaults on our fellow citizens and our democracy overwhelm us, I will point out that there needs to be a response to each of them. I don\u2019t mean an individual response \u2013 that\u2019s not even practical in most cases \u2013 but rather a response by an organization that knows how to deal with that problem.<\/p>\n
A lot of that response will be litigation, though some of it \u2013 particularly when it comes to their attacks on immigrants \u2013 might be more focused on protecting people and holding demonstrations. Regardless, it needs to be led by groups that know what they\u2019re doing, but the rest of us need to know that such work is happening and to get some idea of how we can support it.<\/p>\n
In the case of those groups \u2013 those institutions \u2013 I think support (volunteering and financial) is very critical indeed. I have noticed that the ACLU, Public Citizen, and the Quakers have all filed relevant suits, and so have state attorneys general.<\/p>\n
One of the actions over the executive order that is intended to nullify the 14th Amendment to the Constitution has already had success in the courts. But there will need to be a lot more of that just to hold a little ground.<\/p>\n
In general, when I hear the word \u201cprotect institutions,\u201d it\u2019s those groups I have in mind, because they\u2019re the ones that have been doing the work.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But I still kind of cringe when I hear \u201cprotect institutions,\u201d because, frankly, a lot of the institutions failed to protect us.<\/p>\n
I mean, the Republican Party started failing us 50 years ago. And while the Democratic Party when in power has done many of the things the people of this country need \u2013 the Affordable Care Act did improve a lot of people\u2019s access to health care and various efforts by the Biden administration did markedly improve the infrastructure and work situation, not to mention that it has been the Democrats who have expanded our civil rights as well as our economic rights over my lifetime \u2013 they have continued to be too passive when dealing with threats to the core of our democracy.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m very tired of being told to vote hard and even more tired of hearing that we have to tolerate this abusive authoritarian regime because people didn\u2019t turn out enough votes.<\/p>\n
Brazil managed to block Bolsonaro from running for office. Why couldn\u2019t our country do that? We even have a provision in the Constitution that addresses it, but nothing happened.<\/p>\n
Which is to say, I don\u2019t think the voters failed this country so much as I think a lot of our institutions did.<\/p>\n
So before I do anything for Democrats stronger than send regular messages to my representatives and show up on election day to vote, I want to see some action by the leaders of the Democratic Party that tell me they\u2019re actually going to do something this time. And I don\u2019t mean individually on social media; I mean collectively in the Halls of Congress and as a party organizing for the future.<\/p>\n
And that goes double for legacy media. I don\u2019t like getting a lot of my news from newsletters and niche publications that are not capable of covering everything, but the established newspapers and other outlets are busy pretending this is just another change in administrations.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not. I remember Reagan and Junior Bush and others of their ilk and their actions were bad, but this is levels worse. For one thing, they are taking away rights we worked decades, even centuries, to establish at the cost of many lives.<\/p>\n
And the grifter can\u2019t even address a tragedy without making racist and misogynist statements.<\/p>\n
We have enough people dying these days from abysmal pandemic management and our farce of a health care system. We don\u2019t need to make things worse.<\/p>\n
Anyway, my solution is to pay enough attention so that you know what\u2019s going on but aren\u2019t reduced to screaming into the void, and to pick the places where you can do something and the institutions you can support.<\/p>\n
And if you\u2019re a federal worker or other person who suddenly finds yourself on the front lines when all you ever meant to do was your job, bless you and I hope you can stand your ground. We need you.<\/p>\n
Because when it comes to fascists, there\u2019s nothing exceptional about the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Over lunch this week, Madeleine Robins and I discussed a book we\u2019ve both read more than once: Sinclair Lewis\u2019s It Can\u2019t Happen Here. We have not re-read it recently, and neither of us is willing to do so right now, but as we know the story pretty well, we see the parallels all around us. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17],"tags":[866,1005,1004],"class_list":["post-3832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-rants","tag-american-exceptionalism","tag-institutions","tag-sinclair-lewis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3833,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions\/3833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}