It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis (1935)

What if an egomaniacal narcissist and sociopath posing as a populist was elected President of the United States?

Book Review: It Can't Happen Here is being read by everybody, their sister, and their aunt's cat these days. Why? The book has been dismissed as "not much of a novel." I'd say that Naked Lunch isn't much of a novel, but the real question is what the author was trying to do with a novel. If the author's goal was to create a warning wrapped inside a work of propaganda, then It Can't Happen Here is a brilliant novel. Sinclair Lewis asks what if in the midst of the Great Depression Roosevelt didn't get a second term in 1936, outmaneuvered by a power hungry politician with delusions of grandeur (perhaps modeled on Huey Long, but with modern comparisons also). In the book Lewis skewers both fascists and communists alike, and creates a reasonable portrayal of America becoming like the contemporary European fascist countries. At the time there were genuine threats to the American government from both the right and left, and this book shows how in reality Roosevelt saved America from extremism. But I have to admit that I read it with only half my attention, as the other half was distracted by the novel's similarities to what's going on in the political world today. Some similarities are minor and purely coincidental, but other parallels are disturbing. There are too many parallels to mention them all, but this fictional president cozies up to murderous foreign dictators, has an evil genius behind his actions, anticipates vast business dealings with the Russians, believes the media spreads "lies," tries to control the news, makes populist promises that are never fulfilled, caters to the large corporations, is misogynist (women are limited to working in beauty parlors and nursing), racist, and anti-semitic, sees Americans fleeing to Canada ... and many more, eventually I stopped keeping track. Oddly, the President's wife stays home and sees her husband once a week, his book is ghost-written, his administration takes well into February to get organized, he deceitfully inflates the reports of the crowds that come to see him, and more and more. It Can't Happen Here is entertaining, as much for its relation to current events as for the historical events of the time, and well worth reading as both a civics lesson and a warning that America's greatest danger is within. [4★]