A Novel More Prescient Than Fiction

In 1935, American novelist and playwright Sinclair Lewis published a novel he meant to be a cautionary tale about the rise of an authoritarian government in the United States. But when read in today's political climate, the book seems less a work of fiction than a prescient foreboding of what was to come.

The basic plot of  It Can't Happen Here involves a pompous, blustering, populist politician who gets elected president running on a platform that is anti-woman, anti-Jew, and anti-black, by making promises he can never deliver on, by accusing the news media of spreading lies, and by proclaiming only he can cure the country's ills and "make it great again." Once he takes office, he begins issuing orders that by-pass the law-making powers of Congress and the legal review of the judiciary, and strips the rights of millions of people.

What sounds like a plot torn from today's headlines was actually written 80 years before the election of Donald Trump to the White House.

Sinclair's bitingly witty story holds so many parallels to the results of the 2016 election and its aftermath as to be unnerving. Written at a time when fascist governments were popping up throughout Europe, the book was inspired by the naïve belief of Americans at the time that what was happening across the Atlantic "can't happen here."

Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip is a populist U.S. senator loosely based on the bombastic southern Senator Huey Long, whose quest for the presidency was ended by an assassin's bullet in 1935. Windrip curries the favor of Americans disgruntled over the economic blight of the Great Depression by claiming he would end unemployment, much as Trump promised to "bring jobs back" to America.

Men of Little Intellectual Curiosity

A man of little intellectual curiosity, Windrip claims his autobiography is the world's greatest book next to the Bible, the same claim made by an equally incurious Trump about his ghostwritten autobiography The Art of the Deal. Windrips' political base is a rag-tag group of agitators called The Minute Men, or MMs for short. Think of the MMs as a combination of the Tea Party radicals and Alt-Right white supremacists who helped put Trump into office.

Windrip runs for office, much as Trump did, with promises of taking power in Washington away from industrialists and bankers and giving it back to the little man. Once in power, however, Windrip begins appointing incompetent cronies to key government leadership roles.

Sound familiar? Trump, who promised to "drain the swamp" in Washington, filled his Cabinet with controversial D.C. insiders, family members, wealthy financiers, corporate CEOs, and lobbyists—most of whom were appointed to their offices without approval from Congress.

Almost immediately, Windrip by-passes Congress and begins issuing executive orders ending President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal social programs, stripping women of the right to vote, and Jews and blacks of their civil rights. He replaces key military leaders with buffoons from the Minutemen, and abolishes all regulations on businesses.

In the first few days of his administration, Trump used executive orders to strip regulations on banks, industry, and polluters; demanded the repeal of President Obama's Affordable Care Act; ordered the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants (at least those who are non-Anglo); began caging Hispanic immigrant children, and removed the nation's top military and national security leaders from the National Security Council, replacing them with his Alt-Right strategist, Steve Bannon. Bannon, a self-professed white nationalist, didn't last long, of course, and as of this writing he is facing federal criminal charges for fraud.

To consolidate power, Windrip sends handpicked "commissioners" to assume the leadership of local governments. The move is very similar to the Nazis use of gauleiters to take control of areas of Germany. Trump hasn't done that—yet—but several Republican governors have dispatched "emergency managers" to take over local government bodies in their states. (Two such emergency managers were charged with felonies for their roles in the Flint, Michigan drinking water fiasco.)

Windrip fails to make good on any of his campaign promises save one; he ends unemployment by sending the unemployed to labor camps. Workers from labor camps are provided to companies for a small fee. This, of course, means those companies lay off regular workers who, now unemployed, are sent to labor camps.

As one of his first acts, Trump rescinded President Obama's executive order to withdraw federal prisoners from privately operated prisons, which have been criticized for bolstering their profits by outsourcing inmates as prison laborers.

Building Walls to Keep Us In

Windrip fulfills one of Trump's campaign promises when he strengthens border security to prevent illegal immigration out of the United States into Canada and Mexico. Walls, after all, keep people in as well as out. Trump has not succeeded in building his promised border wall, but his incompetence during the Covid-19 crisis forced the bulk of Europe to ban U.S. travelers from visiting their countries—essentially building a wall to keep us in. The only wall Trump succeeded in building so far is an "unscalable" wall around the White House grounds.

Eventually, as Windrip consolidates his power, he does away with all political parties except the new Corporatist Party, whose members are called Corpos. The country is now ruled by and for corporations and wealthy oligarchs, the very definition of fascism as defined by the father of fascism, Italy's Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

Trump stuffed his Cabinet with wealthy and mostly incompetent corporate donors. His economic policies have benefited major corporations at the expense of American workers. His trade war with China did nothing to hurt that country while devastating a large part of the American agricultural sector. Even before the pandemic, Trump's job numbers were plunging despite burgeoning corporate profits.

Lewis narrates his story through the disbelieving eyes of Doremus Jessup, a middle-aged newspaperman who cannot believe his fellow citizens don't see the slow creep of growing totalitarianism in the country. When MMs begin to terrorize the citizenry, people assume they are just a small minority of rabble-rousers. Even when Windrip establishes concentration camps to house his enemies, many in the country simply cannot believe the United States is falling victim to corporate fascism. They continue to believe "it can't happen here." By the time they realize it has happened here, it is too late.

Trump has praised white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and QAnon conspiracy theorists. He ordered federal police and troops to attack peaceful demonstrators so he could be photographed holding a Bible outside a Washington church. His followers have attacked synagogues and mosques, and gunned down cops. Federal agents clad in unmarked military uniforms kidnapped peaceful protesters in Portland, Ore., threw them into unmarked vehicles, and held them without just cause. Alt-Right armed militia are being allowed to patrol American streets. One of those "minutemen," a 17-year-old teenager with an illegal weapons, is now accused of murdering two people.

And still too many Americans refuse to see this country's slide into authoritarianism. They still believe "it can't happen here."

Lewis's inspiration for this book was simply the time in which it was written. In the 1930s, the United States was still recovering from the Great Depression. Ninety percent of the country's wealth was owned by only three percent of the population. (Today, after 30 years of Reaganomics, only one percent of Americans own the bulk of the nation's wealth).

Dissatisfaction over the slow economic recovery spawned several populist movements, many of them pro-fascist. In 1932, a group of wealthy conservatives attempted a coup to overthrow the government and establish a fascist government. (See: American Fascists: A Forgotten History on this blog.)

Lewis doesn't spare any political movement in this book. He views any strongly held belief system, political or religious, as potentially authoritarian. All it takes is a populace too wrapped up in their own lives to not recognize what's happening about them, or not caring what's happening as long as it doesn't happen to them.

There is no happy ending to this book. There is no great uprising of patriots; many of those who most loudly proclaimed their patriotism in the beginning of the book end up in the MMs or working for Windrip, just as the Republican Party—which initially opposed Trump's candidacy—is now his greatest enabler.

 Far more than Orwell's 1984 or Huxley's Brave New World, It Can't Happen Here is a cautionary tale  all Americans should be reading—and heeding—today.

Conservatives Snapping at the Hand that Feeds Them

A few years ago, the New York Times published two pieces shedding light on the most mysterious—and, to Democrats, the most frustrating—fact of American political life: that those conservative-voting “red” states consume far more federal government “entitlements” benefits than liberal-voting “blue” states.

This is both mysterious and frustrating to the Democrats because the Republican Party— including Donald Trump and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell—rails against what they call “the welfare state.”

According to the GOP, the so-called “welfare state” discourages Americans—in their view, blacks and Hispanics—from seeking honest work. But, as the Times article pointed out, most of the recipients of government benefits are white conservatives who are retired or disabled. What makes people such as these vote against their own interests?

Shortly after the first article appeared, Paul Krugman, the Times Nobel Prize-winning economist columnist, also explored that conundrum.

Krugman points to an Indiana University study showing that residents of the 10 states ranked by the Gallup Poll as being the “most conservative” received 21.2 percent of their income from government entitlements, compare to only 17.1 percent for the 10 states Gallup ranked as “most liberal.”

“Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on handouts?” Krugman asks.

Americans Must Learn the Lessons of the Spanish Flu

Makeshift hospital for Spanish Flu victims.
Source: National Archives

Few people were prepared for the worldwide scourge thrust upon us by the sudden advent of the novel corona virus SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes the deadly COVID-19 disease. Yet despite repeated use of adjectives like “unprecedented,” and “extraordinary,” the fact is just 100 years ago the world faced a similar plague, the so-called Spanish Flu, which swept over the globe for the same reason today’s corona virus has—thanks to government secrecy and incompetence, and the inability for some ordinary citizens to look after themselves or care a damn about their friends and neighbors.

Yet the same virus that devastated the world a century ago can also teach us the way we can—and must—fight the current pandemic.

In America’s head-long rush to war in early 1918, few paid much attention to the growing number of soldiers reporting in sick with high fevers, body aches, and chills. It was, after all, flu season, and wartime expediency would not allow common influenza to slow down military training. Within a year, however, that flu would kill would vastly surpass the number of soldiers and sailors who died in combat on all sides during all four years of World War I.

So-Called Spanish Flu Death Toll

From August 1914 to the signing of the armistice in November 1918, about 16 million military personnel and civilians were killed or died of diseases associated with combat. From the spring of 1918 to the spring of 1919, the Spanish Flu claimed the lives of at least 40 million people—far more, too, than were lost in the Black Plague. Some estimates of the number of persons who succumbed to the Spanish Flu reach as high as 100 million.

Just as health experts today are warning of subsequent waves of SARS-COVID-2, the Spanish Flu came in three waves, with infection rates rising and ebbing, then rising again. At its height in the fall of 1918, the Purple Death, as it was also known, could kill a person in mere hours. Unlike most influenza variants, this flu killed more than just the very young and the very old. It was also particularly harsh for victims 20 to 40 years old—the very population that was fighting at the front.

And like today, there was no cure, no vaccine, and little support that medicine could provide other than prayer.

Flu Epidemic: Where Did It Come From?

Even today, no one absolutely is sure where such a virulent avian H1N1 flu virus came from. Some researchers believe it may have started in China. Others theorize the virus had been around for years, with minor outbreaks occurring in France in 1916 and England in 1917.

What we do know is that in January and February 1918, flu swept through rural Haskell County, Kansas. Between late February and early March, three recruits from Haskell County reported for training at Fort Riley, Kansas. Many historians believe one or more of these recruits carried the virus. By the end of March, thousands of Fort Riley soldiers were ill. Soldiers transferring to other military camps carried the virus with them, and soon 24 of the nation’s 36 largest military installations were suffering large outbreaks of influenza.

Though highly contagious, at this point the flu was still relatively mild. Though the death rate from this was somewhat higher than the normal rate of 0.1%, it wasn’t high enough to cause alarm. Infected and uninfected soldiers were packed into cramp troop ships for the voyage to the French port of Brest. By the time the ships arrived, even more of the soldiers were infected. They, in turn, carried the virus into the trenches.

Once brought into the trenches, the virus quickly spread through the British, French, and German forces. In wartime, however, casualty rates, even for illness, are kept secret. Media censorship prevented journalists from reporting on the large numbers of soldiers coming down ill in both the training camps and trenches. The families of soldiers who died of the flu were simply notified that their love one “died on the field of honor. “Whether on the battlefront or the home front, few people knew there was a flu epidemic. And no one realized how quickly it would become a global pandemic—or how deadly it would be.

By spring, the flu reached Spain, probably brought across the border by returning Spanish laborers who had been working in France. Because Spain was neutral in the war, there was no press censorship, and the Spanish media reported freely on what the news service Agencia Fabra called a “strange form of disease of epidemic character. “When the citizens of the belligerent countries finally became aware of the epidemics in their own nations, the flu had a new name. “Under the name of Spanish influenza, an epidemic is sweeping the North American Continent,” reported the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “It is said to have made its appearance first in Spain, hence Spanish influenza.”

The Second Wave Arrives

The flu subsided during the summer months of 1918, so much so that British military authorities declared the end to the Spanish Flu on August 10. But that—just as we’re seeing today—was merely wishful thinking. The influenza virus was only in waiting; changing itself, mutating into a more efficient predator.

Today, scientists understand that viruses can become more virulent as they pass from one human to another, a process called “passage.” The 1960 Nobel recipient Dr. Macfarlane Burnet estimated the relatively mild virus seen in the first wave of Spanish Flu had gone through fifteen to twenty human passages, emerging in the fall of 1918 a much more lethal disease than before. It would be this mutation that would give the Spanish Flu the nickname Purple Death.

As American soldiers continued to arrive in France in late August, French military authorities saw another eruption of influenza among their troops. So many sick French and American soldiers were hospitalized that the hospital had to turn away new victims.

And then, victims were dying in large numbers—20 times higher than normal flu—and many only hours after first showing symptoms. It was not unusual for a victim to wake up feeling fine, then collapse a few hours later. By dinner they would be dead. In between, bloody fluid filled the lungs, preventing the exchange of CO2 for oxygen. Cyanosis turned the skin blue, then purple, and sometimes nearly black, as the victim literally drowned in their own bodily fluids.

The current belief regarding today’s SARS-COVID-2 virus is it damages the capillaries (small blood vessel) that line the lung and the alveoli sacs, preventing proper gas exchange. Similarly, some victims of COVID-19 die only a few hours after falling ill.

 The Flu Comes Full Circle

In September the virus came full circle, returning to the U.S. with a vengeance aboard troop ships and warships returning from France. Once again, wartime expediency help spread the disease. On September 25, 3,108 soldiers boarded a troop train at Camp Grant, Illinois. By the time they reached their destination at Camp Hancock, Georgia, a 950-mile trek, 2,000 of the soldiers had to be hospitalized with the flu. Dozens died.

On September 28 Philadelphia held a patriotic parade featuring thousands of soldiers, sailors, Boy Scouts, and civic group members. Within three days, every hospital room in the city was filled with flu victims. As many as a quarter of the victims died every day, only to be replaced with new victims.

Similar results were seen in every large city in the nation. Like today, public health officials ordered stores and theaters closed. Businesses shut down. Public coughing and hand shaking were prohibited. Outside their homes, people had to wear cloth masks over their faces. Field hospitals like those normally seen on battlefields began popping up across the country to take in the overflow of flu patients from brick and mortar hospitals.

Mandatory face masks helped prevent the spread
of Spanish Flu. Source: National Archives

Many today think social distancing orders are excessive, but the extreme means Gunnison, Colorado took to save its citizens demonstrated its effectiveness. The city literally sealed itself off from the rest of the world. Armed guards prevented any outsider from entering the city limits; the also prevented any resident from leave. Extreme, yes, but it worked Gunnison was probably the only town in the U.S. to avoid the Spanish Flu. 

Eventually, the country’s leaders realized the best way to stop the flu was to stop feeding it. The military draft imposed to build up America’s small peacetime army was halted, and by October almost all military training was halted. The pipeline of fresh troops headed for the trenches of France began to dry up. Fortunately, the war ended on November 11.

Historians estimate about 700,000 Americans died from the Spanish Flu—more than all the American skilled in combat in WWI, WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War together.

A Pandemic of Global Devastation

But America was not alone in its suffering. This second wave of influenza spread throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia. In Spain, which gave the pandemic its name, Catholic Masses held to pray for deliverance only helped spread the virus faster. Twelve hundred flu victims died daily in Barcelona alone; eventually more than 260,000 Spaniards would perish. Churches and funeral homes could not keep up with the dead.

When the killing stopped on the battlefields, the dying from influenza and secondary infections continued. A week after the November 11 armistice, the number of flu-related deaths in England soared to 19,000; eventually some 200,000 would die in the United Kingdom. India lost 5 million to the flu. Between 30,000 and 50,000 Canadians died. Many more perished in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East. Then, by the end of November, it was gone. The virus that arrived in the third wave in December was a mere shadow of its former self. The virus had undergone an antigenic shift, creating a less virulent mutation. The third wave swept over New York City and San Francisco, California. It lingered throughout much of 1919, causing outbreaks here and there, but never the devastation the second wave wrought.

Spanish Flu: Aftermath

Despite its devastation, the Spanish Flu was largely forgotten until recently. Even the deadly outbreaks of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus in 2003 and the Novel H1N1 “swine flu” virus in 2009 did little to prepare us for the novel corona virus that plagues us today. (I survived the 2009 virus. Ironically, I contracted it while attending, as a U.S. Navy analyst in military medical operations, a class on responding to pandemics held aboard the hospital ship Mercy.)

Many factors tribute to the world’s slow response to the current virus, but they weren’t new or unprecedented factors. First was China’s secrecy about the virulence of the disease. That was exasperated by the leadership of too many nations failing to recognize the health disaster looming before them—including Donald Trump’s ongoing inability to deal with reality or to care about anyone or anything except himself and his re-election.

But by understanding what worked and didn’t work to combat the 1918 flu, we can understand better what’s working—and not working— today. Today’s politically-motivated demonstrations against stay-at-home orders forcing an early reopening harkens back actions that help spur the virus in 1918. The success of Gunnison to avoid any flu victims at all demonstrates isolation works. In the end, public health should always trump politics.