{"id":19517,"date":"2017-02-21T12:04:18","date_gmt":"2017-02-21T17:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=19517"},"modified":"2017-02-21T18:45:08","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T23:45:08","slug":"it-cant-happen-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=19517","title":{"rendered":"It can&#8217;t happen here."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I only had to type six characters and a space: It can&#8217; &#8211; and the full title of the movie I woke up dreaming about popped up in my Google Search: <strong>It Can&#8217;t Happen Here<\/strong>. I suspect Donald Trump&#8217;s series of unfortunate events has prompted a lot of other people in their sixties to Google that title.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It Can&#8217;t Happen Here<\/strong> was a book written by, Sinclair Lewis, the Minnesotan who wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kingsblood_Royal\">one of his books<\/a> half a mile from my house. But I was wrong. The movie I had in mind was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=LyCPtzZRh5I\">Red Nightmare, which you can see on Youtube<\/a>. This was a Warner Brother&#8217;s Film, about what America would be like if Russian Communists took over whereas <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/It_Can't_Happen_Here\">Sinclair&#8217;s book<\/a> was published a quarter century earlier. Lewis, long suspected be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.conservapedia.com\/Sinclair_Lewis\">a Commie by Right Wingers<\/a> had a differenty bogeyman in his 1935 novel. It was a Fascist demagogue, Buzz Windrip, modeled after Louisiana Governor Huey Long.  Like <strong>Saturday Night Live<\/strong> the book was considered satire although Lewis probably thought it was more of a wake up call.<\/p>\n<p>Ten years after Lewis, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/It_Can't_Happen_Here\">Robert Penn Warren<\/a> would win a Pulitzer for another treatment of Huey Long called &#8220;All the King&#8217;s Men.&#8221;  I&#8217;ve only seen the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rottentomatoes.com\/m\/1000654_all_the_kings_men\">Broderick Crawford movie<\/a>. Claudia, the novel reader in my household, loved Warren&#8217;s book. <\/p>\n<p>The line that Democracy calls for constant vigilance is appreciated on both left and right. Eight years ago &#8220;conservative writers&#8221; were warning that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&#038;rlz=1C1NHXL_enUS718US719&#038;ion=1&#038;espv=2&#038;ie=UTF-8#q=communist+take+over+obama\">President Obama was going to instigate a communist take over<\/a>. Count me among the Obama lovers who fret that the opposite could occur. This post was originally going to be titled:  &#8220;Trump Supporters are Not Brown Shirts &#8211; Yet.&#8221; That was meant to be a hopeful title.<\/p>\n<p>I have no trouble seeing Donald Trump put his own ego over the &#8220;American Democratic Experiment.&#8221;  He&#8217;s like one of the Tigers in that embarrassing old relic <a href=\"http:\/\/people.ischool.illinois.edu\/~heinric3\/514LBS\/LittleBlackSamboText.html\">Little Black Sambo<\/a>. I can only hope he chases the other tigers around the tree turns and to butter. I&#8217;m losing hope that he will grow into the Presidency. He looks more and more like the tinytrump pictures in that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/TinyTrumps\/\">Reddit Thread<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.redditmedia.com\/YZULydwCqRGc-Vz3i2T5e6JRBKI5DapbkyJUgJFOha8.jpg?w=460&#038;s=2fc74e1fa2041aebeeae0067b73e9a3b\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When I hear him call legitimate news &#8220;fake&#8221; I can imagine him being gently led to a psyche ward mumbling to all who will listen that he is Jesus Christ. Is this madness, illiteracy, dementia, a lifetime of unpunished bullying or vainglory? I don&#8217;t know.<\/p>\n<p>Thankfully, for every Bannon, Pudzer, DeVos and Miller Trump has been coaxed into appointing sensible people. I&#8217;ve got no problem with General Mattis or Judge Gorsuch. I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/2017\/01\/26\/trump-would-do-well-to-consider-neil-gorsuch-for-supreme-court\/\">a glowing review of the jurist in the Denver Post<\/a> when I was visiting my Uncle last month. As long as Trump keeps appointing one Gorsuch for every Sessions I&#8217;ll sleep at night. As long as Republican Senator&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/the-fix\/wp\/2017\/02\/18\/thats-how-dictators-get-started-mccain-criticizes-trump-for-calling-media-the-enemy\/?utm_term=.e5dcea5701e6\">McCain<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rawstory.com\/2017\/02\/lindsey-graham-warns-trump-free-press-and-judiciary-are-worth-fighting-and-dying-for\/\">Lindsey Graham<\/a> birddog Trump, I&#8217;ll sleep at night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I only had to type six characters and a space: It can&#8217; &#8211; and the full title of the movie I woke up dreaming&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[127],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19517"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19517"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19517\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19534,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19517\/revisions\/19534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}