It is Happening There

In 1935, the American novelist Sinclair Lewis published a satirical novel – It Can’t Happen Here. The plot revolves around a Presidential electoral victory by a folksy Republican Party Senator from a small state. ‘Buzz’ Windrup storms to power on the back of a massive media blitz and the promise to grant every American $5,000 in cash, the latter perhaps the first promotion of the Basic Income idea. His campaign is orchestrated by a shadowy figure, Lee Sarason, later to become Buzz’s secretary of State. The victory is ensured by the mobilization of a popular paramilitary force, the Minute Men, controlled by Sarason. The MMs patrol the streets, beat up liberals and other undesirables and police the polling booths. The armed forces fall into line, as do business, the churches, Judiciary, the mainstream media and labour organizations. A leading Jewish Rabbi urges compliance by his fellow Jews in the face of a rising tide of anti-Semitism.

The story unfolds through the eyes of the editor of a small New England newspaper, Doremus Jessup, who gradually moves from a position of cynical commentary to underground political resistance. Stubbornly refusing to bend to the prevailing winds, in spite of the hopelessness of his opposition, he personally endures the escalating descent into the totalitarian abyss. He, his daughter and a few likeminded friends organize to move enemies of the regime across the border to Canada, a recreation of ‘the underground railway’ that helped slaves escape before the Civil War, while also running a subversive printing press documenting the way in which, step by step, the corporatist regime was breaking every electoral promise and ignoring every article of the Bill of Rights. Needless to say, Joe voter never saw a single one of the five thousand dollars. Caught by the MMs Doremus disappears into one of the regime’s bulging concentration camps. On escaping he links up with the developing resistance organized from Canada by an exiled Democrat Senator and a renegade army general.

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016 gave the novel a significant boost in sales. I had been vaguely aware of the book but never read it until that singular event in November 2016. Since then much entertainment has been had by disbelieving liberals and lefties in putting real names to the characters in the novel. Trump for Windrup and Bannon for Sarason are popular and obvious fits. The march of generals and senior business executives into Trump’s Cabinet also finds echoes in Buzz’s administration. But the parallels are more than personality based. Many of Trump’s actions and ways of governing were uncannily captured in the novel. Trump has deliberately picked a fight with Mexico. Windrup and his successor go to war with Mexico. Corporate greed and fraud prosper in both worlds. Opponents are demonized in Trumpland, though not sent to gaol or the camps – yet. But the separation of the children from their Mexican parents on crossing the border is a dark reflection of the novel’s narrative and a clear pointer to an even darker future. Both regimes have created a parallel universe of ‘facts’. In this world the logic of the Red Queen rules. Both leaders use spectacle and public stunts as a substitute for policy. Trump’s most recent turn with Chairman Kim in Singapore nicely makes this last point. However not even a writer of Lewis’s calibre could approach Trump’s most recent rhetorical flourish – the creation of a brand new arm of the US military. The US Spaceforce will, he promises, ensure American dominance of the next ‘American Frontier’. Weaponising space will bring peace to the world – ‘believe him’. No doubt this will enable Kim Jong Un to sleep soundly at night and bring him groveling to the negotiating table.

But such comparisons are dangerous. Trump is not just a pumped up blowhard. He is leader of the largest economy in the world and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most lethal military machine. His unpredictability is creating an unstable international climate and threatening to break the rules-based order of international relations laboriously constructed under US leadership since World War II. His ill-tempered and ill-timed performance at the G-7 Summit in Canada last week, culminating in a walkout, is driving a wedge between America and its historic allies while moving him closer to the rusted-on leaders of America’s historic foes, Russia and China. All that stands between us and a Trump presidency-for-life (a nightmare of all the Founding Fathers but Alexander Hamilton) is the increasingly ramshackle US Constitution, dysfunctional political institutions and a deeply divided and partisan civic culture. This is hardly comforting for the rest of us.

Trump’s promise to ‘make America great again’ echoes Buzz Windrup’s empty rhetoric. Like the latter, Trump is fond of the sound of his own voice. In the novel Buzz is deposed in the early hours of the morning by his Secretary of State and manages to escape death by being exiled to France, to live on the wealth stolen from American taxpayers and spirited to Switzerland. Sarason in turn is deposed by an army general who, at the novel’s end, is engaged in battle with the gathering forces of the Resistance. Trump’s position is more secure. He has moved to sack anyone in his Administration who poses a threat or seeks to restrain him. Bannon is gone. So are Comey, General McMaster, General Flynn and Tillerson. Trump’s original Chief of Staff Reince Priebus resigned under pressure, along with a string of others who displeased the Boss. The Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who is investigating possible Russian connivance with the Trump campaign during and just after the general election, poses the only threat on the horizon. In a development that would further strain the creative imagination of a novelist, Trump has publicly mused on the possibility that he might use the presidential pardon to pardon himself, if the Mueller investigation found against him and his family. He has indicated that he will continue to use this power to pardon whoever he likes, including corrupt executives and police officers and Republican Party operatives like ‘Scooter’ Libby, Vice-President Dick Cheney’s gofer.

It is happening there. This is no joke! A lot could go wrong on Trump’s watch. History is replete with nations falling into the abyss due to the miscalculations of self-professed political geniuses like Donald Trump. However, with luck, America will survive Trump. It has dealt with other crises in the two hundred year-plus life of the Republic. What remains, however, are the forces, national and international, that gave rise to the Trump phenomenon and the similar hard-right resurgence in countries like the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, the Ukraine and even Scandinavia. There is a genuine crisis of Democracy at the door. It is associated with what, during the 1970s, the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas called a ‘legitimation crisis’. The mob is stirring. The citizens in those countries are observing rising inequality and closing opportunities for themselves, their families and their neighbours. The politics of unfairness – characterized by powerful elites as ‘the politics of envy’ – is emerging to create new fissures in the body politic and new axes of conflict. Opportunists like Trump have been able, to date, to turn these wellsprings of unrest to their advantage, to shore up their power and privileges. But the radical potential in Democracy as a political system – demos as ‘the people’ and kratia as ‘rule – is ever a threat to ruling elites. Democracy means ‘rule of the poor against the rich’ and the rich know that. They are vigilant. In Trump they have a champion. Expect their defense of him to be vigorous.

It is happening here and now. The novel is a wake up call. Read it and wake up!