LOOKS GIVE IN EVERY DEPARTMENT
‘It can’t happen here’: the horrifying power of The Plot Against America https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/mar/30/the-plot-against-america-philip-roth-tv-hbo?CMP=share_btn_tw
Sinclair Lewis laid claim to It Can’t Happen Here back in 1935 with a novel that imagined a populist demagogue whipping the United States into a fascist dystopia, complete with internment camps for dissidents and paramilitary goon squads.
The Trump parallels come early and often, and while the writing occasionally prints its subtext in font a couple of sizes too large, it’s all in order to make the point that much more forcefully.
“The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store.
Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.”
― Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here
The Fugitive Stag 