IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE won the Noble Prize for Sinclair Lewis in 1930s for his postwar dystopia, where the fascist threat isn’t external but home-grown. The book is free at libraries or guttenberg.com. Local bookstores probably have on “classics” shelves. Amazon may be cheap and convenient, though never free. (Below is adapted from Wikipedia):
Plot: In It Can’t Happen Here by American author Sinclair Lewis an American politician, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, quickly rises to power to become the country’s first outright dictator. Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor, early on sees Windrip’s fascist policies for what they are and becomes his most ardent critic.
Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip runs on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 per year. Portraying himself as a champion of “the forgotten man” and “traditional” American values, Windrip defeats incumbent President FDR for the Democratic nomination, and then beats his Republican opponent in the November election. Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the “Minute Men,” who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporate regime.
One of Windrip’s first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as legislators. The Minute Men respond to protests harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip’s administration, known as the Corpo government, curtails women’s and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges.
Highlights from the book--”The Executive has got to have a freer hand and be able to move quick in an emergency and Not be tied down by a lot of dumb shyster lawyer congressmen taking months to shoot off their mouths in debates.”
“They took it too, like Napoleon’s soldiers. And they had the Jews and the Negroes to look down on, more and more. The M,M.’s (Minutemen) saw to that. Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.”
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“The Revolution did not create a nation.”–Robert Penn Warren
“Roger Lowenstein gives a gripping account of how Lincoln and his secretary of Treasury, Salmon P. Chase, successfully won the financial war against the South. It also tells the deeper story of how Lincoln forged a new economic union, even as he was remaking the political union. Ways and Means is a tour de force of narrative history that provides a novel and original perspective on our greatest President.”— Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance
This is rare book about the Civil War, because its focus is on the dire financial battles of a government with no money. Even before the confederacy’s secession, the United States Treasury had run out of money! Lincoln’s Whig government had no authority to raise taxes, no currency, and there were no federal banks. That struggle shaped the structure of our financial institutions and their instruments (how did green paper money eventually became accepted in a time when the gold standard prevailed?) To me, a general reader, much of this history was a surprise.
Who knew Lee, an outstanding West Point graduate, was originally invited to head Lincoln’s Defense Dept? That the confederacy won almost every battle, while Lincoln ran through incompetent generals and despaired? Yet the Union army had supplies enough to make it through poor leadership and debacles. And, though the army was a priority for the Confederacy, well fed and outfitted, eventually a starving South could not sustain the prolonged war. Why did this happen? Jefferson Davis later on admitted he should have taken the advice of his financial advisor, Judah Benjamin, to send the year’s cotton crop to England in advance of the war. Like “money in a bank,” he would then have had enough to fund the war. Cotton was the South’s major resource, including their financial investment in slaves- passed from one generation to the next. .
When the South seceded from the union, I was surprised to learn it wasn’t a declaration of war. They were angry with the growing centralization of the North and potential taxes to pay for it. They assumed cotton was so critical, at home and in Europe, that secession would check the North. This planter aristocracy, tied to prevailing Jeffersonian ideals of states’ independence, assumed these values would dominate, as they had in the past. That it came to a war neither had planned for, nor the reality that it would last longer than anyone anticipated, was a tragedy for both sides.
Lincoln’s new Whig Government wanted to build canals, railroads, schools. Lincoln’s ideal that ” a working man deserved a chance at a better life” was shared by the self-made men of his party who had different backgrounds and values than the planters. While they considered education key for men being able to advance in the world, for planter culture education was a “finishing” school for sons, whose proud inheritance was cotton. Lincoln believed his agenda would foster economic progress for upwardly striving Americans, in particular enslaved Black Americans.
At the forefront of WAYS AND MEANS is Salmon Chase. Lincoln’s vanquished political rival now his Secretary of the Treasury waged war on the financial front, levying taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. While the Union and Rebel armies fought increasingly savage battles, the Republican led Congress enacted legislation that made the government for the first time a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. The 37th Congress legislated for homesteads, a transcontinental railroad, involvement in education, agriculture and eventually immigration. It established a progressive income tax and created the greenback-paper money. While the Union became self-sustaining and benefited from a diverse manufacturing base, the South plunged into financial free fall. An agrarian economy, they had to leverage cotton to finance the war. The North’s financial advantage over the South’s agrarian economy was decisive, when citizens went hungry. The war may have been won more on treasuries than the battlefield.
The drama of brokers and local banks, who worked with Chase is a fascinating story of improvisation and dramatic pivots. There is also the ongoing personality clashes between Lincoln and his essential finance chief. The relationship would come undone and continue. For me, the thread not completely answered in Ways And Means is why the Union was so important to Lincoln. He waged war at crippling cost for years with no end in sight. My guess a factor may have been Lincoln’s experience with poverty. He grew up so poor his father hired him out as a laborer. That he got education, became a lawyer and worked for the railroads, before seeking public office, was a rise he never took for granted. Economic opportunity for all, was not just a campaign slogan to him. It was key to a dynamic society. These beliefs were embodied in the vision of a nation, as a “more perfect union.”
“We the people of the United States, in Order to form the perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this constitution for the United States of America.”
The compromise and work of “We the People,” expected of the President and the Congress, is to join disparate groups in common objectives–like climate control initiatives. Critical to effective government is the opportunity and freedom to solve serious challenges. The former President behind January 6th, Donald Trump is a divisive figure–empowered by his ability to manipulate his followers’ high emotion Skillful at conflict, he holds our national purpose hostage to his will. The Constitution was drawn up by individuals, who were readers and thinkers. Have the political “watchers” of our time seeking to make policy abandoned reason for spectacle–like Ancient Rome? If the Internet is a doppelganger of real life, we might decide to resist “checking-in”and slow-walk the future. .
S.W.
Source:
http://notanotherbookreview.blogspot.com/2024/07/us-in-political-chaos-it-cant-happen.html
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