Michael: Alright Kevin, I'm going to say the title of a book, and I want your gut reaction, your one-liner roast of the premise: It Can't Happen Here. Kevin: Easy. That's the official slogan of every country right before it happens there. Michael: Perfect. And that's exactly the nerve that Sinclair Lewis, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, wanted to hit. He wrote It Can't Happen Here in 1935, in a frantic four months, basically shouting from the rooftops as he watched fascism rise in Europe. Kevin: So this wasn't just a random story, it was a fire alarm. Michael: A full-blown fire alarm. And what's wild is how many critics at the time thought it was a bit over-the-top, maybe not his best literary work. But history has a funny way of turning political warnings into prophecies. Kevin: I can imagine. So, if this is a fire alarm, what's the fire? What's the blueprint Lewis lays out for how a democracy just… collapses?

Michael: The blueprint is fascinating because it's not about a foreign invasion or a military coup in the traditional sense. It starts with words. It starts in places like a fancy dinner party in small-town Vermont. Kevin: A dinner party? I was expecting secret meetings in smoky back rooms, not pass the potatoes and plot a dictatorship. Michael: Exactly. Lewis shows us the rot is already there, among the "respectable" people. At this dinner, a retired General Edgeways gives this grand speech. He says America must arm itself more and more, "not for conquest—not for jealousy—not for war—but for peace!" Kevin: Oh, I think I've heard that one before. The classic "we must prepare for war to ensure peace." It sounds so noble and defensive. Michael: It does, until he gets pushed a little. Another guest, a zealous patriot named Mrs. Gimmitch, chimes in that maybe a war would be a good thing to instill "Discipline" in the country and get rid of all the "lazy bums" and "money grubbers." Kevin: Okay, now the mask is slipping a little. She's basically saying a good war would sort out the people she doesn't like. Michael: Precisely. And the General, feeling emboldened, drops the pretense entirely. He says what he’d really like to do is tell the world, "Now you boys never mind about the moral side of this. We have power, and power is its own excuse!" The whole room, except for our protagonist Doremus Jessup, erupts in applause. Kevin: Wow. So the appetite for a strongman, for a might-makes-right philosophy, is already there. It's just waiting for someone to serve it up on a platter. Michael: And that someone is Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip. He's the charismatic, folksy, populist candidate who promises to make America proud and prosperous again. He gives the people a common enemy—intellectuals, minorities, unions—and a simple solution: himself. Kevin: This is all sounding eerily familiar. But a speech is one thing. How does he actually win? Michael: Through pure, unadulterated political theater. The book's description of the Democratic National Convention where he gets the nomination is bone-chilling. His strategist, a media genius named Lee Sarason, orchestrates the whole thing. Kevin: What does he do? Michael: He has a procession of symbols march into the hall. First, two ancient Union veterans and a Confederate veteran, all over ninety, leaning on each other, carrying what look like tattered battle flags. The crowd goes wild with patriotic emotion. Kevin: That's powerful imagery. Unity, history, sacrifice. Michael: Except the flags were fakes. They were theatrical props manufactured on Hester Street in New York for a play. Kevin: Hold on, he used fake props at a national convention to manipulate the crowd? That's next-level political stagecraft. Michael: It gets better. After the fake veterans, he brings in a dozen wounded soldiers from the Great War, stumbling on crutches. Then a group of desperately poor people carrying a sign that says, "We Are on Relief. We Want to Become Human Beings Again. We Want Buzz!" The whole thing culminates with the entrance of a popular radio preacher, Bishop Prang, which triggers four hours of non-stop cheering for Windrip. Kevin: That is an emotional assault. He's not selling policy; he's selling a feeling. He's a savior for the forgotten, a hero for the veterans, a uniter of the nation. Who cares about the details when the feeling is that strong? Michael: And that’s the core of the blueprint. Windrip’s platform, his "Fifteen Points," is a mess of contradictions. It promises to nationalize banks and also protect private property. It condemns discrimination against Jewish people but also bars them from public office if they don't pledge allegiance to the New Testament. It doesn't have to make sense. Kevin: Because it's not for thinking, it's for feeling. But surely some people saw through this. The protagonist, Doremus, he must have been screaming from the rooftops. Michael: He was. But when he warns his friend, a wealthy quarry owner named Francis Tasbrough, that this is how fascism starts, his friend just laughs. He says the famous line: "Nonsense! That couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen." Kevin: There it is. The title of the book. The core delusion. Michael: And Doremus has this brilliant, cynical comeback. He says, "Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!" He argues that American gullibility and love for a good show makes the country the perfect breeding ground. And he was right. Windrip wins the election in a landslide.

Michael: And once that seductive blueprint works and Windrip is in power, the mask comes off with terrifying speed. The 'what if' becomes 'what now.' Kevin: How fast are we talking? Does he just start signing executive orders? Michael: Faster and more brutal than that. The first thing is the normalization of political violence through his private army, the "Minute Men," or M.M.'s. These are the guys in the blue uniforms with the yellow stripes. They're recruited from angry young men, ex-criminals, anyone who wants a uniform and the power to push people around. Kevin: So they're basically state-sanctioned thugs. Michael: Exactly. Doremus travels to New York right after the election and sees it firsthand. He watches a group of M.M.'s beat an old man bloody for shouting "To hell with Buzz!" A Navy Chief Petty Officer tries to intervene, and they swarm him, kicking him in the head until his face is just a mess of blood. The police arrive, and who do they arrest? Kevin: Let me guess. Not the M.M.'s. Michael: They arrest the dissenters. They protect the M.M.'s. The system has already flipped. The enforcers of the law now protect the breakers of the law, as long as they're on the right side. Kevin: That's horrifying. The idea that the institutions you trust to protect you are suddenly turned against you. That’s a deep kind of terror. Michael: And it gets personal very, very quickly. Doremus, the small-town newspaper editor, finally has his breaking point after the regime’s Secretary of Education gets drunk, murders a rabbi and his own former professor, and is acquitted on grounds of "self-defense." Kevin: He's celebrated for it, isn't he? Michael: He gets telegrams of congratulations from President Windrip. So Doremus, in a fit of rage, writes and publishes a scathing editorial calling Windrip a "buzzard" and his government a "pirate gang." Kevin: Good for him. That's the power of the press. Michael: It was. The next morning, a mob, including M.M.'s, attacks his newspaper office, smashing everything. And then his former handyman, a guy named Shad Ledue who Doremus always treated with a kind of condescending pity, shows up. Only now, Shad is the County Commissioner and an M.M. officer. Kevin: Oh no. This is the moment. The neighbor-on-neighbor turn. Michael: Shad disperses the mob, not to save Doremus, but to seize the newspaper plant for the state. Then he has Doremus arrested. The man who used to fix his sink is now the one prodding him with a bayonet. Kevin: That’s the detail that makes it so real. It’s not some faceless stormtrooper. It’s Shad. It’s the guy you know. Michael: And then comes the torture. Doremus is taken to a concentration camp set up on the Dartmouth College campus. They force him to drink a quart of castor oil. They lash his bare back with a steel fishing rod until he passes out. All while asking him if he's a Communist. Kevin: And the trial? Is there any semblance of justice? Michael: It's a complete sham. His old friend, Francis Tasbrough—the one who said "it can't happen here"—testifies against him with lies. Shad Ledue falsely accuses him of plotting violence. Doremus is sentenced to a minimum of seventeen years of hard labor. The judge even mockingly adds twenty more lashes to his sentence for good measure. Kevin: So the entire system—the police, the courts, your neighbors—it all just evaporates. The book's point is that the guardrails of democracy are only as strong as the people who are willing to defend them. And in this story, almost no one was.

Kevin: Faced with that kind of absolute, brutal power, what can anyone even do? It feels completely hopeless. Michael: It does. And that's where the book shifts to its final, most difficult question. When the unthinkable arrives, what is the moral calculus of resistance? Lewis explores this through the Jessup family, who all choose different paths. Kevin: So it’s not just one answer. Michael: Not at all. First, you have Doremus. After he eventually escapes the camp, he joins the "New Underground," or N.U. He goes back to what he knows: words. He helps set up a secret printing press in a friend's basement and writes anti-regime pamphlets. It's intellectual resistance—fighting lies with truth, even at the risk of death. Kevin: That feels like the classic, noble form of resistance. The pen is mightier than the sword, and all that. Michael: It is. But then you have his daughter, Sissy. Her path is much murkier. She's being pursued by the now-powerful Shad Ledue, the man who arrested her father. She despises him, but she pretends to be interested. She plays along, flirts with him, and uses his infatuation to extract information for the resistance. Kevin: Wow, so she's using espionage and manipulation. That's a morally complicated choice. She's using the tools of the corrupt system against itself. Michael: Deeply complicated. She gets him to confess his corrupt dealings, which he keeps in a little red notebook. She arranges to have the notebook stolen, photographed, and returned. Then she leaks the information to Shad's political rival. Shad is killed shortly after. Sissy gets the job done, but she's sickened by it. She says she finds "no heroism but only barbaric bestiality in having to kill." But she also knows she'd do it again. Kevin: That's a heavy burden. It raises the question of whether you can fight a monstrous system without becoming a little monstrous yourself. Michael: And then there's the most extreme example: her sister, Mary. Mary's husband was murdered by the regime. She is consumed by grief and a desire for vengeance against the man she holds responsible, the judge who sentenced her father, Effingham Swan. Kevin: What does she do? Michael: She does something unthinkable. She enrolls in the Corpo Women's Flying Corps to learn how to fly a plane and handle bombs. She steals hand grenades, tracks Swan's official plane, and tries to bomb it from the air. She misses. Kevin: So her plan fails. Michael: The bombing plan fails. But she doesn't give up. In the book, she just says, "Oh well!" and deliberately dives her plane straight into the wing of his. She kills herself, Swan, and everyone on his plane. Kevin: A suicide mission. That's pure, desperate, self-destructive vengeance. So you have this whole spectrum: Doremus with his principled words, Sissy with her morally grey spycraft, and Mary with her violent, tragic sacrifice. Lewis isn't giving us an easy answer, is he? Michael: He's giving us a series of impossible choices. He even has Doremus argue against assassination earlier in the book, saying "the blood of the tyrants is the seed of the massacre." Yet his own daughter chooses that path. It's a reflection of how tyranny shatters not just laws, but moral clarity itself.

Kevin: So after walking us through this nightmare, what's the ultimate takeaway? Is this book just a terrifying prophecy designed to keep us up at night? Michael: It's definitely designed to be a wake-up call. But the most profound insight, the one that really sticks with you, comes when Doremus is in prison. He's reflecting on how it all happened, and he doesn't just blame the dictator, Buzz Windrip, or the corporate interests who backed him. Kevin: Who does he blame? Michael: He blames himself. There's this incredible quote where he thinks, "The tyranny of this dictatorship isn’t primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It’s the fault of Doremus Jessup! Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest.” Kevin: Wow. That hits hard. He's saying the real failure wasn't the rise of evil, but the inaction of the good. The complacency of the comfortable. Michael: Exactly. The book's final warning isn't about the charismatic monster who might appear. It's a warning to the audience. It's a mirror held up to all the well-meaning, educated people who see the signs, feel a little uneasy, but ultimately do nothing because they can't believe the worst could actually happen. Kevin: It forces you to ask yourself, "What would I do?" Am I the person who just shares an angry article online, or am I the person who actually puts something on the line? Am I just watching, or am I paying attention? Michael: That's the question. The book's final, chilling message isn't 'it can't happen here.' It's 'it can only happen here if you let it.' Kevin: A powerful and frankly terrifying thought to end on. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.