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It’s happening here!
Editor:
Recent events have reminded me of some books I have read: ‘It Can’t Happen Here” by Sinclair Lewis. What will happen when America has a dictator, written in 1935. This story looks at what could happen if authoritarianism and fascism took hold in the US. I read it several years ago and remember thinking, thank goodness it couldn’t happen here. Well, guess what, folks, it is happening here.
Another excellent novel that shows how fascism works is Isabel Allende’s “A Long Petal of the Sea.” The protagonist is a doctor fleeing the Spanish Civil War, which took place in 1936-1939. The doctor just wanted to do his job, but was forced to flee the country after the fascists, led by Generalissimo Franco, took over. The fascists were the elite and powerful and rich; their opponents were the peasants and the working class. Fascists would pull people out of their homes and shoot them in the streets. Sound familiar?
Read “On Tyranny” by the historian Timothy Snyder. I think we need to get away from getting all our information from social media and Fox (Entertainment) News and read some history. As the saying goes, if we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat. it.
Annette Preston
Laurium
Sinking into despotism
Dear Editor:
Throughout the summer, the leading stories on the nightly TV news have been about the weather.
All of this happens, sadly, as the United States sinks deeper into dictatorial despotism at the hands of our 47th President.
News outlets, citizens, and politicians know very little about autocracy. They are familiar with the fact that Trump was elected by the people, so what's the beef?
The beef, folks, is the fact that Trump has taken over for himself virtually all of the legal powers of Congress. No one elected him to do that. And yet he has cowed Republicans in Congress to the point that virtually none will challenge his various usurpations because they fear losing jobs, power, fame.
Rather than report on the history of democracy in this country, and the specifics of the U.S. Constitution, it is much easier to show video of downed trees and power lines, winds howling through neighborhoods, fires burning over the tops of hills, and drought drying up western state reservoirs.
Our knowledge is so limited that it is our eyes that do all the thinking for us rather than our brains and our books.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, UT