Thoughts on Queston 1 for "It Can't Happen Here"

1. On page 26-30, Doremus delivers a monologue about why Fascism, Communism, etc. CAN happen here.  One quote follows:

“ Prohibition—shooting down people just because they might be transporting liquor—no, that couldn’t happen in America!  Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours!”

Discuss this in context with today’s political climate.  What is happening in our world that mirrors events in the novel – or are there any?

Books examples:
1)  Huey Long's monarch over Louisiana - aka Kingfish, motto was "Every man a king".  Dominated the state government.  Wanted mass redistribution of wealth.  Assisinated in 1935.
2)  Father Coughlin divine oracles to millions - broadcasts have been called "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture".  After hinting at attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue antisemitic commentary, and later to support at least some of the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.^[4]
3) Tammany grafting - It was the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in controlling New York City and New York State politics and helping immigrants, most notably the Irish, rise up in American politics from the 1790s to the 1960s.
4) Ku Klux Klan
5) Called sauerkraut 'Libery Cabbage' - due to concerns the American public would reject a product with a German name, American sauerkraut makers relabeled their product as "Liberty cabbage" for the duration of the war
6) Kiss the feet of Billy Sunday, the million dollar evangelist - Sunday was a strong supporter of Prohibition, and his preaching almost certainly played a significant role in the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1919.
7) and Aimee McPherson - Accused of lying about being kidnapped and turning up in the Arizona dessert.  More likely with lover off the pacific.  Evangelist who used radio.
8) Voliva - Evangelist who believed in a flat earth
9) Mother Eddy - Wrote the textbook for christian science - healing power of god
10) OGPU were hiding in Oskaloosa - Soviet secret police
11) Al Smith - Democrat presidential nominee who believed in the pope over the consitituion
12) Tom Heflin - Democrat - Aruged that black Alabamans shouldn't vote and was against interracial marriage
13) William Jennings Bryan who learned biology from his pious old grandma - Democrat - attacked the theory of evolution.  Presidential candidate.
14) Kentucky night riders - a vigilante group that murdered, burned down buildings, and seized towns because of the unfair, low price of tobacco by the Duke monopoly.
15) Children's crusade - story tells of a Christian boy who gets 30,000 children to crusade to convert muslims and either died in a shipwreck or were sold into slavery.
Sinclair Lewis clearly dislikes religious extremists who are anti-prohibition and anti-evolution.