In this space last month I posted about the troublingly prescient “spirit,” and some specifics, of Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 “It Can’t Happen Here.”
Think it hasn’t?
“Cooped up like chickens in cages, eaten alive by bloodthirsty mosquitoes and living in cells said to be awash with human waste and filth... “ That’s the description of “Alligator Alcatraz” in The Telegraph newspaper.
It is essentially the kind of thing depicted in Lewis’ dystopian novel: innocent people sent to this concentration camp – let’s call it what it is – and to other, farther-flung deportation locations such as El Salvador and South Sudan. I don’t think even Lewis foresaw that abhorrence.
There is a terrible irony in Trump’s brutal partnership with places he once termed “shithole countries”. This new illegal mistreatment of legal residents and, in some cases, U.S. citizens, is a stain on this country and the world.
I am not changing the subject when I say sometimes you have to look backwards to look ahead, and that I am reading “War and Peace.”
Yes, the Tolstoy classic, a novel written 150 years ago. Always wanted to; and it’s already shown at least one current, and chilling, connection. (Saying “it’s like ‘War and Peace’” is the literature equivalent of those chuckle-headed tropes such as “tastes like chicken,” “hot enough for ya?” and “it ain’t rocket science.”) And so I am reading Tolstoy. The early-chapters’ setup depicting the labyrinthine personal relationships in early-19th-century Moscow and St. Petersburg is a fascinating prelude to what I know will come. The preamble is complicated to get through but I am reminded of the veritable slog that was the first 100 pages of “Moby Dick,” that other epic classic that serves as a punchline at times but develops in its middle and late stages as a thrilling ride. To cite another trope: “a real page-turner.”
Yet “War and Peace” did indeed provide an early pay-off.
There, on page 60, is one character’s observation about pending war between Russia and Napoleon’s France. Word has emerged about an official government document:
“The manifesto no one had yet read, but everyone knew of its appearance.”
Sinclair Lewis envisioned masked armed thugs arresting and incarcerating innocent citizens, without impunity, and the rise of “Corpos,” an unofficial, intolerant, forceful political party (read MAGA).
Tolstoy was writing very much from a historical perspective, so it’s not quite the same sort of prescience, but it feels like it:
“The manifesto no one had read”.
Project 2025 is something we all know appeared. American Civil Liberties Union describes it as “… a federal policy agenda and blueprint for a radical restructuring of the executive branch authored and published by former Trump administration officials in partnership with The Heritage Foundation, a longstanding conservative think tank that opposes abortion and reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, immigrants rights, and racial equality.”
“Project 2025,” states ACLU, “includes a long list of extreme policy recommendations touching on nearly every aspect of American life.” … Many initiatives “are outright unconstitutional.”
And in 2025, it is playing out in the sudden, Draconian limits on immigrants’ and many others’ personal freedoms, threats to the free press, latent and outright racism, and gutting of government programs and even whole departments. These are the broad strokes (or lashes).
Then there is the president who posts AI videos of the arrest of former presidents – just one of a series of daily attempts at distractions from what feel like all-but-unveiled high crimes (and forget the misdemeanors.)
The Late Show and Stephen Colbert are getting canceled and yet I wonder how it is Colbert has apparently gone nine years without invoking “truthiness,” his excellent 2016 word invention for that which sounds true but is not. Is his withholding of the word his acknowledgment that, under Trump, “truth” is irrelevant?
And why is no one talking about another critical word we heard about in 2016, with the advent of Trump 1.0?
Kakocracy.
We witness the anti-science of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and the seemingly prescribed doltery of Pam Bondi, Christi Noem, Mario Rubio and Pete Hegseth. Worst, a Secretary of Education Linda McMahon who, on record in front of a Senate committee, seems comfortable with Holocaust denialism.
Kakocracy: government by the worst people.
Moreover, Trump and his family and friends just get richer. The grifter in chief is about to roll out gold-plated cellphones, as if Bibles and sneakers were not enough.
As the Carnegie Endowment’s Moises Naim puts it: “Scoundrels have always been in the halls of power along with amateurs, the inept and the deranged. But these days the criminality of some political leaders has reached levels worthy of the tyrants of antiquity.”
Oh, Naim wrote this in 2018.
“And the ineptitude of those in power now has much graver consequences due to globalization, technology, the complexity of society as well as the speed with which things happen.”
Written seven years ago before the tariffs, before the co-opting of the highest court, before the unleashing of ICE, before the Mar-A-Lago favors-carousel, before Twitter/X solidified our toxic consciousness, before pre-compliant self-censorship, before the MAGA kool-aid, before the utter surrender of the GOP to the selfish whims of one man.
Krapocracy!
Well said and timely, Kirby.