I finished reading It Can't Happen Here, and have to say that Lewis's 1935 dystopian novel has a disturbing number of similarities to today. I think the largest takeaway is that while Windrip thought he was president, it was his Secretary of State Lee Sarason managing the Corpo of corrupt appointees, supported by the volunteer Minute Men army who was the power behind that office. As things evolved people came and went in offices quickly . . . does any of this sound familiar? The Secy of State position in Trump's cabinet isn't the power this time, it's the senate leader, but McConnell has left Trump in place because it suits him to do so. End of that story.

It is a novel, it isn't a mirror reflection of today, it was written as a reaction to the Fascism and non-democratic Socialism raging through Europe at the time, leading up to WWII, that Sinclair in 1935 didn't predict. But he was close enough to some things to make this book remarkable today. The character development in that book was primarily around the protagonist Doremus Jessup, the main "character" is the political movement portrayed. Like reading Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, the conditions are the reason the characters exist at all, to travel through the circumstances as they existed at the time and give readers a good look around.