Category Archives: People

“When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag… (or whatever).”

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“When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in the flag and waving a cross”?

For years, I felt i was the only one that was never able to pin down the source of this quote, though "everyone" said it was Sinclair Lewis. I've spewed my doubts around the blogoshere for years, and finally, others started delving into it,  and finally, Wikiquote (and soon Wikipedia, we hope) is calling it a "misattribution." 

There are may articles about this topic, some of them quite exhaustively compiled (like this one), but all of them inconclusive or otherwise flawed in some way or another.  So, being pretty anal about actual facts, and not alleged facts, I felt I would try to clear it up by going to a scholar who might actually know a little something about Sinclair Lewis and his work.

What follows that scholar's letter to me. I think this is fairly dispositive that the words were not penned by Sinclair Lewis. Following it are some related references with fairly convincing evidence that it was actually a misquotation of a Harrison Salisbury remark about Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here."  I won't swear to that until I've next checked into that claim. It sure sounds right, though.

Shoq:

This quote sounds like something Sinclair Lewis might have said or written, but the Sinclair Lewis Society has never been able to find this exact quote although we've been asked a number of times.

Here are passages from two books Lewis wrote that at least hint at the quote attributed to him.

 From It Can't Happen Here: "But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty."

From Gideon Planish: "I just wish people wouldn't quote Lincoln or the Bible, or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongs more to the bank-book and the three golden balls."

 There was also a play called Strangers in the late 1970s which had a similar quote, but no one, including one of Lewis’s biographers, Richard Lingeman, has ever been able to locate the quote.

 Hope that helps. Many thanks for writing. And thank you for passing the information on to Wikipedia.

 Cheers,

 Sally

Sally E. Parry, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Sinclair Lewis Society
College of Arts and Sciences
Campus Box 4100
Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61790-4100
(309) 438-5669

"I am convinced that everything that is worthwhile in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit…"  Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

We'll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II by Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry www.kentuckypress.com

 

Please direct people to this site. As wonderful a quote as it is, and probably a total truism, it should be properly attributed to who actually said it :)

Related

 

 

Please, please help Karen Wiggins… who has helped so many

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Dear friends:

As some know, I am alway hesitant to make charitable appeals, because the Internet is rife with cases of scams, phony dramas,  or attention whores claiming some fender bender caused them serious trauma and need your dollars to survive (or more likely, buy more Spaghettios for their dinner). Few ever try to confirm these things, or confirm them well, and many get stung. Even if they don't know they were stung, it happens far too often.

And almost as irksome, is the fact that it's so hard to decide who is deserving of Internet appeals for charity.  We can't help everyone, but that shouldn't mean helping someone is out of the question. In the end, like much in this life, it's the luck of the draw.  My own rule of thumb is that for someone to really warrant broad-based Internet appeals, the beneficiary must have extended their own life or generosity to others in some measurable way. I feel this case passes that smell test and deserves our generosity.

Since I never accept Internet appeals at face value, I have personally spoken with @chrisWiggins (at his Google number) and confirmed all of this. I hope my word is good, and you can rely on this being completely legitimate.  His mother has a marvelous record of human kindness and generosity, and deserves all the life we can buy for her.

I hope you will help with whatever you can afford. Even a single dollar will count.

Thank you so much.

 

The story: Please help Karen Wiggins

The donation page: http://karenwiggins.eventbrite.com/

@chriswiggin's  Linked-in Page: http://linkd.in/9vqNsF

 

PS

Yes, Chris is a recent hire at Google. But they have working stiffs, too.(They're not all Googleaires).  He's no more able to save his mother alone than most of us would be in a similar circumstance.

George Carlin on the American Dream (with transcript)

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This legendary rant is even better when read. The transcripts I could find always sucked. So I’ve made what i hope is a more readable version below, so this classic piece of polemical gold can be shared and understood more widely. I’ve read it dozens of times. I still can’t find a flaw in it, or anything even exaggerated. He’s right. We’re fucked. Unless we think of some way to fight back.  I have my ideas. Do you?

Read it first.  Then watch the video. Then read it again.  Then share it far and wide with the little green button. Retweets do count.

Transcript

But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever,  EVER be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying,  lobbying, to get what they want.  Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: 

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.

Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it!  You, and I, are not in the big club.

By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL.  And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick thats being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.

It’s called the American Dream,because you have to be asleep to believe it.

Related

George Carlin’s daughter,  @kelly_carlin, on her first radio show with guest Paul Provenza, talking about this routine.