by parallels to the MAGA movement. The book is particularly impressive given that it was published in 1935, before the world had witnessed the worst of Hitler.

Just a few of the many parallels to Trump & MAGA:
1) Buzz Windrip's campaign tapping into a militaristic patriotism and encouraging private militias loyal to the strongman leader
2) At the same time, once elected, the candidate planned to hide away the old and injured veterans, replacing them with young healthy soldiers –- something Trump explicitly asked military leaders to do)
3) Pretending to care for the common man, when the real policy goals are to support the top 0.1%
4) Pretending to be Religious and lacing comments with quotes of scripture, while acting in a decidedly unchristian manner
5) America first themes and protectionist policies
6) Unachievable promises of prosperity -- for example, an unspecified plan to make wages very high while making the price of popular products very low (hard to achieve simultaneously)

There were brilliant descriptions of the movement -- too many to capture. Here are a couple of quotes that stood out:

About the candidate:
The Senator was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his "ideas" almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture, and his yet more celebrated humor the sly cynicism of a country store. Certainly there was nothing exhilarating in the actual words of his speeches, nor anything convincing in his philosophy. His political platforms were only wings of a windmill.

(Boy does that nail Trump!)

About the propaganda strategy:
An honest propagandist for any Cause, that is, one who honestly studies and figures out the most effective way of putting over his Message, will learn fairly early that it is not fair to ordinary folks—it just confuses them—to try to make them swallow all the true facts that would be suitable to a higher class of people. And one seemingly small but almighty important point he learns, if he does much speechifying, is that you can win over folks to your point of view much better in the evening, when they are tired out from work and not so likely to resist you, than at any other time of day.

(He could have been talking about the Faux News evening lineup)


Thanks for the recommendation. I was sufficiently inspired that I also reserved another Sinclair Lewis novel -- Elmer Gantry.