What Would Thoreau Say?

  This election season has led me to ask the question:  "what would Doremus Jessup say?" My name is Doremus Jessup and I was born in 1935 to a mother named Sinclair Lewis.   Lewis, one of America’s great authors, spawned me in a novel entitled It Can’t Happen Here.    That book, which detailed the takeover of the American government by a dictator elected by the American people, offered a fictionalized account of what, of course, seemed impossible in the America of Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson. In the book I was the small-town editor of a newspaper that offered somewhat cynical, yet factual reviews of the comings and goings of the days' fictional politicians.   Senator Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip was the name of the eventual dictator who marshaled support from across the country - young kids to older adults - by scaring them and reminding them that only he had the answers to the problems plaguing America, principally caused at that time by bankers and the radical left.