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# Santa Monica It can most definitely happen here
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/santa-monica-it-can-most-definitely-happen-here-editor/
- Published: 2007-07-24T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T02:21:27.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By Hale Porter Los Angeles*

(Re: “Exposing Bush’s Orwellian reality,” opinion, July 19) (Bennet Kelley) quotes George Orwell’s “1984,” as do most other modern political observers. When I was in high school during WWII, my history teacher insisted that, with our system of checks & balances, totalitarian governments like Germany and Italy were impossible here in the U.S.

Is there no one out there who remembers, as I do, a novel in 1937 by Sinclair Lewis titled “It Can’t Happen Here”? Not only can it happen here, it is... now!

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 24, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)