It Can't Happen Here

I just finished reading It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. This book was amazing, partly because it was published in 1935 before many of the atrocities of World War II were known and yet it mirrored them pretty accurately as a possibility, but also because it rang disturbingly close to home today. I'm not the only one who thinks so by the way...here and here. (I realize some may find these articles uncomfortable or slightly offensive...sorry...sort of...) This quote sums up what I believe to be the main point to be taken away from the book - that many Americans are so comfortable in our privilege that we are unwilling to challenge the status quo when it ought to be challenged:

"'The tyranny of this dictatorship isn't primarily the fault of Big Business, nor of the demagogues who do their dirty work. It's the fault of Doremus Jessup! [Main character, normal middle-class white guy who owns a local newspaper.] Of all the conscientious, respectable, lazy-minded Doremus Jessups who have let the demagogues wriggle in, without fierce enough protest. A few months ago I thought the slaughter of the Civil War, and the agitation of the violent Abolitionists who helped bring it on, were evil. But possibly they had to be violent, because easy-going citizens like me couldn't be stirred up otherwise. If our grandfathers had had the alertness and courage to see the evils of slavery and of a government conducted by gentlemen for gentlemen only, there wouldn't have been any need of agitators and war and blood. It's my sort, the Responsible Citizens who've felt ourselves superior because we've been well-to-do and what we thought was 'educated,' who brought on the Civil War, the French Revolution, and now the Facist Dictatorship. It's I who murdered Rabbi de Verez. It's I who persecuted the Jews and the Negroes. I can blame no Aras Dilley, no Shad Ledue (both of these men are poor, uneducated men who become part of the president's national police force after the dictatorship is formed), no Buzz Windrip (the president/facist dictator), but only my own timid should and drowsy mind. Forgive, O Lord!"

I'm not saying that I'm super awesome at being counter-cultural and challenging the systems that need to be challenged, but I do believe that this is a real problem that we all need to work on. (I'm probably about to make some of you uncomfortable again...) As Christians, we are told to be in the world, but not of it, and to me that doesn't mean that we look and act like normal Americans with a few tweaks here and there (maybe not drinking or not cussing or going to church every week), but instead that we live a radically different lifestyle. Politically, it makes me ask some serious questions, specifically, has our socio-economic status and/or our desire to fit into a certain category of being American trumped our ability to see what's most important? Should we really be concerned that our tax money might be going into a welfare recipient's pocket because we earned that money and they didn't? Or should we be disregarding that American "virtue" and instead be focused on loving others until it hurts - by giving even more of what we have to those who need it, regardless of how they got to be in their position of need.

This may seem disconnected from the quote above, but it really isn't. We need to be ok with not being comfortable, to the point that we are willing to work for change. We need to truly follow the example that Jesus set for us and go against the status quo out of love for everyone around us.

I know most of the people I send this blog to do not agree with me politically, and I don't expect you to agree with me necessarily, but maybe think about it...