I bet none of you knew about this historical novel, "It Can't Happen Here!", from 1935 by Sinclair Lewis. That same old, delusional expression is well remembered by Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants here in Argentina, as it was blindly blurted out with absolute confidence in the face of any fears that Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez initiatives would end in distopic dictatorships.

But the novel precedes those disasters: it wasn't based on Cuba nor Venezuela, it was based on recent events in the USA itself, where fears of the unthinkable where met with such confident answer.

Sadly the All the King's Men movie fails miserably to portrait what the true danger was about, but by 1915, Huey Long started to emerge as more than a mere demagogue, but as a true menace to the base principles that had made the USA the world super-power it was.

I always say: people is people everywhere. I'm always met by weird theories on why Latin-America has been stuck as a 3rd world country for more than a century, but that wasn't our reality at first: we came down from being a 1st world country, not the other way around. By 1935 Argentina was on its way to beat the USA PCI when we decided that the current world wide fad was the way to go: socialists regimes raging Europe showed themselves as superior to capitalism, sported first by Mussolini, then by Hitler. And then, by Argentina. Our "Mussolini" was the infamous General Perón, who rose to political power after participating in a coup d'etat that allowed him to position himself as a leader in the fashion of Mussolini, to which he admired greatly.

"It's because of the dictatorships!", they say, so "it will never happen here!"... ...but, in a country without a single background event of an accomplished coup d'etat as the USA, the exact same thing was happening freely, organically, and with has much strength as anywhere else...

Here we can hear Perón's voice when we read the radical speeches with which Huey Long inflamed the masses about:

People from the great depression era fell unconditionally in love of this premises, granting Long absolute power over Louisiana. And I mean absolute power: all three powers of the state where under his strict control. Legislation, Justice, and Law Enforcement, all where under Long's command, which he promptly used to smash any dissident voices. We are speaking of an entire state, not a single vulnerable city, but a state.

With sole control on legislation, he started passing laws at his will. With sole control on public funds, he started financing a massive propaganda machine to idealize his figure and demonize any margin of dissidence. He ultimately prohibited any media that was not under control of the state, even the college newspaper of the University of Louisiana.

The negative economic impact was immediate: undeterred inflation, free-fall salaries, etc. But, with absolute control over the public opinion, any failure could not be his but caused by the despicable enemies of the people! It's because of the capitalist! They hate the people! The solution is to give more power to the State! More taxes! With unanimous approval of the people, he thus proceeded to create "ministries" at his discretion, with the premise that any activity must be under the control of a state ministry, specially the "ministry of press", which had sole authority to censor any "non adequate" opinion.

At the heigh of his power, when he was senator he unsuccessfully tried to pass a law to change the constitution so that anyone that was found to perform an activity outside of the control of its designated ministries was to be prosecuted (indeed, he was unlawfully in control of Louisiana, through his puppets, while he was senator). Once again the enemies of the people doesn't want me to care for you! The outrage! Give me the power to counter this beasts that crave for your suffering!

He did not but to increase his power and influence more and more. Marvellous stories of his idyllic leadership where always reaching the nation, on how this humble men of the people was giving a tireless battle against the "enemies of the working class". The senate had two trucks to deliver letters from the entire country: one truck had to be devoted solely to Long, the other to the rest of the senate.

He was on his way to win the presidency.

What stopped all of that? Did the people realized of what was going on and decided to stop the madness by retiring their support to Long? Long story short: no, it was solely stopped by a bullet, leaving place to a less radical socialist.

The USA isn't asleep. At large, maybe it was never awake. Now it's time.