"We definitely weren’t designed to cope with all this--our bodies, our nervous systems, our brains. Among all the other dangers these developments represent, they’re simply wearing us out. A lot of us would like politicians to offer, alongside promises of affordability, even a glimpse of serenity."
![Screenshot from IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis, a novel set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator (in allusion to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany)]
P411
the duties of despotism along with his shoes and his fine new coat. He no longer went out racketing. His cabinet begged him not to clown in barrooms and lodge entertain-ments; it was not dignified, and it was dangerous to be too near to strangers.
So he played poker with his bodyguard, late at night, and at such times drank too much, and he cursed them and glared with bulging eyes whenever he lost, which, for all the good-will of his guards about letting him win, had to be often, because he pinched their salaries badly and locked up the spoons. He had become as unbouncing and unbuzz-ing a Buzz as might be, and he did not know it.
All the while he loved the People just as much as he feared and detested Persons, and he planned to do some-thing historic. Certainly! He would give each family that five thousand dollars a year just as soon now as he could arrange it.
https://archive.org/details/itcanthappenhere00lewi_0/page/412/mode/1up](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:2kf2qj56o2vq7jfaq4x4ogp6/bafkreidprxoqo3eys5qhuyiyxqavsisa7bp7tbatljvbioc5wbbes3t5bm)
