Alan Zendell, August 23, 2025

As a lifelong reader and writer of science fiction and other futurist genres, I’ve always been fascinated by the interplay between predictive fiction and reality. Sometimes the futurists get it right, sometimes they don’t. Sinclair Lewis warned America in 1935 that the country was not immune to Fascism and authoritarianism in his classic novel, It Can’t Happen Here. Thus, on February 20 1939, six months before the German Blitzkrieg of Poland, 20,000 American Nazis calling themselves the German American Bund staged a “pro-Americanism” rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The good news about the rally was the 100,000 real pro-Americans who protested the rally.

I’m certain the ratio of five Americans who prefer our Constitution and democracy to each one who supports Trump’s right-wing power grab still applies today, except that no one is fighting back in an effective way. More and more, people who might be in a posiiton to save our democracy are instead looking out for their own self-interest, hoping the MAGA wave will pass them by.

Futurists in the 1990s began warning of the dangers of an unregulated Internet and the rise of “news” organizations outside the aegis of the Federal Communications Commission. The consistent predictions made by dozens of outstanding writers was that the first casualty would be truth. When anyone can purchase a web domain or create a podcast and say anything they please regardless of facts or truth, and there’s no fair witness fact-checking, they predicted chaos will reign and the forces of darkness will inevitably win.

In 1985, novelist Margaret Atwood published A Handmaid’s Tale, which warned of the possibility of a successful, extremist, white male dominated “Christian” revolution. When I read it, my first reaction was that Ms. Atwood should have stuck to subjects she understood. Her novel suggested America could go from what it was in 1985 to a police state that controlled every American institution, in which women had the same rights blacks had prior to the first Civil War (that is, they were the property of men,) in less than a decade. How could she have expected her readers to believe something so absurd?

Ms. Atwood had the advantage of a fictional pretext, that somehow, except for a very few, women had become incapable of having children. As portrayed in both the book and the television adaptation of it, the second Civil War that followed left most of the country in ruins except New England, which became a Christian, Fascist oligarchy, with the United States in exile residing in Toronto. (Oh, Canada!) Until Trump’s second term began, no one could have convinced me that it could happen here, but I probably would have said the same about Sinclair Lewis’ warning, had I been alive in 1935.

I must apologize to Ms. Atwood. Her prediction looks less absurd every day as Trump continues to attack everything most Americans hold dear, and there is no indication that the right-wing dominated Supreme Court will do anything to stop him. To all Americans who have allowed themselves to become numb to Trump and MAGA, despite the obvious lies and incompetence that define this administration, I say, WAKE UP NOW. Do you want your grandchildren, especially those sweet little girls you bounce on your knee living in a world designed by Donald Trump, Adolf Hitler, and horror stories penned by George Orwell and Margaret Atwood?

I didn’t believe it, even after Trump won and selected the authors of Project 2025 and sycophants who would do anything for a taste of power to run our government. I didn’t believe it when Elon Musk took his chain saw to government agencies that violated the precepts of Project 2025 under the false guise of attacking fraud and abuse. But when ICE started looking like Hitler’s Gestapo, and the best the loyal opposition could do were marathon sit-ins in the House and Senate, when Trump sanctioned Benjamin Netanyahu’s complete destruction of Gaza and continued his public one-sided romance with Vladimir Putin, causing the EU and NATO to break with America, I got scared. For the first time in my life, (I was born during World War 2,) I am pessimistic about the future of our country.

I applaud California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker for standing up to Trump’s attempt to steal the mid-term elections, but those two, alone, cannot defeat MAGA. Where the hell are the leaders sworn to uphold the Constitution?

If you’ve ever visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam and seen the photos on the walls of Nazi troops marching through the Dutch capital, hold on to the horror you felt at that moment. It will be happening in DC within weeks, and if we believe our sociopathic president, in Chicago and Los Angeles soon after. If that’s not enough to make you scream, I give up!