Can’t Happen Here

Salt Lake City Weekly
Aug. 31, 2005

I thought Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here and Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale are the works of fiction envisioning the dystopian American society in a militant-fascist regime, but these novels have the self-fulfilling prophecy of George Orwell’s iconic masterwork 1984 [“Iraq in Utah,” Aug. 25, City Weekly].

The heavy-handed and brutish military-style raid in the name of drug prevention is the epitome of de facto fascismo. The suppression of a legitimate (one that tries hard to stay legal under a stringent circumstance) rave with vicious force would make Benito Mussolini fill himself with fascistically macho pride from beyond the grave.

Media who generously give a blowjob to the esteemed machismo of the Utah County Sheriff’s Office is a fine example of demonstrating the characteristic tenet of fascism in suppressing out of fear, ignorance and morally panicked belligerency with the propagandistic arm of the corporate-controlled mainstream media to cheering approval of uptight soccer mothers and militant arm-chair Daddy Warhawks.

The Utah County Sheriff’s press releases may gush praise and fabricate lies justifying the raid, but such egotistical, self-congratulatory abuse of power and deception by “public servants you can trust” become obvious when countered by the witnesses’ shocking Internet posts that report brutal tactics of the officers against harmless attendees and damning video evidence. This is Footloose deja vu, only absurdly totalitarian in reality.

The Diamond Park incident is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. The sheer, albeit unjustified, brutality of the raid perpetuated against the attendees on the private property in disregard of documented legal permits leave the unmistakable impression that Utah law enforcement dumped a large steaming plop of crap on the Bill of Rights.

Utah County law enforcement who engaged in the vigorous assault on the Constitution at the rave would be at home in alliance with Il Duce’s Blackshirt posse in 1920s Italy.

Aaron Heineman

Mesa, Ariz.