It Can't Happen Here and It Didn't Happen Here

While drafting a post about Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here I repeatedly got the title wrong, writing It Didn't Happen Here instead.

This is because there is another book by that very title, cowritten by star of the mid-century centrist intellectual ferment Seymour Martin Lipset (with Gary Wolfe Marks).

His book, the title of which played off of the title of Lewis' classic, addressed not the failure of European-style fascism to take root in America, but the failure of socialist movements to make much headway in the country. In doing so Lewis' choice of title can seem misleading, promising to address one topic but addressing another--but from the standpoint of the horseshoe theory-minded center, which pretends that the "extremists" of the right and left are essentially alike, the implicit equivalence is a natural thing to claim, all as, of course, the left and not the right is what really keeps the centrist awake at night, as they remind every intelligent observer of the political scene all the time.