Salon.com political reporter Joe Conason has a new book out titled It Can Happen Here. The title plays off of the title of Upton Sinclair’s 1935 satirical novel It Can’t Happen Here, which tells the story of a not-too-distant future America seduced into totalitarianism.

Here’s a link to an excerpt from Conason’s book on Salon (you may have to watch a brief advertisement in order to get to the content).

The most obvious symptoms can be observed in the regime’s style, which features an almost casual contempt for democratic and lawful norms; an expanding appetite for executive control at the expense of constitutional balances; a reckless impulse to corrupt national institutions with partisan ideology; and an ugly tendency to smear dissent as disloyalty. The most troubling effects are matters of substance, including the suspension of traditional legal rights for certain citizens; the imposition of secrecy and the inhibition of the free flow of information; the extension of domestic spying without legal sanction or warrant; the promotion of torture and other barbaric practices, in defiance of American and international law; and the collusion of government and party with corporate interests and religious fundamentalists.

The entirety of the excerpt is well worth reading. Whether or not Conason’s fears of totalitarianism are well-founded, these types of fears more and more have found expression in more and more main-stream outlets. While Salon doesn’t attempt to obscure its left-of-center leanings, it’s hardly the domain of mad ravings or conspiracy-laden “rumors on the internets.”

But if the good old-fashioned “internets” are more your style, I highly recommend David Neiwert’s 6-part series on the more social and cultural aspects of a perceived rising tide of totalitarianism in America. Neiwert is both a journalist and intelligent possesses quite the vocabulary, hence the title of his paper inspired by the 6-part series involves the news media, and word I had to look up in a dictionary: Rush, Newspeak and Fascism: An Exegesis.