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The movie sex videoDystopia Project is Mashable's ongoing book series reflecting on what dystopian fiction has to tell us under a Trump administration.We'll debrief a new book every two weeks, teasing out its secrets.  As Nineteen Eighty-Fourraced to the top of the Amazon bestseller list right after Trump's inauguration, for very good reasons, there was another dystopian book hot on its tail: Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here.

There were good reasons for the sudden flurry of interest in this 1935 novel, too. Lewis' book is the first of only two attempts by major American authors to follow the election of a populist U.S. president who turns out to be a fascist dictator. (The other is Philip Roth's The Plot Against America, which we'll get to in a future Dystopia Project post.)

SEE ALSO: How Trump has already taken us into full-on 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' territory

But while the gripping, terrifying classic Nineteen Eighty-Fouris still riding high at the top of the book charts, with the publisher rushing out new copies as fast as it can, It Can't Happen Herehas slumped -- from number 3 down to number 30 on the Amazon bestseller chart.

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Why is that, when the fear of fascism in Trump's America seems greater than ever?

First of all, It Can't Happen Here-- a huge bestseller in its day -- hasn't aged well. Its protagonist is Doremus Jessup, the aging editor of a liberal newspaper in conservative small-town Vermont. Jessup, as his name suggests, was a deliberate throwback to the 19th century. He thinks and talks in very flowery stream-of-consciousness prose, stuffed with references to writers and concepts long forgotten.

Jessup is hard to root for. While Orwell's hero Winston Smith attempts his doomed act of thoughtcrime rebellion against Big Brother from the very first page, Jessup takes an age to really stand up to his dictator, Buzz Windrip.

A folksy senator with a knack for media manipulation, Windrip runs for the Democratic nomination on a 15-point plan that includes a guaranteed $5,000 annual income for every American -- oh yes, plus completely disenfranchising women and African-Americans, and amending the Constitution to reduce the powers of Congress and the courts.

That's way more brazen than anything Trump has suggested, even though there is plenty about Windrip that sounds Trumpish.

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But here's the essential difference. On the day after Windrip's inauguration, when Congress refuses to pass his constitutional amendment, Windrip responds by declaring martial law. He's already established a nationwide brownshirt-style force called the Minute Men (or the "M.M.s"); now he makes them an official part of the regular army.

The M.M.s arrest a hundred congressmen and most of the Supreme Court. The people riot and surround the jail where they're being held. Goaded on by Windrip, there's a massacre. Suddenly, the remnants of Congress decide they can pass the Constitutional Amendment giving the president unchecked power. He proceeds to reorganize the entire U.S., abolishing the states and forming a centralized dictatorship -- all in his first few weeks.

Trump, meanwhile, has tweeted angrily at members of Congress and the judiciary. Republicans in Congress have shown a shameful lack of spine when it comes to oversight of the president and vetting of his cabinet, but the judicial branch is actually standing up to him. The rule of law holds, for now.

SEE ALSO: Trump said, 'See you in court' and the internet replied, 'What?'

There are troubling reports that some of the Customs and Border Patrol ignored the first judicial order halting Trump's travel ban last week, that Canadian Muslims are being turned away at the border based on nothing but their religion, that the FBI will stop investigating white supremacists.

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This is very worrying. But this is not the same as a Minute Men force marching through the streets, arresting elected officials and spreading terror. The only "massacre" in Trump's America so far was invented by Kellyanne Conway.

Predicting Steve Bannon

That said, it's eerie that both Windrip and Trump have a chief advisor who works in the shadows and came from media backgrounds. Lee Sarason is the name of Windrip's Steve Bannon.

Spoiler alert: Sarason becomes Secretary of State and instigates a coup against Windrip, then sets up an even worse dictatorship of his own.

"President Bannon" indeed. Watch your back, Mr. Trump.

Meanwhile, both Trump and Windrip become obsessed with trashing the "dishonest media", even though they are both experts at manipulating it -- and both benefit from its constant spotlight.

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Doremus Jessup's one act of rebellion, months after the dictatorship has been established, is to write a fiery front-page editorial. He is jailed for this, but they let him out when he promises to help his successor write pro-Windrip articles. Some hero.

By the end of the book, Jessup is an agent of the resistance based in Canada; his job is to skip across the border and stir up rebellion. But to achieve this, he spreads propaganda himself, telling each man the rumors he needs to hear.

This kind of behavior doesn't make for a likable character. Indeed, Jessup's constant wittering about his self-doubt and compromises make it surprisingly hard to root for him even when he's in a concentration camp, being forced to drink castor oil and taking 20 lashes. (Whereas in Nineteen Eighty-Four, when Winston is tortured, we're right there on the table with him.)

Lewis, for all his poor writing (the bestselling novel was not a critical success at the time) offered a salient lesson for the media here. Don't prevaricate. Don't engage in false equivalence. And don't wait until its too late. If you have what appears to be a well-reported story -- say, an intelligence dossier corroborated by many intelligence officials -- don't back down.

SEE ALSO: Someone's giving away copies of '1984' and urging people to 'fight back'

But the biggest feeling I had on completing a read of It Can't Happen Herein Trump's America is one of relief.

Buzz Windrip seems a cartoon dictator who spreads his power and sets up concentration camps freakishly fast -- faster even than Hitler and Mussolini were able to do at the time. He isn't distracted by pointless, petty battles like Trump. (It's probably a good thing for Windrip that Twitter didn't exist in 1935.)

The amount of resistance to Windrip is surprisingly low. Nearly everyone in the novel, save Jessup, seems bamboozled by him. Instead of coming together and marching in the streets, the opposition is divided and demoralized.

Take heart, America: We've already exceeded Lewis' expectations.

Should we be concerned about the rise of fascism in the freedom-loving U.S.? Should we fear that Trump is pulling wool over the eyes of millions? Absolutely. But at the same time, it's important to not overstate the threat level.

We have an incompetent, kleptocratic leader who keeps doubling down on his lies, threatening the media and attempting to gaslight us all. He's becoming more erratic by the day, and in full view of the world. He's bad, but he's no Buzz Windrip.

It can't happen here? Sure it can. But it hasn't yet.

Topics Donald Trump