To the Editor:

Let us go back to basics — the basics of human nature.

I’m referring to the positive and negative aspects of human nature that have reared their heads countless times through the ages of recorded human history and, no doubt, before: the good, the bad and the ugly, if you will.

Ever since the debacle that resulted in George W. Bush being appointed president by the Supreme Court back in 2000, I have been haunted by a little book that was required reading for me in a history course in undergraduate school decades ago.

This book, titled “It Can’t Happen Here,” by the Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis, was written in 1935 in response to the rise in fascism in many countries at that time.

This book was very powerful then and is even more so, now.

People, it is a short read — 331 pages — and it is riveting in the parallels it draws with the political characters and their philosophies of this day, before this election of 2012. Read it, weep, then vote your conscience.

Virginia Fish
Brunswick