Can it happen?

Trump’s authoritarian tendencies represent a clear and present danger to this nation.

For decades, Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel, “It Can’t Happen Here,” has languished in obscurity, although as Donald J. Trump takes over the Republican Party, and perhaps the White House, that’s likely to change. Lewis’s cautionary tale about the dangers of homegrown fascism isn’t great literature, but its portrayal of a demagogic huckster who promises “to make America a proud, rich land again” is an eerie portent.

Trump’s fictional antecedent is Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, a folksy New Englander who was, in Lewis’s words, “an inspired guesser at what political doctrines the people would like.” Windrip “was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his ‘ideas’ almost idiotic.” His enraptured followers don’t care.

Windrip is obsessed with the balance of trade and promises economic triumph once his notions are implemented. (Lewis is writing at the height of the Depression.) “I shall not be content till this country can produce every single thing we need . . . ,” he tells his enraptured audiences. “We shall have such a balance of trade as will go far to carry out my often-criticized yet completely sound idea of from $3,000 to $5,000 per year for every single family.”

Windrip mesmerizes the Democratic National Convention, is elected president a few months later in a fair election and immediately declares martial law. He seizes control of the press and universities, locks up his opponents and establishes concentration camps — all while wearing the costume of a patriot elected to preserve the “American Way of Life.”

Who knows whether Trump is a fascist — at age 69 he seems never to have crafted a fully developed politi- cal philosophy — but his authoritarian tendencies represent a clear and present danger to this nation. As one of his fellow Republicans put it last fall, “[Trump] offers a barking carnival act that can best be described as Trumpism: a toxic mix of demagoguery and mean-spiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.” He also called Trump’s candidacy “a cancer on conservatism.”

That GOP prophet crying in the wilderness was none other than former Gov. Rick Perry. Perhaps bored with village life in Round Top, physician Perry apparently has concluded that the cancer he diagnosed a few months ago is benign. Last week he endorsed the bullying billionaire and also made himself available as a vicepresidential running mate.

Perry and his fellow Republicans will have to come to terms in their own way with this man — a man who represents an existential threat to their party — but Americans need to realize that we’re entering uncharted territory. We’ve had our share of demagogues and would-be despots through the years — Huey “the Kingfish” Long, George Wallace and Lyndon LaRouche among them — but never before has one of them captured the nomination of a major party.

The fictional Buzz Windrip received the nomination of his party in Cleveland of all places. Once Trump accepts his party’s nomination this summer (in Cleveland), Americans of all political persuasions have a solemn task ahead of them. They must make sure that the strange coincidence of truth and fiction ends right there, on the banks of the Cuyahoga.

That GOP prophet crying in the wilderness was none other than former Gov. Rick Perry.