Can't happen here!

A friend sent me the following excerpt from a WashPost piece today:

But [he] doesn't need to close newspapers in order to force people to censor themselves. He doesn't need thousands of political prisoners if he can make examples of a few people in every sector of society, a labor leader here, a journalist there. And he doesn't need to cancel elections if he can use his appointees to change the rules so that the voting can be easily manipulated. It is a terrific facade, but inside is an atmosphere of total control and fear. Traveling around the country, as I do, it's shocking to see how frightened people are about what the government can do to their lives.

“He” in this case was Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Well, of course. After all, as Sinclair Lewis wrote, it can’t happen here.