This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
With the flurry of books and several documentary films appearing as the national election campaign counts down, a strange entry recently appeared.
"Liberty's Last Stand," by New York Times best-selling author Stephen Coonts, came out in June. When one starts reading it, one can see an odd twist to the standard potboiler for which the author is known.
It's a story of a president gone berserk, using a coordinated series of terrorist attacks around the U.S. to declare martial law, suspend the Constitution and initiate a tyrannical dictatorship.
The commander in chief is a black Democrat in the last year of his second term. His party's pick to succeed him is a woman, but she is badly trailing in the polls to the Republican, a Wisconsin governor.
Sound a tad familiar? It gets better.
In declaring martial law, the president shuts down Fox News and arrests such conservative commentators as Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter and Howard Stern.
Howard Stern?
Now for the kicker.
The president's name in this fictional novel is Barry Soetoro, the name conspiracy theorists say President Barack Obama was called while growing up and living with his mother and Indonesian stepfather and used to apply to Columbia University.
Coincidence or a cynical attempt to plant a seed in the minds of voters during this election?
There is another book available on Amazon written four years ago that almost seems prophetic. It's title: "The Mormon Grail."
It was written by Curt Burnett, who was press secretary to former Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah, and later vice president of public affairs for Questar Corp.
His book also is about a tyrannical leader who uses fear tactics for his own political leverage. His name is Sen. Marcus Stanley, described by the author thusly: "Stalking around … and flailing his arms, Stanley used his fierce oratorical skills to denounce the administration."
With the slogan "America First," he organizes a mass movement to pull the country out of another Great Depression.
"Nobody cared about Stanley's checkered past nor his controversial views on noneconomic issues like race and religion," Burnett wrote.
During the party's convention, Stanley thunders: "Our nation has been betrayed by greedy internationalist businessmen and corrupt politicians."
Burnett has him storming around the stage with a portable microphone, "gesticulating forcefully to underscore his key messages. He pounded away at the need for change while not giving any specifics." He announced he would demand Congress give him emergency powers to implement his program "to get this country back to work."
Stanley wins the White House and engineers a military coup after a series of terrorist bombings, becoming America's first dictator, Burnett explains. He sets up a network of clandestine "black camps" to "re-educate" anyone who disagrees with him, including one protagonist in the book, the "young Mormon prophet Joseph Smithfield [sic]."