From The Attic — True Stories for a Kinder, Cooler America
The Twenties, those Twenties, those “Roaring Twenties,” began with raids. A century ago, on New Year’s Day, cops in New York and Chicago raided back alleys and busted gangsters distilling wood alcohol for an America about to go dry. The following night, federal marshals stormed labor halls coast-to-coast, arresting thousands. Throughout the ensuing “Red Scare,” more raids followed. Hundreds of “aliens” were deported.
All that winter, the decade that would later roar remained on edge. President Wilson had not been seen in public since October. No photos. No newsreels. No word of his condition other than “stroke.” On January 10, Congress convened and voted to exclude a duly elected Congressman from Wisconsin. His crime? Being a socialist. The vote was 328–6. A week later, Prohibition officially began, bringing a wave of armed robberies and gangland murders. Those were the days, my friend.
Now that the 2020s have begun, we’ll hear much about the Roaring Twenties. We’ll drag out The Great Gatsby, re-run “Boardwalk Empire,” listen to scratchy music from the Jazz Age. If there is one decade Americans romanticize, it’s the 1920s.
But nostalgia is a progressive disease. Symptoms include:
1) a foul taste for present times;
2) an allergic reaction to the word “progress;”
3) a feverish itch to watch “Andy of Mayberry,” listen to Classic Rock, and go to classic car rallies.
Are there nostalgia sufferers in your midst?
Alas, the cure for nostalgia is harsh. History is bitter medicine, but as we enter these new Twenties, a full dose is just what the doctor ordered. Because everywhere you look, you see nostalgia spreading. MAGA hats. Faces downturned at the slightest mention of the future. And the dangerous fallacy that “things have never been this bad.” So, America, bend over. This might pinch a little.
A century ago the average American died at 60. One in ten children died in infancy. In 1920 alone, measles killed 7,000. Diseases we don’t even have anymore — scarlet fever, smallpox, diphtheria — raged unchecked. Polio crippled tens of thousands including, in 1921, the future president of the United States. Anti-vaxxers, get a clue
In 1920, just a third of American homes had electricity, and just one in 100 had indoor plumbing. No homes had radios. All news came from newspapers which, as suggested by their names — Springfield Republican, St. Louis Globe-Democrat — were openly tied to one political party or another. The news of 1920 did not assault us 24/7, but it was just as grim as today’s fare.
In January, a century ago, U.S. Marines occupying Haiti were attacked by rebels in Port-au-Prince. Come spring, tornadoes killed 500 across the Midwest. A million children worked in mines and mills. In homes across America, families still mourned 110,000 killed in World War I and a half million dead from Spanish flu. The Ku Klux Klan was rising, and not just in the South. In 1920, African-Americans were lynched at the rate of one each week. And in September 1920, a car bomb killed dozens on Wall Street.
Now you might argue that 1920 wasn’t yet The 1920s. And that much of modernity, including radio, popular magazines, jazz, and women’s independence, began during the decade. You might also note that dire news from the past doesn’t make anyone feel better about the present. As one of my students said after taking this medicine, “so things have always sucked?”
History can be a pale corrective to nostalgia. Perhaps “those who can’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Still, those who whitewash the past, yearning for good times that weren’t all that good, will never face forward.
Sometime during 1920, a young pundit began surveying democracy. Walter Lippmann did not like what he saw. Democracy was endangered, Lippmann felt. Not by Reds or socialists, nor by crime. The threat to democracy, Lippmann wrote, was a confusing barrage of fact, opinion, and propaganda. Published in 1922, Lippmann’s Public Opinion still seems as post-modern as a website.
Democracy depends on consensus, Lippmann wrote. Consensus depends on facts we all agree on. But facts were threatened by: 1) Self-censorship and limited social contact, known today as “a bubble”; 2) Lack of time to follow public affairs; 3) News compressed into “very short messages,” known today as “sound bites;” 4) Fear of facing facts — call them “inconvenient truths” — that threaten the status quo.
Lippmann offered no cure. But nearly a century has passed and our “endangered” democracy is still with us. I say we keep it going. But we won’t unless we can face a few truths. Not just that “things have always sucked,” but that as Lippman said, “there can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.” And as Coretta Scott King said, “Freedom is never really won — you earn it and win it in every generation.”
Finally, as we begin a new decade let’s remember how Robert Frost responded when asked to sum up life: “It goes on.”
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