A century ago, America was ablaze in progressive change: Jazz. Flappers. Shorter skirts. Speakeasies. The Harlem Renaissance. Mass produced family cars. Radio. Modernist art and literature. Women won the right to vote.
That was the 1920s, the Roaring 20s.
Now it’s the 2020’s, and we’re roaring again. Only this time, most of the roaring is at each other. Pick an issue, and the volume is high. Not since the Vietnam War era have Americans roared so loudly from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Take something as anodyne as books. More than 4,200 titles were cited for potential bans in school and public libraries last year, a two-year increase of 128 percent, according to the American Library Association. Why? Certain groups at state and local levels find it inappropriate that young people might encounter themes of race, gender, sexuality or history. But rather than trust reading choices to individual families, they have judged the material so threatening to young impressionable minds that they insist on some books being removed from library shelves. Among the more notable offenders: Ulysses, Lolita and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Two years ago in Tennessee, a pastor went so far as to organise a book burning ceremony, encouraging members of his congregation to confront the “demonic influences” in the Harry Potter and Twilight series by tossing copies of them into a bonfire.
OK, so we haven’t reached Nazi-level book burnings, but even such an isolated incident is another example of extreme behaviour that serves as a metaphor for a divided, angry nation, now with a contentious presidential election just months away. People are up-in-arms, figuratively and sometimes literally, over immigration, Israel, Ukraine, campus protests, free speech, drilling, abortion, guns, inflation, contraception, the so-called “weaponization” of the Justice Department and loads of other issues.
Congress is always a venue for heated arguments over one thing or another. Rarely does it sink to playground level. Rarely, but not never. During a recent House subcommittee hearing, a white Republican, Marjorie Taylor Greene, took a sarcastic swipe at a black Democrat, Jasmine Crocket, saying, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”
After an argument over what kinds of remarks should be stricken from the official record as inappropriate, Crocket turned to the Republican panel chairman and shot him some snark: “If somebody on this committee starts talking about somebody’s bleach-blonde, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
“Say, what now?” Asked a perplexed committee chairman, James Comer of Kentucky.
“Not a good look for Congress,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said later.
Nor has the Supreme Court eluded controversy, apart from its rulings on highly contentious cases. Recent reports emerged that flags favored by staunch Donald Trump supporters appeared flying over the primary residence and vacation home of Justice Samuel Alito. One flag so angered anti-Trump neighbors that they exchanged nasty words with Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann. Denying any involvement, the Justice said his wife was solely responsible for hoisting both flags. Her right to free speech and all that, he said.
That contretemps followed stories drawing another justice into hot water. Clarence Thomas was widely criticised for accepting lavish gifts from a friend who has had business before the court. Thomas’s wife, Ginni, was a strong advocate for invalidating Joe Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020.
Not a good look for the court, either, which is supposed to appear above even an appearance of a conflict of interests. Neither justice heeded calls to recuse himself from cases involving Trump. Some members of Congress are calling for a Supreme Court Code of Ethics. Fat chance of that.
Will it get worse before it gets worse?
I could go on. But it does seem as though the nation’s water supply has been laced with a mind-closing substance that neutralises empathy, compassion, tolerance and common sense, much to the disruption of a country that up until a decade ago exercised reasonable probity in most matters.
And now we have a new presidential election matchup to consider, leaving us to wonder if America’s political landscape will get worse before it gets better or will it get worse before it gets worse? I remember a critical scene in the 1951 science-fiction film, The Day The Earth Stood Still. The British actor Michael Rennie, as Klaatu, commander of a flying saucer from a faraway planet, warned a leading scientist that earth would be eliminated if its people could not live in peace. “Such power exists,” he promises.
The same threat might apply today to climate change with an unwillingness by many countries to enact more aggressive policies to fight it. But as a political matter in the United States, Klaatu’s message has sharp resonance. Neither party is showing any real sign of lowering temperatures to take on intractable challenges. The two party nominees — Trump and Biden’s replacement in the election, Vice President Kamala Harris — are ratcheting up critiques of each other, with Trump already proclaiming, “I’m not going to be nice.”
Trump’s felony conviction in New York state court for falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment for sex with a porn actress set up a potentially ironic smackdown, should the contenders agree to debate: A former federal prosecutor vs. a felon.
The guilty verdict exposed Trump to a sentence of anywhere from probation to months or even years in prison. No punishment is likely to be imposed until his appeals are exhausted, a lengthy process expected to extend well beyond the election. But it does mean he’s running for president as a convicted felon, still facing serious charges in three other cases that are not expected to start before next year at the earliest, if they start at all.
The big question is whether any of this persuades the remaining sliver of undecided voters to cast ballots one way or another. Biden’s decision not to seek a second term and Harris jumping straight into campaign mode energised Democrats everywhere, drew her even with Trump in the polls and forced Republicans to direct their trash-talking toward the highest-ranking Black woman in American history.
Harris raised more than $120 million in campaign donations within two days of Biden’s announcement, deflecting much of the favourable attention Trump was getting for being shot in the ear by a sniper at a rally in Pennsylvania. His new running mate, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, threw in with his own critiques of Harris, calling her a “childless cat lady,” a descriptor that drew immediate condemnation from politicians in both parties and single mums everywhere. Seems her role as step-mother to her husband’s two kids didn’t count.
In any case, Harris supporters began wondering if Taylor Swift, a real-life childless cat lady with millions of social media followers, might offer a surprise endorsement of Harris. Such a vote of confidence would ignite energy on both sides, raising rhetorical levels yet again.
The 1920s were especially notable for exploding a staid, conventional American society. That era brought forth new possibilities and a sense of optimism until the shock of the 1929 stock market crash unleashed years of economic, psychological and political depression.
A century later, the dynamics are radically different. Political activity is anything but staid with undercurrents of fear and anger propelling the noise level on both sides. Both sides, by the way, that predict the other will bring about the downfall of American democracy as we know it.
Sadly, we’re not all pulling in the same direction toward a shared vision for a happy, prosperous future. Quite the opposite. Many Americans, along with our NATO allies, have no idea what to expect in the years ahead. With one exception: In a country so sharply divided, the election will produce a winner that only half the country wants, and the roaring will go on — at each other, over almost everything, no matter who wins in November.
A view from the brig
Eugene V Debs is a footnote in American history. A devout union leader, isolationist and socialist, he ran five times for president under the banner of the Socialist Party. His best finish was 6 percent of the vote in 1912, good for third place behind the winner, Theodore Roosevelt of the Progressive Party.
Why bring up Debs now? For the moment he holds a unique place in the annals of presidential politics: He is the only candidate to run for the White House while in prison, a predicate for the now oft-asked question: Can Donald Trump still run for president as a convicted felon? Debs is proof that he can, inasmuch as the US Constitution includes only three requirements to be elected to the nation’s highest office: Be at least 35 years old, be a natural born citizen and have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.
Debs the only candidate to run for the White House while in prison
Debs was arrested in 1918 two weeks after delivering an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio, criticising American involvement in World War I and urging young men to resist the draft. He was charged with 10 counts of violating the espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918. In September 1918, he admitted guilt and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Despite all that, he mounted his final run for the White House from federal prison and won 3.4 percent of the vote, a third-place finish behind Warren G. Harding in the first election that allowed women to vote.
On Christmas 1921, Harding commuted Debs’s sentence, freeing him after two years and nine months behind bars. He died five years later a month before his 71st birthday.
It’s doubtful that Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over Trump’s felony conviction in May, would send Trump to prison until his appeals are complete. That could take many months or even years, which would leave Debs’s historical distinction intact for the time being.
Trump would have to settle for a different unique claim: He could become America’s first convicted felon to win the presidency.
Michael Janofsky is a writer and editor in Los Angeles. He previously spent 24 years as a correspondent for The New York Times
