Updated 3 years ago
The 2020s will be a mirror image of the 1920s. Warren Harding campaigned for a “Return to Normalcy,” but actually espoused “America First” and a rejection of the radical ideas of big business-busting Theodore Roosevelt and the globalism of Woodrow Wilson.
While the politics are swapped, I believe the 2020s, like the 1920s, will be a major expansion after a period of adjustments from Covid-19.
And the victor is obviously the opposite, as is the fact that the reincarnation of William Jennings Bryant, this time reborn as The Beast, has been cast out via legitimate voting.
The spirit of Teddy Roosevelt will be back.
And as a former college radical, the biggest nightmare for an extremist is ejecting a tyrant democratically. No armed revolution involved. No lynching needed!
Ever since Nixon and Watergate, the notion that “The System” worked is only going to make people more moderate, complacent, and trusting of “experts” and “mainstream media.” Fringe movements, zines, obscure political newspapers, self-proclaimed gurus, and today, conspiracy websites are swept back under the rug. The zeitgeist shifts back to vanilla.
Truly radical structural solutions, such as ending the electoral college and changing to a parliamentary system to accommodate third parties, get put to the back burner. While this may seem bad for the fringe – and the prospect of other ancillary leftist goals such as college debt alleviation and single-payer healthcare may seem stalled – I would like to think that in a more calm, quiet environment such ideas can be more rationally debated.
Take out the loudmouth in chief, and some of these ideas might actually take seed.
This may seem impossible given the current state of the Senate, but understand that paradigms shift every so often, watersheds do happen. Legal marijuana and gay marriage would have been unthinkable even 20 years ago.
Let’s see what happens when we turn down the volume and begin the boring work of crunching the numbers.
