"Labor unrest and violence compounded the mutual recriminations in which Democrats and Republicans engaged. During XXXX alone four million Americans—steel and dock workers, meat packers, and even members of the Boston police department—went on strike to protest the reduction in wages, the assault on the rights of organized labor, and the loss of jobs. Massive unemployment sometimes merged with white resentment at black success, contributing to the racial carnage that tormented such cities as Chicago, St. Louis, Knoxville, and Tulsa. A hysterical press convinced readers throughout the nation that communist subversives roamed the streets at will, plotting the demise of the American government. Meanwhile, women had earned the right to vote in national elections. Prohibition had thoroughly altered the drinking habits and social customs of countless Americans, while also introducing a new set of laws and spawning a new variety of criminals. Finally, nature had inflicted its own misery in the form of an influenza pandemic that ultimately cost 675,000 American lives. By the time of the election in November, a huge bloc of voters, unsettled by war, aggravated by political squabbling, frightened by the threat of radical conspiracies, alarmed by class conflict and racial antagonism, and terrified by the pandemic longed for a restoration of order and stability. XXXX promised them deliverance.'
Source: The Politics of “Normalcy:” The American Confrontation with Progressivism
Does this sound familiar? The time was 1919 and the president was Harding.
[EDIT ADDED]
A second essay contained further relevant quotes:
" Rudyard Kipling expressed in his poem, “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” for example, that our human nature is such that we fail to learn from our mistakes:
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire; [2]
Winston Churchill relayed a similar sentiment in a speech before the House of Commons in 1935 regarding the Stresa Front, in which Britain, Italy, and France agreed to maintain Austria’s independence—without success. It is considered an important, albeit failed, agreement that could have prevented World War II, but Churchill’s remarks are in agreement with Kipling about our inability to “retain” lessons from our past experiences, as Santayana advocates. The illustrious statesman remarked:
When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history."
GA
