The dark parallels between 1920s America and today’s political climate.
The dark parallels between 1920s America and today’s political climate.
The early 1920s in the US offers historical lessons on how current pessimism about the state of the country can manifest in dangerous, discriminatory ways.
As promised, the second Trump administration has quickly rolled out a slew of policies and executive orders that the president says are all aimed at “Making America Great Again.” This takes on different forms, including Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency quickly laying off thousands of workers at various federal agencies, and President Donald Trump pausing all funding for Ukraine.
Trump is a daily Teapot Dome scandal.
It’s easier for history to repeat itself after you’ve gutted public education.
This quote in an article from 2012 by Katie Billotte has always stuck with me.
This war on the liberal arts is born from the same desire that produces voter ID laws: a desire to limit democratic participation. The goal of a liberal arts education was never primarily direct economic benefit for the recipient or even the sort of personal/spiritual development about which many like to wax lyrically. The purpose of a liberal arts education was always meant to be a political education. The Latin ars liberalis refers to the skills required of a free man -- that is the skills of a citizen. The Latin word ars and its Greek equivalent techne do not mean art in a modern sense. Instead the word refers to a craft or a skill. Thus, history, rhetoric and literature were seen as the skills a citizen needed for his job: governing.
Before Jan went off the deep end and seemingly started to realign himself entirely (I think he may legit have a mental disorder), he wrote a pretty good piece on the concept of liberal/liberalism and how it related to freedom and education:
https://www.scribd.com/document/59477947/Definition-of-Liberal-by-Jan-Irvin
TLDR? /s
The greatest depression.
Making America Great Again rears its ugly, alien, Lovecraftian head to make us all lose our minds and sanity in the face of unfathomable horrors.
I think they meant "1930's Germany and today's political climate"
The article is worth a read. A lot of Americans don’t realize how much of Nazi Germany ideas had inspiration from and solid support in America.
WW2 provided two incredibly powerful antidotes.
- The US was one of the only industrialized nations not bombed to shit, giving us an economic advantage never before seen.
- the victory over the nazis gave us a shared narrative. A clean and easy story of the good of the allies overcoming the evil of the axis.
For a few generations this carried us. But we shouldn’t forget history, Hitler looked to our eugenics programs for inspiration, not the other way round.
The 20's gonna 20!