America’s Obsession with ‘Normal’
Returning to normal has always been a retreat from progress
America has had an unhealthy attitude toward “normal” for over 100 years. Coming out of WWI, Americans were weary of war and everything else that marked the Wilson Administration. They just wanted to get back to normal. Warren Harding went so far as to use the word in his “Return to Normalcy” campaign slogan. Harding appealed to American desires to put the ravages of WWI, the Spanish Flu epidemic, and the first Red Scare behind us. Woodrow Wilson, hobbled by a stroke and failing health, had become invisible and his League of Nations idea was left on the cutting room floor.
It worked. I mean it really worked. Harding trounced the Democratic candidate James Cox in the electoral college 404 to 121. Americans don’t like messy. They don’t like confusion. They don’t like to think too much.
They just want normal, dammit.
And return to normal we did. The “Roaring Twenties” was a wild time of the good old American values of corruption, racism, and unbridled greed. What’s more American than that? During the twenties, the Ku Klux Klan went mainstream. They didn’t even wear their hoods anymore. They didn’t need to. It was socially acceptable to be in the Klan. They even had parades with large numbers of Klan members…
