The Return of the Roaring ’20’s
Looking back to look ahead, and to get ready for the New Year and the new decade!
It’s hard to believe that in a few, short days we will be staring a new decade.
As the 2020’s begin, I thought it might be fun to look back on the era fondly known as the “Roaring 20’s.” This was a time my grandmother recalled with a great deal of nostalgia when I was young. Perhaps we can use events from that decade to predict what might occur in the next few years as well.
While 1920 dawned with a corrupt administration in place, my second favorite president, Calvin Coolidge, ultimately succeeded to the presidency upon the sudden death of Warren G. Harding in 1923. “Silent Cal” was then elected in his own right in 1924, gaining an enduring reputation as a small government conservative and also as a man who said very little and had an exceedingly dry sense of humor.
The Coolidge Administration’s principal objective was to restore the Federal government’s finances to peacetime basis and by doing so, to encourage and facilitate the country’s return to normalcy. The Administration’s primary focus was on reducing the huge war debt, followed by cutting the high wartime tax rates. This was accompanied by an unceasing effort to make the governmental establishment operate efficiently, effectively, and economically.
The newly created Bureau of the Budget, which fell under President Coolidge’s direct supervision, played a principal role in this process. President Coolidge himself made pioneering use of the radio to reach out twice annually to the American people to report on the progress of his economic program.
Unlike Coolidge, President Donald Trump is hardly silent. However, like #30, Trump has a legendary sense of humor (albeit a different kind) and has also pioneered the effective use of a new media (Twitter).
And, like Coolidge, Trump’s economic policies have created soaring economy.
The Nasdaq composite breached the 9,000 threshold for the first time in history on Thursday, benefiting from Amazon’s record-breaking holiday sales and a year-end stock-market rally.
The S&P 500 also surged to a record high, climbing as holiday-season sales figures revealed strong consumer activity and growing popularity in online shopping.
…Amazon stock jumped as much as 4.2% on Thursday after announcing it enjoyed a “record-breaking” holiday-shopping season. The e-commerce giant said “billions of items were purchased” during the Thanksgiving to Christmas period, along with “tens of millions of Amazon devices” worldwide. More than 5 million new customers started Prime free trials or paid memberships, the company added in a statement.
There are also reports that e-commerce sales soared 18.8% year over year through the Christmas season despite the holiday period’s shorter duration due to a late Thanksgiving. If I were to predict, it looks like the economy is going to be gangbusters.
Another event during the 1920’s that is of personal importance to me is the 1922 discovery of King Tutankamen’s tomb. I sure would love to see another spectacular discovery repeated, perhaps Cleopatra’s or Nefertiti’s final resting place. But for now, Egypt continues to tease with new finds being regularly reported, partly as a result of new technologies.
TATTOOS depicting animals, gods and floral patterns have been found “hidden” on 3,000-year-old Egyptian mummies.
The ancient body art, found on seven female mummies, may help shed light on why the Egyptians got inked.
Prior to the new discovery, tattoos had only been found on six mummies over more than a century of research at ancient sites in Egypt.
“When I first saw [the tattoos], I felt both the thrill of discovery and the magic of this new technology,” archaeologist Dr Anne Austin told Fox News.
“We were able to identify dozens of tattoos. They showed imagery of religious symbols, floral motifs and important animals like the cows of the goddess Hathor.”
The 1920’s also was the era of some spectacular and tasteful women’s fashion, as well as outstanding Jazz music. I long for the days when the latest style of clothing for any gender is not an embarrassment and when popular music didn’t make me want to grab my professional grade hearing protection.
Hopefully, the 2020’s will see the continuation of prosperity without the development of fascism…though given the antics of Democratic Party leadership, that last part may prove challenging.
I thought I would share a little dance number to get us into the spirit of both the New Year and the new decade.
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The Charleston actually made a bit of a comeback. Watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEWi3l1ghD4
Those are guys dancing. What’s wrong with you?
I sincerely hope new Gershwin’s, Rodger’s, Hammerstein’s, and other such composers can be found, and that the present-day vulgarians are put away forever.
Gershwin’s, Rodger’s, Hammerstein’s were raised in a different school system, and generations of musicians and wanna be composers are learning to compose without having to play musical instruments or learning music theory.
There are quite a few very talented composers working in movies and tv, but classic orchestral composition likely died as an art because classical education has died.
….and today’s singers are learning to sing without having to avoid being off key. They just vocalize into a computer box.
Whoop Whoop De Do!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7SNTSq-9o
Dancing the Charleston around the world. Including performances by Miss Bee Jackson, Miss Josephine Baker, Mr Jack Dempsey, and Miss Vaughan.
There is also a signature to those voices that I’ve never heard anyone point out: they all sound like they’re singing after inhaling helium.
The pitch control software might be responsible.
I was listening as a radio deejay was doing a retrospective on the singing of Frank Sinatra, lots of songs I’d never heard of. He didn’t just sing “New York, New York”.
But there’s a reason “NY NY” is used as his trademark. The other songs were worse, much worse. He had a very small range and he sang many notes out of tune. He just didn’t know when he was in tune and when he wasn’t.
No wonder he had to practice so much. He needed all the clues he could get, because he couldn’t just hear the intervals or pitches.
Well, there was Prohibition (the Twenties might have roared a bit more without that), the economic problem in 1929, a decade of inappropriate farming practices which led to the Dust Bowl of the ’30s, and of course Mussolini in 1922. The music was pretty good, though, although a decent microphone didn’t appear until 1931, making radically different vocal styles possible for band music. Before that, singing was basically bellowing to a tune. Not that there’s anything wrong with that . . .
Hiter took control of the nazi party in 1921.
Interesting how a hundred years later, the US congress has members the likes of tlaib, omar and cortez, as well as our having a former first lady who turned out to be a rather dumb racist pig. Nonetheless, these people are now maintstream in the US.
Like locusts, every hundred years.
I was reading about the growth of communism in that period. I was thinking that we are currently in the 1930’s.
The farming practices of the 1920’s are certainly superior to the “no till, use Roundup” practices of today that will lead to mega increases in cancer for generations as the Roundup leeches into the groundwater supply.
There is no evidence, or even reason to suspect, that Roundup™ is at all unhealthy for people, let alone that it causes cancer. That, after a dozen or so attempts, someone eventually found a jury stupid enough to believe it doesn’t change that.
Sadly we lost a huge talent the other day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Himmelfarb
Gertrude Himmelfarb (August 8, 1922 – December 30, 2019[4]), also known as Bea Kristol, was an American historian. She was a leader of conservative interpretations of history and historiography. She wrote extensively on intellectual history, with a focus on Great Britain and the Victorian era, as well as on contemporary society and culture.
You must be referring to the Wilson administration. While I consider Wilson perhaps the worst president ever — even worse president than 0bama — I’m not aware of corruption as a problem with his administration. Maybe that’s just a gap in my education, in which case I’d appreciate some keywords that would lead me to finding out about it. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find that Wilson was corrupt on top of everything else wrong with him, I’ve just never heard of it.
But I suspect you’re referring to the Harding administration that came in in 1921, in which Coolidge was vice president. Harding was actually a good president. It’s unfortunate that he’s known nowadays mostly for the fact that some of his appointees were caught with their hands in the till; this was because he had dared to defeat a Progressive and attempt to roll back his Progressive predecessor’s program, so the Progressives went all out looking for dirt and found some. Rather like Trump.
I would consider the coverup of Wilson’s incapacity after his stroke in 1919 to be corruption. The US has a mechanism already in place to deal with a disabled president, but the Democrats perverted it, substituting Mrs Wilson for functions which should have been performed by Vice President Marshall. This pretense continued through the end of Wilson’s second term in 1921.
went all out looking for dirt and found some. Rather like Trump.
What dirt did they find on DJT? (Real, not imaginary.) The corruption rampant up to cabinet level in the Harding admin was real, from Teapot Dome on down.
That apparently simple, cheerful “silent” video of the Charleston is scandalous!
In the 1920’s because of the shapeless dresses that revealed the shape of the body and exposed the calves, and the suggestive dance moves.
Today, because it fails utterly to address issues of intersectionality, privilege and inclusion.
We’ve gotten culturally stupider.