FUSING ADOLESCENCE AND DECADENCE

After WWI, a pundit said that America was the only nation on record to jump from adolescence to decadence without taking the intervening steps. An example was fox-trotting, a contemporary rage, which was branded as “impure, polluting, corrupting, debasing, spiritually ruinous, an invitation to carnality.” So what’s new? In the 60's we not only skipped the intervening step but also just fused perpetual adolescence with lifelong decadence and reaped the fruits of such indulgence in the persona of the Clintons. The 20's flappers eventually morphed into feminists as time marched on. We elected Warren G. Harding during the roaring 20's promising to return this country to “normalcy, ” even though he personified just the opposite as did our culture. The stock market crash represented price levels too high, a bull market. A 93% increase in consumer goods from 1920-1929 certainly helped add fuel to the fires of unreasonable expectations. Fast forward to 2008 for deja vu and our recession. History repeats itself but just in different ways. Hope and change from Obama did NOT mean hope and change in the way the public perceived it; when socialism unwrapped itself, who knew what it would entail?