AMERICANS VOTE FOR 'A RETURN TO NORMALCY'
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) "The country--recently riven by disease, inflamed with racial violence and anxious about immigration, torn between isolation and globalism--yearned for...a return 'to normalcy.'"
These words, written by Thomas Mallon in The New Yorker, describe not the state of the nation in 2020, but the situation the people of the United States faced on November 2nd 1920.
Although voter turn-out was low, Americans elected Republican Warren Gamaliel Harding, who promised 'a return to normalcy,' by a landslide. Republicans gained comfortable control of both houses of Congress.
The nation had endured a bloody world war, an influenza epidemic that took 675,000 American lives, racial strife which included lynchings in Minnesota, Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi and Florida, and were increasingly concerned about immigration.
Irving Stone wrote in 1943...
"The people were tired: tired from the war, tired from the suffering and bloodshed, tired from hysteria...they wanted to be let alone, to sleep in the sun, to recoup their energy and their enthusiasm."
SOURCE
"How the Promise of Normalcy Won the 1920 Election," by Thomas Mallon, September 14, 2020, The New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/
