History repeats, but not exactly. There are cycles and rhythms. Empires rise and fall; there seems an inevitability to that. There are also smaller repetitive movements within societies, which come and go like the seasons. I’ve been thinking a lot about the similarities between our current dyspeptic moment and what was happening in America one hundred years ago, in 1924. It was a more optimistic time—this was a chronically optimistic country until the 1970s, according to the polls—but there was a curling inward as well, a national retrenchment, a retreat from the world stage. The big three Trumpist themes of 2024—isolationism, protectionism and nativism—were huge in 1924 as well.
Isolationism. The hyper-patriotic enthusiasm for World War I had curdled. War had turned out to be far less romantic than jingos like Teddy Roosevelt imagined. Woodrow Wilson’s idealism had crashed against European realities; his attempt to remake the international order—via a League of Nations—was defeated in the Senate. The country had always tended toward isolationism, a consequence of geography and policy (Washington’s Farewell Address) and now that was redoubled. There was a period of pacifist delusion: war was banned in the 1928 Kellogg-Briand pact.
There are similar stirrings on the left and right now. Trump liberated the Republican Party from internationalist fantasies—like the notion that the US could remake the Middle East to its advantage after the September 11 attacks. Republicans are in full retreat from the world, except for the neoconservative, anti-Trump sliver; the opposition to funding the war in Ukraine, and Trump’s disdain for NATO, is evidence of that. The “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party, always anti-war (and rightly so in most cases), has metastasized into an anti-western, pro-Palestinian boutique miasma.
All of this could change in a heartbeat—a terrorist attack like 9/11 would do it—but the foreign policy theme song for 2024 is “Make The World Go Away.”…at a moment when the world seems closer than ever.
Protectionism. The retreat from the world was commercial as well a hundred years ago. The 1920s saw several tariff increases on foreign goods, culminating in the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930:
The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, enacted in June 1930, added about 20% to the United States' already high import duties on foreign agricultural products and manufactured goods. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 previously raised the average import tax on foreign goods to about 40%.
The effect was a 66% reduction in international trade. Many economists believe Smoot-Hawley exacerbated the Great Depression, though international trade was a fraction of what it is today. Which is why Trump’s proposed 20% increase in tariffs could be disastrous…but popular.
Free trade was something of a novelty 100 years ago; protecting American industries had been national policy almost from the start. It’s different now. American manufacturing collapsed in the late 20th century, a result of neoliberal globalism. Much of Trump’s initial appeal to the white working-class was his anti-China emphasis—and, it could be argued, he had a point, especially when it came to national security industries like computer chips. Biden recognized this in part, passed the Chips Act—but Trump is likely to take advantage of the Administration’s fixation on electric cars (He calls them “Chinese cars.”) in 2024.
Nativism. What do 1924 and 2024 have most in common? Immigrants. In droves: 15% of current Americans were born elsewhere, a record. But it was nearly that in 1924, and the result was drastic: the passage of the most draconian immigration act in US history, which Dan Okrent described in his excellent book The Guarded Gate. This had a profound impact on domestic politics in the 1920s, a wave of violent white Protestant reaction to Jews, Catholics and Asians. Jim Crow was the law of (much of) the land and custom in much of the rest; lynching, a vigilante pastime in theSouth. The Ku Klux Klan was celebrated in movies like D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, which may have led to the Klan’s revival as a largely nativist force in the 1920s. (Trump’s father, Fred, allegedly was a Brooklyn sympathizer.) By 1924, the largest affinity group at the Democratic National Convention was members of the Klan—the convention, which lasted 103 ballots, was called the Klanbake. It nominated John W. Davis over the Catholic Al Smith. (Smith got the nomination in 1928 and was trounced by Herbert Hoover, in a lather of anti-Catholicism.)
In 2024, racial panic among white people—now including Jews and Catholics discriminated against in 1924—is perhaps the most important factor in American politics. Immigration could be the biggest issue of the election; the Southern Border is a mess. Race-conscious affirmative action, via Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs, is likely to be a flashpoint as well.
There are other similarities:
—The country was recovering from a major pandemic in both decades—the flu in the 1920s, Covid now.
—The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is having an impact similar to the national rebellion against Prohibition in the 1920s…and Prohibition was perhaps the first major legislation inspired by identity politics, the Women’s Suffrage movement.
—The culture in both decades was wild and raw and free.
—There was a revolution in new styles and technologies—jazz, radio and automobiles 100 years ago; AI and social media now. We face the possibility, as John Ellis points out in our latest Night Owls podcast, of a rather Matrixy world of euphoric passivity, a combination of generic-priced aphrodisia, weight loss drugs and machines to do our thinking for us.
In 1924, the country elected a traditional conservative, Calvin Coolidge.
In 2024, the country may elect a charlatan authoritarian who jokes about being a “dictator on day one.” If, indeed, he is joking.
My Book Pages
Best fiction I read in 2023: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. This is not only brilliantly written and, at times, wildly funny, it is also the best account of the plagues afflicting white, working-class Appalachia that I’ve read.
Best non-fiction: The Silk Roads by Peter Frankopan. This may be the most important book I’ve read in years, a history of the world from the perspective of Central Asia—how civilization developed from trade routes, which brought prosperity, which brought education and high culture. The Europeans are peripheral until late in the story, when Christopher Columbus and Vasco de Gama opened new trades routes—and the palefaces are brutal when they come, entirely racist and inhumane (The Mongols seem positively enlightened by comparison). The last chapters, about America’s attempt to control the region over the past seventy years, are stunning.
A Bit of Optimism to end the year
Nick Kristof does an annual column about good things that are happening in the world. It is particularly refreshing and necessary this year.
And here’s to a happier and saner New Year for all of you who have indulged my rantings in 2023. Thanks for your patronage and support!
I think this is generally true, but, regarding isolationism. after some initial grumbling about helping Europe (Coolidge famously said,"they borrowed the money didn't they?"), the Dawes Plan came about in 24', helping France and Britain. Before the crash, I think, it looked like much of Western Europe had recovered. It wasn't exactly the Marshall Plan, but pretty impactful for the time.
The main difference is that we should have progressed past this insanity, 100 years later. Instead, progressives have raised a generation of Jewish genocide loving Gen Z sociopaths, who are openly pro Hamas. Kudos to that failure of progress.