I Want Normalcy

As in 1920, Americans in 2020 want a return to normalcy after the coronavirus pandemic, assuming it ever ends.  A lot of people have a problem with that attitude, because, in their view, normalcy means income inequality, health care inequities, pollution, and overdevelopment.

Well, that's not my idea of normalcy, and that's not the idea of normalcy among people who are quite vocal about wanting to return to it.  For us, normalcy is simply being able to go to a supermarket without looking like a bank robber or a ninja warrior.  It means when, you do go in to a bank, you can walk into the lobby and not have to use the uncivilized drive-in window.  It means going once again to art museums and libraries, which have been closed for being "non-essential" enterprises.  It means going to a party and being able to mingle freely with your fellow guests.  It pains me to know that my model friend Nancy Donahue and my hairdresser friend Harry King won't be able to have their fashion reunion party any time soon because of this damn virus because their parties have a lot of what I activities that social distancing and personal protection apparel render impossible - lots of hugging, lots of kissing, lots of beautiful faces, and, for me anyway, having a diet soft drink at the bar without having to worry about catching a disease.  What's so bad about that sort of normalcy?

You know, when Warren G. Harding promised a return to normalcy, he wasn't necessarily saying we should go back to horse-and-buggy transportation or manually gaslit streetlights or anything like that.  Harding was in fact fascinated with the new technology coming out of the post-World-War-I era, such as radio and motion pictures, and he even went on a camping trip with captains of industry to show how safe automobiles were.  He simply wanted a return to Americans living their lives in the relative peace and safety that preceded the war.  He wanted to get the economy up and running again and he wanted economic activity to absorb new technology with ease, which is why he appointed bureaucratic wizard Herbert Hoover as Secretary of Commerce.  Perhaps Harding's greatest contribution to the United States was that he helped create a new norm that Americans would come to enjoy, a norm that included road trips, movie dates, and Louis Armstrong.  As for the charge against Harding that "normalcy" meant isolationism and wanting nothing to do with the outside world, even that is misplaced. The U.S., despite its failure to join the League of Nations, hosted an international naval disarmament conference in 1921.  President Calvin Coolidge, Harding's successor, continued American responsibility as a global leader with aid to victims of the 1923 earthquake in Japan and later promoted the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a 1928 treaty negotiated by Frank Kellogg, Coolidge's Secretary of State, and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, to (unsuccessfully, of course) try to prevent another global war.  (One effort at promoting normalcy in the 1920s - Prohibition - was in fact an abnormal condition, and also a resounding failure.) 

What would be wrong with a "normalcy" that would allow Americans to breathe freely - literally? And what's wrong with a "normalcy" that does not include Donald J. Trump?

Americans in 2020 just want to return to the simple pleasures of life that existed before this damn virus struck.  To quote the title character from the 1980 movie Private Benjamin, "I want to wear my sandals, I want to go out to lunch, I want to be normal again."