20/20

 A global pandemic. America turning away from the world. Racial unrest. Labor strife. Restrictions on civil liberties. Massive corrupt self-dealing in the government. White supremacists emboldened and marching on Washington. Anti-immigrant hysteria. A government struggling to ban illegal substances.

This is a description of America roughly a hundred years ago. The flu pandemic; tariff and trade policy; race riots, including the Greenwood massacre; general strikes; the Harding Administration; the "Second Klan" effectively taking over the government of some states; various immigration exclusion acts, Prohibition...all of this was from the period 1918-1923. The pandemic then was worse and coming off a murderous and especially pointless war.

This turmoil helped usher in a conservative governance that survived Teapot Dome scandals and the absolute lack of charisma in Calvin Coolidge. It led to the Scopes and Sacco and Vanzetti trials. The first Red Scare. The rise of criminal cartels supplying Americans with illegal alcohol.

In all, there are a lot of reasons to feel overwhelmed, but our grandparents and great-grandparents had it worse. They also seemed to make pretty shitty choices as a result. Coolidge and Andrew Mellon helped create an economy tailor made to suffer a bubble and a collapse. Hoover took the blame, but the Great Depression was created on Coolidge's watch. 

If Trump was re-elected, not only would we return to an America where the Klan would be welcome in the Oval Office but one where economic policy would prioritize short-term market returns over long-term economic health. 

Thankfully, we won't get a chance to test this thesis, but America requires at least 12 sustained years of Democratic control of the government, so that we can avoid the 1930s. It's too late to avoid the 1920s. We're already reliving them.