After the war and the Spanish Flu came the Roaring Twenties. In the popular imagination, it was a time of of prosperity and hedonism–of Al Capone, Jay Gatsby, and flappers dancing the Charleston. It was the party that would never end, until the Great Depression came crashing down, and it did.
But that is only part of the picture. The Roaring Twenties were a time of furious cultural warfare, as the rural white Protestant majority attempted to regain control of the country. Prohibition was imposed; a new racist immigration law was adopted; the Scopes trial took place; Al Smith was crushed in 1928; and the Klan was revived, even in some northern states.
We’re reliving the second part of the picture. We skipped the first part, for better or worse.