Recent events might cause us to conclude that we’re in uncharted territory.  Many viewed the challenges of 2020 as unique.  Political strife.  Pandemic.  Violence in the streets.  A contentious presidential election.  But it turns out that there’s really nothing new here.  The old French proverb, “the more things change, the more they stay the same” was never more apt than it is right now, because the truth is, not much has changed in the last 100 years.  If you’re a history buff and a political junkie like me I recommend David Pietrusza’s, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents.  It’s a history of the events leading up to the 1920 election.  The title refers to the fact that six men who had been, were, or would be president were involved in the 1920 campaign.  Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover and FDR.  Think we’re dealing with issues we’ve never dealt with before?  Think again.  In the 1920 campaign, there were great political  tensions between left-leaning and right-leaning Americans.  Unemployment was high after WWI, and recovery was weakened by the Spanish Flu Pandemic.  Sound familiar?  In 1920, there were race riots in many cities.  In 1920, the Red Scare had leaders checking under every bed for Russian communists out to destroy America.  Russian collusion even then.  Police in 1920 had clashes with anarchist and left-leaning groups in the streets.  In 1920, public health authorities strongly recommended that people wear face masks to stop the spread of the virus.  They also issued social distancing guidelines and urged people to practice proper hygiene.  About 600,000 Americans died of the Spanish Flu.  We’re well on our way to that figure with the Wuhan Flu.  How medicine has advanced in 100 years.  If you need more evidence that our government has made little progress in 100 years, other issues in 1920 were disagreements on immigration policy, and calls for government controlled healthcare.  The 2020 election wasn’t exactly the same as the one in 1920.  2020 being the way 2020 was, some things were ass-backwards.  For instance, in 1920, outgoing president, Woodrow Wilson, was a progressive/socialist, and incoming president Harding a devout capitalist.  In 2020, switch that around.  1920 was the first time women could vote.  In 2020, we expanded suffrage to non-citizens, the unregistered and the deceased.  In 100 years, we’ve gone from one person – one vote, to one tractor-trailer – 138,000 votes.  Progress. Back to Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson was the father of the Deep State.  He saw the Constitution as an outdated impediment to the absolute power of the federal government.  As a result, Wilson built up the administrative State, the bureaucracy, to permit the federal government to expand into areas the Founders left to the States by issuing regulations rather than laws.  100 years later, the federal government has balooned far beyond Wilson’s wildest dreams.  By contrast, today’s outgoing president, Trump, cut into the Deep State by reducing regulations.  Woodrow Wilson did have something in common with Trump.  Both Wilson and Trump contracted the virus that was the culprit in each of their respective pandemics.  Wilson also has parallels with Joe Biden when it comes to diminished capacity.  Wilson suffered a stroke 13 months before the end of his term.  He was bedridden for most of the last year of his term, and it is suspected that his wife was really president that last year.  The difference is that corrupt demented imbecile Joe Biden is mentally diminished on his way into office, and his wife has been propping him up for the year preceding the start of his term.  In 1920, outgoing president Wilson had a personal “tone” that was repugnant to many.  Sound familiar?  Wilson was a nasty, arrogant, sanctimonious SOB.  When he proposed his “Fourteen Points” at Versailles, France’s Prime Minister Clemenceau observed, “Fourteen points?  God Almighty had only ten.”  Like Trump, Wilson had problems with people in his own Party.  Wilson accepted the help of Democrat Party bosses to get elected NJ Governor, and once elected, he double-crossed the bosses, refusing even to speak to them.  As a result, the Democrat bosses sabotaged their own legislative candidates to let Republicans take control of the Legislature.  That’s real hate.  Call them the Never Wilsoners.  The 1920 campaign sounded a lot like the 2020 contest.  1920 Republicans opposed Wilson’s attempt to get the U.S. into the League of Nations, running on a slogan familiar to Trump supporters – “America First.”  Warren G. Harding was elected on the pledge that America must return to “normalcy.”  Biden ran on a pledge that things “would return to normal,” channeling Warren G. Harding, “America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration…not surgery but serenity.”  The Chicago Sun-Times was more blunt, “We’ll have a president who is not crazy, erratic, self-serving and intellectually dishonest.”  No.  He’ll just be demented, confused, and personally dishonest.   In any case, some people in the Biden camp aren’t onboard with the normalcy thing.  Witness the words of Lilliputian leader of the loony Left, Robert Reich.  “A return to ‘normal’ would be disastrous.  We can’t give in to the allure of ‘normal’ – because normal is what got us here.  Normal led to Trump.  Normal in this case has been decades of systemic racism as well as shredded safety nets for everyone in need, the most expensive but least adequate healthcare system in the modern world, and a growing climate catastrophe that’s steadily undermining public health.”  Whoa!  Funny that Reich and his Commie compatriots did nothing to stem “systemic racism” or any other supposed catastrophe during the 8 years of Clinton or the 8 years of Obama.  Maybe it’s only “systemic” when they’re not in charge.  And shredded safety nets?  Social spending has gone up every year.  But I digress.  What’s sad about Leftist calls for normalcy is that the Leftist nuts actually believe that they are normal.  It’s a minifestation of their metal disorder, delusions of rectitude.  If you believe you’re always right, then you’re normal and everyone else is abnormal.  The last parallel I’ll share from the 1920 election is that the winner in 1920, as in 2020, had a 7 million vote plurality.  Biden better hope the similarity ends there.  Warren G. Harding was elected in 1920, but his administration was plagued by corruption, and he died in office, reportedly of food poisoning, to be replaced by Silent Calvin Coolidge.  Not bad. If the Squad feeds Woodrow G. Biden the poison mushrooms, we’ll get Cackling Kamala Harris.  Pray for Biden’s health.