1920's

The 1920's brought a lot to the front door-step of America, the rise of the entertainment industry, the first automobile, prohibition and the invention of fire. The remaining Americans born in this Golden Age, referred to as "The Roaring 20's," are now roaring down our highways at about 12 miles per hour. The kids of the 20's would soon become the foundation that put our country at the top of the totem pole we call "The World Powers," and this is where we will continue to stay for decades to come. (Don’t even think about it, China.) This brings me to my main point of this brilliantly conceived, fascinatingly factious essay: The 1920’s will remain America’s best decade. Just think about it, if you lived in the 20’s, not only would you not know what World War II is, but you would have no idea what a Nuclear Bomb is, and you wouldn’t have to worry about hearing Celine Dion on the radio. I can’t speak for everyone, but that’s a world I would love to live in. Fact: Everyone will die. Fiction: The 1920’s will die. Now you tell me, which one of those is true? If you answered, “Both, and that was a rhetorical question, so the answer is neither,” then yeah, you’d be half right. (What?) Look at everything we’ve accomplished in America and it will be taken directly back to the 1920’s. For example, there’d be no present day Christmas if not for this delicate decade. Charles Dickens’ masterpiece, A Christmas Carol was written in 1843…Alright, bad example. Okay, look at our society today, a lot of it is heavily influenced by the gangster image, your “Fitty Cents” and your “Snoop Dizzle Doggy Dizzes” would be nothing without the inspiration of the original O.G’s, such as Al Capone, Jack “The Machine Gun” McGurn and Charlie Chaplin. Now, close your eyes. (You obviously didn’t listen if you are still reading.) Make a mental picture of the 1920’s. Does it look better or worse than your mental picture of the two-thousands? In the 1920’s there was no abortion, there was no terrorism, and there was no such thing as germs. Now, when you think about where we are today, everything is aborted, everyone gets a divorce and those who don’t are gay people who had to fight the power to get married, and everyone is going to die from the Bird Flu. Here’s a little nugget of information: In 1926-America, every 7 seconds a child got an A in school. In 2006-America, every 7 seconds a child dies of AIDS. It seems like over the past 80 years people began to take the saying “When life gives you lemons, make lemonAIDS” too literal. I’ll admit, the 1920’s did have its cons. In the 1920’s, Dr. Seuss wrote a number of books that would at a later date be considered classics. However, these books weren’t published until the late 50’s. You’re probably thinking, why weren’t they published? I’ll tell you why. Racism. Dr. Seuss’ books were never given the green light to be published simply because he was a black man. (Dr. Seuss was black, right? See: Dr. Dre, Dr. Jay…Dr. Pepper?) Racism was quickly removed from the 20’s when our great president Herbert Hoover signed the “Wait-Until-the-1960’s-Treaty” with both White and Black America. As the 20’s roared on, with all of our accomplishments, it made us more vulnerable than ever. William Shakespeare once wrote, “You betta check yo’ self befo’ you wreck yo’ self,” and what I think my man Will meant here was, hey, you have to mind your surroundings, look around, see what’s going on around the world, learn from it. Take advantage of your faults and make yourself stronger. No one listened to Shakespeare, and paid no attention to his advice. Our economy was booming and no one thought anything of it except that they could now buy more knickers and maybe one day they can go to the “pictures” and see a “talkie.” Now I hate to turn this into an English essay, but I’ll quote Shakespeare again when he said “Mo’ money, Mo’ Problems.” It seems like he knew exactly what was going on. On October 28th, 1929, our stock market crashed. America turned into the Middle East over night, and no one knew what to do. (This is on the 1920’s, not the 1930’s, so my job is done.) In conclusion, even though America may not be doing so hot right now, we always can look back at the 1920’s and think about how great of a nation we once were, I mean, we took one of the worst things ever, the Great Depression and learned from it, and as the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…strike two.”