Normal

    A lot of people are talking, kinda nostalgically, about "normal".  I don't know that combination of wage slavery, kleptocracy and inequality is something we really want to return to but there it is.  Be that as it may, that's not the subject here.
    The calls for a return to "normalcy" and the repeated use of that word in respectable publications is one of my pet peeves.  My peevishness isn't rooted in some imagined dedication to the tenets of the King's English. (Technically that should be the Queen's English but what the hell?)  My peeve is rooted in our history and who should know it in detail. "Normalcy" simply is not an English word.  The word is, normality.
    Frederick Lewis Allen was a leading American literary figure and respected historian of the first half of the twentieth century.  As long-time editor of Harper's Magazine, he was a kind of be-all, end-all in journalism circles.  Rightfully so. As a historian, he wrote the very influential and informative, "Only Yesterday".  It's very well written and I guess how interesting it is, is up to you.  I liked it just as a diversion.
    Isn't that nice of me to recommend something written over 85-90 years ago?  Like most things of that era, it is in black and white but I think you'll like it.  Now, here's the hook.  There is a difference between recommended reading and required reading.  If you're a journalist or historian or a public official concerned with making American policy, this is required reading.  If you haven't read Allen you really shouldn't be commenting because your education is incomplete, inadequate.
    "Only Yesterday" is a social and political history of the 1920s.  The first presidential campaign of that decade was,  Harding v Cox.  Harding campaigned on the slogan, "A Return to Normalcy".  That drove the eastern, intellectual establishment wild.  It set off a debate about the fact "normalcy" just isn't a word and Harding's other nostrums and platitudes were so much bullshit of equal, dubious value. The Republicans went to great lengths to prove it was, indeed, a word and cited with straight faces, ridiculous sources going back to, in one laughable case, 1857.  Lewis recounts that all with a straight face.
    Harding won the election with just over 60% of the popular vote.  It did turn out the most polite description of Harding could be, "a real piece of work".  Two confirmed affairs. One, confirmed, illegitimate daughter.  About half his cabinet went to federal prison and the other half probably should have. The one guy, Forbes, yes one of those Forbes, fled to Europe before being apprehended.  It was credibly whispered Harding was assassinated in a sort of palace coup, with the connivance of his wife because he had discussed coming clean about the various scandals with his Vice-President, Coolidge. You can imagine his wife's motives. That's pretty funny and the list of names is a roll-call of FDR's  "malefactors of great wealth".  It's also not my point.
    If you're a journalist or someone involved in public policy in the United States and you don't know the proper word and the anecdote proving the mistake, it means you haven't read Allen's book and screams your education is inadequate and your conclusions half-formed and dismissable.  It really bothers me to see that in the best of circles and on the front pages of national publications. Hopefully, now it will bother you too.