Every 50 Years America Goes Crazy

The following is the opening satirical monologue from “The Andrew Klavan Show.“

You know, when things in America get genuinely upsetting, I sometimes like to take a step back, sidle unobtrusively to the door, slip out, run to my car before anyone notices I’m gone, drive to the airport and catch a plane to one of the isolated islands of French Polynesia where I can wile away the hours with my bare-breasted native lover Tehamana while dining on luscious local fruits and drinking the milk of coconuts, preferably laced with vodka or possibly LSD, whichever is more likely to transform this shrieking hellscape into a colorful, star-speckled hallucination, something like the album cover of the Magical Mystery Tour, except without Paul being dead.

But if that option is not available because of airplane schedules or short supplies of really good drugs, sometimes instead I remind myself that periods of insanity and disorder like this have been a re-occurring feature of American history. Just this week, Michael Barone, the brilliant political analyst — unless it was the Michael Barone who sells ice cream from that big white truck near Central Park — but it’s probably the political guy, right? — anyway, he wrote a helpful article in the New York Sun, pointing out that [quote] “America Goes Crazy Every 50 Years or So.” [unquote]

Barone begins with discussing the War of 1812 when the British burned Washington, D.C., to the ground before Andrew Jackson defeated their forces at the Battle of New Orleans. And that really was crazy, when you think about it, because the British had just finished burning Washington, D.C., to the ground, so defeating them at New Orleans was incredibly ungrateful. We should have strewn their feet with roses and asked them to come back every few years to make sure no one built the place back again. I mean, sure, who wants the British here, when they all talk like homosexuals? I mean, that’s why we had a revolution. A lot of good that did us.

Where was I? Oh yeah…

Fifty years later, we went crazy again and started killing each other in the Civil War. Now don’t get me wrong. The Civil War was fought over the very important issue of women’s rights. I mean, how was Scarlett O’Hara supposed to hold down a job when she had to wear a skirt with the circumference of a helicopter pad? Fortunately, Clark Gable was able to smuggle her out of Atlanta as the city burned down around them, so the war was won and everything went back to normal. But for a minute there, I thought we were in real trouble.

Crazy Time arrived again like clockwork fifty years later with the election of Woodrow Wilson. Wilson did establish some beloved and long-lasting American traditions, like blacks voting for Democrats who hate them and Americans getting killed in wars that have nothing to do with us. But he did go overboard with the 1917 Espionage Act which gave the government power to silence and imprison its political enemies. Luckily, nothing like that could ever happen today, or if it could, I wouldn’t be stupid enough to say so out loud because you know what happens.

Then came the ’60s, when American socialists burned down cities, encouraged spiking crime, destroyed the relations between the sexes, and gutted our institutions. Then came the 2000s, when American socialists burned down cities, encouraged spiking crime, destroyed the relations between the sexes and gutted our Institutions. But no matter how ravingly insane American socialists became, some things in this country remained dependably consistent, like Bernie Sanders.

So my message to you today is that, no matter how much the flaming wreckage of our cities begins to look like the inside of Bernie Sanders’ mind, except without all those women who enjoy getting tied up for some reason, you should never lose hope. Or if you do lose hope, you should never lose faith that you could have hope if you hadn’t lost your faith. And if you lose both your faith and your hope, you shouldn’t get that look on your face where your lower lip starts to tremble and your cheeks get all red and puffy. Unless you’re a girl, then it can be kind of cute, but don’t overplay it. 

Because whatever happens, you can always just remind yourself, that every 50 years America goes crazy, then we get over it. In, like, 49 years or so.

Andrew Klavan is the host of The Andrew Klavan Show at The Daily Wire. A popular political satirist and Hollywood screenwriter, Klavan is also an award-winning novelist. His newest novel is A Strange Habit of Mind, book two in the Cameron Winter Mystery series.

The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.