Hecate bobs her hair

"But when we contrast the state of man in the opening of the twentieth century with the condition of any previous period in his history, then perhaps we may begin to understand something of that blind confidence. It was not so much a reasoned confidence as the inevitable consequence of sustained good fortune. By such standards as they possessed, things HAD gone amazingly well for them. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that for the first time in history whole populations found themselves supplied with more than enough to eat, and the vital statistics of the time witness to an amelioration of hygienic conditions rapid beyond all precedent, and to a vast development of intelligence and ability in all the arts that make life wholesome. The level and quality of the average education had risen tremendously; and at the dawn of the twentieth century comparatively few people in Western Europe or America were unable to read or write. Never before had there been such reading masses.
[...]
The precedents of history were all one tale of the collapse of civilisations, the dangers of the time were manifest. One is incredulous now to believe they could not see."

H.G. Wells - The War in the Air
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"Hey, brother, what ya thinking?
Leave that old record spinning

That good old sound is ringing
They don't know what they're missing"

Caravan Palace - Lone Digger
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"Could've been a passing thing
Just a little boom-boom-bang
But we keep going again
And going again!"

Earl - Tongue Tied
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War.
War never changes. (Hey, guess what classic cRPG Werwolfe is currently re-playing?)
At the dawn of the twentieth century, war loomed inevitable in the minds of many willing to acknowledge such inevitabilities. Most were unwilling. War came, and went, and was declared obsolete. Everything was better forever for a decade or two. Most, faced with declining hopes, only sought to re-affirm their standard of living. It was the roaring twenties, the prohibition era when everyone was drunker than ever, when a crisis of overproduction was addressed by increasing production.

We know better than that now. We buy excess food and burn it. I find it entirely fitting that swing music should begin to make a comeback. The Cold War is decades past. As in the interbellum, half the masses of the developed world throw themselves into a forced frivolity while the other half embrace nationalism, fundamentalism and conservatism to their logical conclusion of fascism. Half the public thinks inventing new personal pronouns will solve the world's ills while the other half is practicing their swastikas. Oh, it's all intersectional. The world would be so much better without those straight white males, wouldn't it? I hear they drink baby blood. #finalsolution? Me Too!

So you gotta swing, swing, swing like it don't mean a thing my flappers and dappers, queens of the ring cycle gotterdameragnarockandrollit. Skidoo, skidoo, while the world spins beneath you. When the truth can no longer be kept quiet beneath your crinoline, drown it out in a trumpet-blast of heel-clicking. Victorian heads couched in faint mores belong in the sands of time.

It's two minutes to midnight.
Pumpkin time, Cindy.