Deja vu all over again!

Sloan, Election Night 1907.

“I’m not a Democrat, I’m of no party. I’m for change for the operating knife when a party rots in power,” he declared in 1908. Though his sympathies were broadly socialist, he was wary of using his art as propaganda. He told one art critic that “I had no intention of working for any Socialist objects in my etchings and paintings though I do think it is the proper party to cast votes for at this time in America.”

Harsh, dirty New York, 0. Henry’s “Baghdad on the Hudson,” had its demotic refuges: the new movie houses, the dance halls, and, very important for Sloan, McSorley’s Ale House, a dimly lit, sawdust floored, working class Irish tavern from which women were banned and whose eccentric annals would be recorded by Joseph Mitchell in his essay “McSorley’s Wonderful Saloon.” Sloan drank there regularly. — Hughes, American Visions

In reading these excerpts about the artist John Sloan’s New York scene of a hundred years ago, the phraseology eerily echoes today’s political chatter:

I’m not a Democrat ... party rots ... change ... power ... socialist ... propaganda ... critic ... cast votes ... at this time in America ... harsh, dirty New York ... “Baghdad on the Hudson” ... working class ... from which women were banned ...

It seems like the more things change, the more it’s like deja vu all over again. Are lessons never learned?