Hoo Boy We Are To Be Keeping All Internets Traditionals

Is It This Life Which Is The Wonderful ?

By I. Rabschinsky

(So this is now annual reprinted Blog thing made just for you. Make enjoyment of holidays because soon they will be made to deport to their country of the Origin.)

George Bailey Guy Understanding How We Are To Being Completely Screwed

This is now standard hoo boy holiday good for you Internets Tradition. You should enjoy, since next time it may be costing you -- because in our Big Huge Nation there is becoming no room for opinions such as these. Peoples may go to the Gitmo for having such opinions. Ha ha ha. But, of course; if you have the money, you can move to the Canada. If you are with the huge money, you can have opinions. How fast the Freedom goes, because Freedom. Ha ha ha!

Great-Uncle Yehudi (In The Front) In The Berlin, 1945

Great-Uncle Yehudi, who is older, still, but strong enough to want to be hit by telephone book until falling down, refuses to be watching the television news. Little Rupert Fox, he never watched, but now he will not watch See Enn Enn, Big Mouse News, or Joe Scarborough network (though he has secretive desires involving the Rachel Maddow ["Nice Jewish girl -- you should find way to meet her," says Great-Uncle Yehudi] ). 

He will not even watch BBC or the PBS Very Balanced. "I am angry, Isidore," he says from the big chair which reclines. "I would spit, if I was not in my own house, sitting."

Great-Uncle Yehudi Today, Without Book Of Phones

But what if you are not watching, I say; you will be not the informed! Great-Uncle Yehudi says, "You are watching what somebodys are wanting to teach you. And their lesson is always, 'You have no power! You are betrayed! Love the Hitler! You cannot be fighting the Bosses! Obey the Cossacks! Shut your mouth and convert to be Christian kind of Gentile!' "

So what do we do? Yehudi makes a sour face. "I will be watching watch The Mister Ed." But what do we do if the Cossacks come? I ask, and Great-Uncle Yehudi laughs.

"Izzi, you are my favorite Great-Nephew (I am only great-nephew, I remind), but Cossacks are already here. You have to choose between learning the lesson They are teaching now, or not learning. And if you decide not to learn, then when time comes, be ready to fight."  

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So we make this the annual offering of the Funny for you, hoping that it can remind of the Time Before and make a smile.

I, Rabschinsky, say this say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.

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So always in the America there is at this time the fooding, and also the Sports Produkt on the television. Many people filling themselves with Holiday as if they about to be told, "Next year, you cannot eat!". I am thinking they are the hostage of their Hindbrain, which is still Neanderthal and wishes to fight with Mastodon. But, still.

And, I am noticing specific films which is only appearing on Amerikanyets television at these months between like maybe September and the time of your New Year.

My examples: At Passover, some of the television is showing The Ten Super Big Mitzvah Rules, with Charlton Heston Guy -- you know, movie where Moses stop making fooling around to pretend he is Big Guy of the Egypt, and decides to get real job saving People Of Israel.

This requires lots of people walking around, always saying "Oh, Moses, Moses, Moses" -- like, if they say this three times, they will be teleported by magik into better movie. Navarone Kind Of Big Guns, maybe, or Socialist-Colored Panther.

Place Which Is Gone Forever: Amerikanyets Driving To Movies:

"Moses, Moses, Moses -- What is happening with our Drive-Ins?"

At another time in year, they are showing same Heston Guy what is Moses in Big Mitzvah Rules in another movie, Ben Of Her. However this is basically film of Jewish guy who becomes like early Jesus guy, but by accident.

Movie is good; he is Number Forty-One guy in slave ship, rowing like animator for the Disney; there are becoming big boat battle, and he gets to be some kind of honorary Goyim. Later, there is an exciting thing with horses and carts -- but it is not the porn film, so too bad for you. Go to web sites where they have not blocked you.

Charlton Ben Heston Making The Ramming Speed, 1959

At finally, with the Christmas, every year since somebody discover the Secret Of Fire there is this broadcasting this movie, It Is Wonderful This Life, made by Frank Capra Guy in 1947, showing the kind of place which everybody wanted to believe was the Amerika. Small town, everybody knows everybody; values is good and everybody work hard and knows their places.

Just like village in the Moldova, except animals do not leave defecation in the street, everyone is speaking English, and most people have job. Plus concrete used in apartment buildings is better quality.

Every single year they are showing this film. It is now a classic also, like Wizard Of Odd and Potemkin Kind Of Battleship and Mister Hulot Goes To Beach Place. It is as big movie as The Tanks Know The Truth (Very popular Great Patriotic War movie made in the Russia. My Great-Uncle Yehudi claims he is in this film as Extra, but still we love him).

Big Scene From Tanks Knowing The Truth: Are They Knowing?

Well, They Are Tank; You Are Person. You Want To Be That Sure?

It Is Wonderful This Life story is maybe simple: Guy, George Bailey Guy, living in small town wants to die, because he thinks his life is shit. And there are the angels, who show us life of this Guy in the little town, and how he is The Good, and there is the Rich Guy who is The Bad. And George Bailey Guy never gets to do things in the Life because the Fate is not for him.

Then there is mistake with money (a problem made from the Rich Bad Guy), for which he is blamed, and he runs from family and goes to place of Publik Alkohol; finally he goes to bridge to jump in freezing water so his family will get small piece of Insurance money. Very Sad (There is also squirrel in another scene which is sad, but never mind). Also very Petit-Bourgeois.

So, Angel Guy comes to the Earth and shows this George Bailey Guy his life is maybe kind of okay, not so much the shit; and boom boom boom, problem with the money goes away in big scene at end when everyone gives him their money, and everyone sings. So happy, little bells on tree and big bells of church ring; America wins the World War Two and future is filled with television and freeway. The End.

But this is too simple, my friend. No way is actual life like this. So, maybe some of me thinks this is kind of the Propaganda about America, to keep us from seeing the Truth of the Things.

And, there is forbidden version of this film, which is other kind of the Propaganda. Please -- allow me to introduce.

---

борьбе за построение социализма во время Угнетение
(также называется "Любовь и революция" после 1991)
("Love And Revolution", Directed By Frank Kapronovich [1949]; Starring Pytor Chost, Gravnik Bolodorin, Irina Valutin. Special appearances by the Spirit Of Revolution, also Che Guevara, Samuel Beckett, and entire 12th Guards Motorized Infantry Regiment)

SO, movie opens with Guy, Georgi Edwardovich Bailey Guy, at the Bridge. He is unhappy, this Guy; boy oh boy he is like making the panic. He goes to public alkohol place and tries to think, but he only finds himself between the forces of dissent and confusion!

TROTSKYITE GUY: River not so bad, after five minutes.

EXISTENTIAL GUY: Wait, but no one comes. No one cares.

Hoo boy; Georgi is in big fix. This guy has family with SmallChilds, and tiny Policy Insuring The Life -- and he is believing everybody would be better off if he would jump and get it over with, already.

GEORGI: My life is steaming pile of animal things,

because the Rich Guy will always win. Now I am jumping.

But, Georgi is being watched at Bridge. Not by some angel Guy (none of this reliance on things which cannot be proven by good Socialist science!) -- but even better -- is Spirit Of Revolutsya!

(Spirit Of The Revolution Watches Georgi)

And, The Spirit saves Georgi! He takes him to place where they can speak of things, of the Truth -- and slowly, Georgi's eyes are opened to not only the forces of historical determinism, but the inevitability of struggle against the oppressor classes!

GEORGI: So you are saying that when the consciousness

of the People is raised sufficiently, that armed struggle

is not only necessary but inevitable?

SPIRIT: You got it, Comrade.

So, Georgi, now with eyes opened thanks to the words of the kindly Spirit, is seeing that the world is filled with inequality and criminal things so big your head feels like kicked soccer ball. It is like understanding that, not only are you living as Dog, lapping up the vomit of the Rich Guy, but you work in factory to make guns to force others to live like this (Also, the Rich Guy pays you in fake dog vomit and those X-Ray glasses which do not work).

For Georgi, this is whole bunch of dried fish to eat in one night (Like story by that Guy, Dickens Guy, Carol Burnett Christmas, or something). This is the Life? He is asking himself.

A World Of Things For Them, But Not Food For Children

Economy And Bad Fate For Peoples Means Nothing To Them

While The Many People Lose Everything To The Illegal Foreclosure

So now Georgi is filled with indignant and bad feeling for The State Of These Things. He feels the pain of the oppressed, working masses, and is being filled with Revolutionary Fervor -- and he goes to talk with the People in his little village, to tell them what the Spirit had revealed to him -- and the Spirit sends along friend, Che Guevara Guy, to help.

GEORGI: We don't have to live under the heel of Potter's boot!

He's just some, bloodsucking animal! Feeding on all of us -- and I'm

tired of living on fake dog vomit! We have to run things!

CHE GUEVARA SPIRIT GUY: Ay, Yi Yi! You listen to this guy.

The People, moved by Georgi's words, march with him to the place of the Bad Rich Guy, to demand Justice, the chance to make something other than guns, and to be paid in actual money instead of rubber dog vomit and X-Ray glasses which do not work.

BAD RICH GUY: You realize that the manufacture and sale of

weapons around the globe is the backbone of our nation's industry?

GEORGI: You don't understand -- the days of taking your rubber

dog barf are over, Potter! We're going to run things!

MOB: No fake dog barf!! No fake dog barf!!

BAD RICH GUY: My family has run this town for fifty generations.

All I have to do is close the factories. How long will it be before

your little rag-tag mob starts to starve? They'll come crawling back

to work -- and for half the rubber dog barf I gave you before!

Then, Georgi takes the Big Step -- the one which all oppressed people are taking in these movies when faced with Oppressors who pay them with rubber dog vomit: He crosses line from intellectualizing his oppression to active revolutionary.

Otherwise, we would have no resolution of all this rising action; and only ending for this film possible is that everyone would go for Pizza. This is unsatisfying from view of the Socialist imperative.

GEORGI: You're wrong, Potter -- you, and people of your

class are finished. Now you're going to face Justice for your

crimes -- because the People own the means of production!

And so The Bad Rich Guy is taken away by the People; his house later becomes hospital, day-care center, and place where revolutionary theater troupes practice before going into the streets.

And, of course, there is a proper celebration at the Georgi Bailey house, with the Revolutsia Spirit and the SmallChilds.

GEORGI: Gosh, Spirit, I don't know how we can thank you.

SMALLCHILD 01: Spirit, can't you stay and have some Fair

Trade™ coffee with homemade whiskey with us?

SPIRIT: No, SmallChild; I must go. There are so many oppressed

peoples in a world beset by unspeakable monsters of Capital.

But I will take a shot of that whiskey -- neat, please.

Finally, after long discussion between Rich Bad Guy and the Organs Of State Security, he faces Revolutionary Justice and the verdict of The People.

RICH BAD GUY: Long live International Capitalism!

PEOPLE'S MILITIA LEADER: Fire!

And, of course, Georgi and his lovely wife are pausing in their labor to build a New Socialist Future to share a moment's reflection on the plight of The Peoples, and also to suggest some hygienic sexual activity between them which may occur later.

...and in the background, The Internationale swells on the soundtrack, sung by the Sad Vlad Orphans Choir Of Greater Moscow! Please to show the credits!

This film has not been shown since its original release; big shame, also, because it is at least as good as movie with Bert Landcaster in it but of the name, just now, is escaping me.

Great-Uncle Yehudi likes Revolutionary Love. He thinks it is wonderful comedy, but still we love him. If you can find this film on DVD, then okay. If not, well then it is big world out there! Be That Guy -- go find!

I, Rabschinsky, say this -- to Moldavish Guy; you also.

Your Reichstag Tuesday Recap

 Revere Them As Royalty, As Gods

National Guard Troops

At Los Angeles Civic Center, Federal Building

June 9, 2025 (Daniel Terna / NYT)

                                            "How did you go bankrupt?"

                                            "Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly."

                                                    -- Ernest Hemingway; The Sun Also Rises (1929)

When things happen, they come in a waterfall, a cascade, a torrent. If you haven't been paying attention, they will seem to appear as if by magic, out of nowhere.  But they never do. 

What's unfolding is not a surprise. It's not hyperbole, or an exaggeration. The Leader wants a blood sacrifice on the altar of his madness. His Orcs are working Sir Sir, yes Sir, to manufacture it. 

Every passing day increases the possibility of live rounds being fired, someone dying -- and when that happens, all bets are off. It's what they want.

SFPD Faces Off Against Anti-ICE / Deportation Protesters, 

San Francisco Mission District, June 9, 2025 (Lauren Elliot / NYT)

The Past Is Present, And Tense

Even with everything that's happened since January 20th, convincing people to believe that we're deep into a fascist coup and to do something is hard. And, we've had nearly a decade to understand that what's happening, right now, was coming.

In the long-ago 2021 (via The Soul Of America),  Adolph Reed posted an observation ("The Whole Country Is The Reichstag"):

"The right-wing ... [has] a single concrete objective—taking absolute power in the U.S. as soon and as definitively as possible. And [they] even seemingly want, to destroy the social fabric of the country [in taking power] ...

"Discrediting government ... has been a component of the GOP game plan ..  and Democrats have reinforced [that] in their own way. ...Four decades of retrenchment and privatization ... steadily increasing economic inequality and government’s failure to address it in any meaningful way [fuels a] lack of confidence, distrust, and hostility toward government ... and eventually even the idea of the public itself.  And [Right-wing billionaires who] bankroll the ultraright have taken advantage of that, [stoking] frustration and rage into a dangerously authoritarian political force."

Campaign Commercial For Every Maga Rethug Candidate In 2026 --

Presuming We're Allowed Elections

(Los Angeles Civic Center, June 8, 2025)

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I grew up in the Fifties and Sixties. I believed in our long national Narrative of America as an imperfect country, always trying to Do Better, on a constant upward (and so, of course, liberal) arc into an inevitable future. That this idea looked identical to the post-WW2 economic boom enjoyed by white Americans, and may not have been good for other humans in other places, took time to learn.

National Guardsmen On The Streets Of Newark, NJ; April, 1967

In that Narrative, Watergate, Vietnam; riots every Summer in major American cities, and the National Guard in the streets; Nixon, Reagan, Bush; Forever War -- all could be seen as tragedies, regrettable episodes. So was the political Right. They were a Fringe, on the wrong side of history. The future would belong to a moderate, Liberal culture: always upwards. Of course it would.

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This Will Be On The Exam

Please listen to me when I say this -- and I want to be wrong -- but 50 years later, the children and grandchildren of the Silent Majority, the Birchers and the Klan, are back. 

They're bully-mean in their MAGA caps and January 6, 2021 - Civil War T-Shirts. They see the world through small, piggish eyes, and they hate you.

They Have Pledged Their Lives And Sacred Honor, To This, The Leader

They hate Colored People and Foreigners, and Eggy-heads, and Libs and Gay and Trans People; and them Eee-leets, weak and soft. They think vaccines and science are evil. They love god; yes they do (somebody's god, anyway), and America. But they hate you, and want you to suffer and die. 

America's Owners are delusional, and rich. Very, very rich. They don't like Trump, or the Base, or anyone who isn't part of their class. But they believe in keeping control of things, and expect some... regrettable, drastic measures are necessary. They want the same fate for you that The Base does.

The Base will be manipulated into doing those drastic things -- as people like them have done, time and again. And after the mass arrests, the kangaroo courts (if any), the private prisons filled; the mass graves covered over -- the Base will sing 'Amazing Grace' in celebration of 'god's great victory' over the evil demons they've expunged.

The likelihood this may play out, here in America, is no longer hyperbole. And I'm not the only person saying so. 

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo

In Middle Of Fascist Takeover

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I'll Take 'White Nationalist Political Narratives' For A Thousand, Alex

In 2021, author George Packer noted in The Atlantic that America's national narrative, Our Story, is a string of crises -- all leading to 'how we got out of it'. How we overcame and went on to even greater triumph: Upwards, always upwards.

But, Packer said, we don't have one unified Story of America -- we have four. The one chosen by the religious and political Right is that of a beautiful America, stolen from its people by immigrants, noisy and uppity People of Color, Women, Liberals, Socialists; LGBTQ+, and (the Base won't say so out loud, yet) Jews and Muslims and Catholics. 

The issues Trump had campaigned on waxed and waned ...What remained was the dark energy he unleashed... Trump’s people still talked about freedom, but they meant blood and soil. Their nationalism was like the ethno-nationalisms on the rise in Europe ... Trump abused every American institution ... and his people cheered. Nothing excited them like owning the libs.

The beautiful America can only return when these demon-possessed culture-despoilers are destroyed. When our Blood and Land is cleansed and purified. Then all will be good again. 

America's Right has been told to prepare, and plan, for a confrontation -- final, bloody, retributive; like battle on the plains of Armageddon.. Trump's core sycophants -- Miller, Noems and Gabbard, Homan, Patel and Hesgeth -- are using this narrative like a blueprint. It's the logical culmination of forty years of victimhood propaganda and hatred. 

They've tied their fate as human beings to making this happen. It's why there are armed troops in Los Angeles. Something has to happen. It's the story arc of a cheap thriller -- Rising Action, leading to a Cliffhanger Climax; then to a Resolution -- and the ending is inevitable: It's Victory. It's "Owning The Libs".

_________________________

You Heard The Fist Here First

In the face of ever-more open corruption and misuse of presidential authority, the Democratic Left is splintered. Democratic leadership is divided at the DNC, and with few exceptions, Congressional leaders seem to focus on how the Right will be judged in the historical record. They send sternly worded letters, and make focus-tested remarks on PBS. 

But it's 2025. This is Crazy Donny 2.0.  American democracy is a store that's being looted right in front of us. It's clear, then, the People must act.  We're human beings, and You Don't Own Us.

The Left needs to come together around popular leadership who gives voice not just to criticism of Crazy Donny and his Lieutenants, but in defining why we're standing up -- a vision that doesn't include the Neoliberal shuck-and-jive of the Clinton and Obama years.  All this shouldn't even be a question.

The Leader, During The 2024 Campaign

The lies and hatred broadcast for forty years by Limbaugh, by the Murdochs and their hand-picked talking heads, are in the "historical record". But the Right thinks: we're Owning The Libs. It is all about the naked use of power, and using that power to enrich yourself.

Los Angeles is a provocation. The situation is like a madman with a gun, who keeps walking towards you while screaming, Don't get any closer!! I'm warnin' ya!! I told ya -- stop comin' at me!!  Finally, he shoots you, shouting, See what you did?? Told ya!! Told ya!! You Libs made me do it!!

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Blood And Soil: The Leader Speaks To The 82nd Airborne, June 7, 2025

 Troops Loudly Cheered Him; Booed Mentions Of Biden And "Gavin Newscum";

Los Angeles... [is] a trash heap... Generations of Army heroes 

did not shed their blood... only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion... 

_______________________________

City Of Angles

This is playing out in Los Angeles. It's a test:  Crazy Donny and the Rethugs say America is being invaded and that's all he needs to "save" the country through mass ICE raids, no due process, deportations. Protests occur; troops are federalized. How quickly will People normalize military occupation? How quickly will a cowed media downplay coverage of any public protests in response? 

Los Angeles is a crisis, manufactured to fit the political narrative fed to the manipulated Base. It's an excuse for what The Leader and his Lieutenants want -- an America resembling Russia, or North Korea. 

They either have to make that Dystopia real -- to pull the trigger -- or give up their power. I suggest they will burn everything to the ground before they give up anything.

Los Angeles is a scaled-down version of what that vision looks and feels like.  It's a public warning to other state Governors, to ordinary citizens. It's an operational prototype for bringing the ICE immigration excuse to a city near you -- federalizing National Guards; bypassing Governors and Mayors. If thwarted, Crazy Donny may invoke the Insurrection Act, his 'legal' basis for occupying America; he loves to double down. 

If The People don't rise up and peaceably, legally, push back on all of this, the Right wins. They'll Own The Libs. Only, they don't just want to own us. They want to destroy us. 

They demand not only that People fear them, but revere them, like royalty; like gods.

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A Very Long Thing About America Really. With Photos. No, Really.

"Oh There's Nothing Like A Road Trip
... when your life is going nowhere"

                              -- Jean Shepard

Charles Cushman; Kodachrome Slide Of Golden Gate Bridge, February 1953

This post has been taking shape for months. But first -- a little digression. Sort of a Fuck You Very Much, You Orc Fucks. You know -- Because Freedom. I warn you, it's a little intense, but these are intense times. 

_____________________________

The Following Is A (Not That Brief) Unpaid Political Rant

"It's A Little Angry -- And That's After The Edits."

In November, half of the United States screeched, We want Oligarchs and Fascism! And this is what we're getting. You wanted this!

There's been (so far) little cohesion on the Left. Democratic Party leadership is the party of closing their eyes and plugging their ears, and "buh buh buh some day it will all go away some day, and don't look at us, it's what all the polls say".

Meanwhile, Elmo Husk is playing with all the data stolen from government departments he's broken and bludgeoned. He bribed Crazy Donny with campaign money, so Donny let him copy databases of personal information, which Old America had spent years and billions to protect from hostile foreign states and cybercriminals. But in New Golden Age America, The call is coming from inside the house. 

So, who will Elmo sell the data to? Yakuza, Triads? Sad Vlad, the Putin? DJ Jim Ping and his CCP All Night Long Band?  Jeffy The Magic Bezos?  Peety Thiel, or Larry, or Zuck, or Sam What AI Am; Lil' Beckah Mercer and Her Daddy?  Even Rupert and Lack Lan too?  So many choices ! 

Crazy Donny can't wait to issue that Declaration Of A State Of Emergency, and Lil' Stevie Reinhard Heydrich Miller can direct protestors and critics and judges and journalists, and you and me! to be deported to Russian prisons. Or worse.  Because Freedom ! Praise Jeesuz!

Good News About Hell

And, applause! for everyone who voted I Am Lovin' me Some Crazy Donny !  I hope you enjoyed the past five months.  When all this shit really hits the fan -- and it will -- just remember: Every time you switch on Fox and Newsmax and OAN, you are sucking Joseph Goebbels' underwear. You wanted this; now you have it. How does it taste, Bobo? 

And, to Democratic party leadership: This is what you wanted, too. You are too frightened of appearing "divisive" "extreme" "radical" to fight back -- because it means you will be criticized by a dozen special MSM Beltway journalists who are busy writing their book of the moment, before the publishing houses are shut down. Why, you might lose influence, appear less relevant. Then what are you good for?

Every time you shut down Progressive voices -- you're licking Donny's adult boo-boo undies. You say only you can make special back-room 'deals' with your 'counterparts' in the Thug party -- people you know will fuck you every chance they get? And you never learn -- so what are you good for? I'd like to know.

And Oh yes Gaza: You won't say 'stop'? Won't turn off the military hardware gravy train? All because criticizing Israel is Bad? Antisemitic?? Please to be giving my dog a blow job, Chuck. Send another strongly worded note to Lil' Pastor Mikey, or Loco Marco, the nazi Ambassador. Maybe Susan Collins will even help you compose it.

______________________________

Ah; but there is good news about Hell:  You repugnant, Orc, nazi degenerates -- You neoliberal goat-fucking scumbags -- you'll all be in it with us.

Damn; if that twerp back on Bluesky wasn't right when they accused me of being an angry, ranting, Downer Dog. Well; losing your World by yards each day will do that to you, kiddo. 

[The] great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark reliance... The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.” 

                      -- Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (1966) 

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo At Close Of Blog Rant

Thank You for your attention. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

______________________________

Transition Paragraphs After Blog Rant

I think about the past, more than is good for me. I think about America, that we're at yet another inflection point in our history.

It's important to remember details about where we all came from, not so long ago, and how far we've come as a society -- particularly when it's so clear there are people who want to take away everything we've been able to force our Billionaire owners to give up since the early 1930s.

_____________________________ 

"Cushmans; Meet The Cushmans

They're a Post-Depression Family"

Historical story-telling is a really like a Spaulding Grey monologue, a step up from the campfire story, the hero's tale. If an Historian is gifted, we might understand better the world and the people who came before us. Because the value for people like us, the Little People down in the streets, really is in the details.

In a broader social and political context, the story-telling can show us who We, The People, once were -- and by comparison, where we are now. What we've gained, and stand to lose.

______________________________

             

 

Ford 1938 De Luxe Tudor Sedan

In the early 2000's, I was surfing the then-Web, and stumbled across a blog post with photos recording a trip taken by a Charles Weever Cushman (1896 - 1972) and his wife, Jean Hamilton Cushman, across the United States in 1940. 

Since I was trained as a historian, and spent a lot of time one way or another as an investigator, I wanted to know more about the Cushmans, and started digging. Much of what I know is relatively recent information; it's taken years to digitize various public sources and make them available online for all of us.

Charles Cushman was born in Indiana. He graduated from the state university; found a job as a Business Analyst at a public relations firm in Chicago in the early 1920's, where he met his wife, Jean -- the boss' daughter. 

Charles and Jean were married in 1924 -- his father-in-law, Joe Hamilton, was a nationally prominent advertising copywriter and innovator in visual media. He was wealthy, connected -- and the uncle of an aspiring writer, John Steinbeck.

_______________________________

(It is, sometimes, the strangest of worlds. In 1930, Hamilton called in a favor to wrangle his nephew a newspaper reporting job in New York City. Steinbeck had published one novel, Cup Of Gold, in 1929, but after the Crash had to take work on a road maintenance crew. The newspaper job allowed Steinbeck to continue writing, and live closer to the New York publishing world.

Twenty-Eight Year-Old John Steinbeck, NYC; 1930

(In the mid-30's, Hamilton was tapped by FDR to become Director of Information for an increasingly embattled Works Progress Administration, defending the Federal Theatre Project and photographers from charges of Leftist bias by right-wing politicians.

(In 1952, Steinbeck put Joe into East of Eden, the youngest of the Hamilton family children, living in Salinas, who goes on to find his calling in advertising, "where his very faults were virtues".)

_______________________________

Cushman's father-in-law Hamilton made sure he had a job (and his daughter, security) in Chicago after the Crash. In 1933, Hamilton became a principal in a new business -- a subsidiary of a Canadian distillery -- which, if Prohibition were repealed, would be positioned to make a ton of money. Hamilton made his son-in-law the business' secretary-treasurer. 

Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933. The distilling company, after making several tons of money, and was sold in 1938 at a substantial profit.  Aber Natürlich, the company's directors and officers -- Joe Hamilton and Charlie Cushman (and Jean) -- made bank.

To celebrate their good fortune, they decided on a road trip from Chicago to the West Coast; then, they would drive east to Florida. It was the first in what became the Cushman's annual routine -- vacations that lasted several months, driving around and across America. 

Cushman had purchased a new 35mm camera, along with rolls of  Kodak's new 'Kodachrome' color film, and was anxious to use them.

______________________________

"Happy Days Are Here (Again)

The nazis, we'll all fear again"

( Note: One U.S. Dollar in 1940, adjusted for inflation, had the purchasing power of $22 in 2025. You'll see both sets of costs as I work through the economics of this post. It's meant to give a real sense of both how well-off the Cushmans were, and living costs in America, 85 years ago.)

In 1940, the Cushmans purchased a brand-new Ford hardtop Tudor De Luxe Coupe for $665 -- that's   $14,630 today. Standard financing for a new automobile was a one-third down payment of $225 ($4,900), with the balance carried on a loan, direct with the auto dealership -- not with a bank. Including interest, the loan would be paid in $30 - $40 monthly installments ($660 - $880 now) over three years.

Charles and Jean drove their new red Ford from Chicago to the Northwest Pacific coast, then, down the length of California. After, they travelled east across the American Southwest, and finally back to Illinois. 

Charles and Jean Cushman: Portland, Oregon; September, 1938

In 1940, America's Interstates didn't yet exist. The Cushman's trip was taken on 3,000-plus miles of blacktop, gravel, or dirt roads. Many roads would be new, built through New Deal WPA / CCC / NRA projects by the kind of road crews John Steinbeck had worked on. With layovers at major stops, the Cushman's trip could easily take thirty days or more.

Their Ford Coupe ran at an average 20 MPG. Gasoline sold in 1940 for ~$0.20 per gallon. A 3,000 mile trip in the Ford would take ~200 gallons and cost forty dollars -- $880 in 2025  (At the current national average of $3.18 / Gal., two hundred gallons will cost you $635 today).

Another fact of interstate driving in the United States in 1938 were Toll Roads. They're nearly extinct, now. But once, roads -- not all, but major 'Turnpikes' -- were privately owned. Wagon, then auto drivers paid to use them. We don't know which, if any, Tolls the Cushmans may have had to pay as they drove around America, or how much.

The Cushman's Tudor Coupe,

On The Marin Side Of The Golden Gate Bridge, 1940

A moderately-priced Tourist Court or hotel room would run an average of $4.50 a night for two people, -- about $120 for 30 days. A decent breakfast, lunch, and dinner in 1940 would run $7.50 per person, per day (including beer and wine) -- altogether, lodging and food for Charles and Jean would cost ~$450 -- almost $10,000 in 2025.

40th Street At 6th Avenue, NYC; June, 1940

(Identified by the newspaper headliner,

"Nazi Army Now 75 Miles From Paris"). Note food item prices.

When you include 10-15% for inevitable add-ons and extras (not including the cost of any clothing, tchotchkes, art, tickets to museums, etc.), their vacation cost ~ $660 ($15,600 today).

Multiply that by 15 other trips between 1939 and 1954, and in 2025 dollars, the Cushmans may have spent $230K -- a quarter of a million dollars -- in their decade-and-a-half of almost continual travel. 

Given that most Americans still struggled with the Depression until 1942, then were swept up in a World War, I'm not completely sure how I feel about all this. The Cushmans were lucky about the money. They were white, upper-middle-class Americans with the relative freedom their 1938 windfall could provide. They were lucky about a lot. 

Fortunately, that has little to do with the photographs.

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OCD Can Be Good For You And Good For Me

Charles Cushman was an avid amateur photographer -- no; he was obsessive about it, starting in 1919 at Indiana University when he acted as photographer for the student newspaper. He took photos -- mostly Box-Brownie-style 120mm-film snapshots -- whenever he had the chance.

Kodak released its groundbreaking Kodachrome color film for 35mm still cameras in 1935. A single, 18-exposure roll in 1940 cost $3.50 ($77 today) -- which included developing and printing by Kodak, something they did for decades (I'm so old I can remember our family mailing rolls of Kodak film in prepaid envelopes to Rochester, New York, and within a week, prints or slides of your photos would be delivered).

In the early 1930's, Charles bought a Contax II 35mm rangefinder camera, with a basic 50mm lens, for $250 ($5,500 today). The Contax was produced by the German firm, Zeiss-Ikon, and among the most expensive 35mm rangefinders available at the time (e.g., made by Leica, Argus, and Kodak).

     

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America, America

"O Blinding Light / O Light That Blinds / I Cannot See / Look Out For Me"

Cushman shot multiple rolls on each trip, and kept detailed notebooks with entries about every exposure. They weren't just tourist snaps. Whether he realized it or not, he was recording what the United States looked like -- even more, what it felt like -- at an inflection point in history. 

The United States settled into isolation after our one, great spasm of colonial Jingoism, the Spanish-American War and the "conquest of the Philippines" in 1898. After our involvement in WW1, the country had rejected Wilson's vision of a global role for the USA and retreated into itself again.

Technology continued changing society. So did the Great Depression -- right down to our foundations. America was divided in 1938 -- Left / Right, Rich vs. Poor. Spain was the Ukraine of the 1930's, torn apart by a war between Fascism, Hitler and Mussolini, and Stalinist Communism. 

FDR had been President for six years, trying to save American democracy and economic markets. He could see the broader world was likely going to pull the U.S. into a major war -- Lindbergh and the America Firsters (some of the same people who had plotted an armed coup to remove Roosevelt in 1934) be damned.

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Cushman's photographs made a record of how people lived -- in rural communities, small towns and large urban areas; how they dressed; their posture and physical condition; where they lived. He could have enjoyed landscape photography, or older architecture studies -- but whether he consciously chose to do so or not, Cushman's real subjects were America, and Americans.

Unemployed Men Near Lower East Side Flophouse, NYC; 1940

He and Jean were in the right places at the right time. He had the right level of obsessive behavior when it came to photography. On their annual excursions, Charles Cushman shot nearly 790 rolls of Kodachrome film over 35 years. In 2025, that's $32,000 -- almost a thousand dollars a year.

And, they travelled during the war (1942-45) despite gasoline, oil, and tires being strictly rationed. Most Americans with autos severely restricted their travel ("Is This Trip Necessary?" was the catchphrase on posters and in advertising), or put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". But not the Cushmans.

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Laguna Beach, California; Sunday Afternoon, June 1940

Jean and Charles Cushman, Miami Beach, FL; March, 1939

In 1954, Charles and Jean moved from Chicago to San Francisco. Polk's City Directory shows they lived in two leased apartments over the next fifteen years. They had been mobile most of their adult lives -- that they rented flats, as opposed to putting down more permanent roots, makes sense. 

They continued making long trips -- to Europe, this time -- and Charles took more photos. The last trip he and Jean took appears to have been to Greece, Austria, and Germany in 1965. A bit later, out for a walk in San Francisco, he took pictures with his ever-present camera in the Haight-Ashbury; just a silhouette on the sidewalk.

       

                              Intersection Of Haight and Masonic, San Francisco; 1967

In 1969, the Cushmans disappear from public records. Charles died in 1972, age 76; no record of Jean.

Charles In Retirement, Snapped By Jean;

San Francisco, Date Unknown

Cushman bequeathed to his alma mater, Indiana University, over 2,200 black-and-white photos, 14,000 color slides, and notebooks. The university had a photography department, and added the bequest to their archives.  

Twenty years later, needing space for their collection, Cushman's photos were deemed nothing more than tourist-level snapshots, and tossed Cushman's photos into a dumpster. An associate professor in the department, by chance, walked past the garbage bin, spotted and literally rescued them. 

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The Photos

Reviewing the color slides, the instructor saw their value as a unique color archive about ordinary America. They showed more than Cushman's good eye for detail and composition. They were a cultural record. You can see them all, online, here.

What stands out in these photos is how much people did not have. There was no broad Middle Class in America.  People didn't have disposable income to spend on consumer goods; it shows in the clothing, shoes, even the facial expressions and physical postures of people we know instinctively are lower on the economic ladder -- and per the 1930 and 1940 Censuses, most people in America were 'working class' or below.

The Second World War, and economic expansion, would change all that. But before 1942 the reality was, a significant number of people worked at jobs which didn't pay much money. Unemployment in 1940 was high - sixteen per cent; there were not that many jobs to be had. We were a nation of people traumatized -- by years of drought, failure, loss; good and bad politics; uncertainty and fear. All of it marked their lives, and our collective national psyche.

(It's not hyperbole. My mother came of age during the Depression and appeared to make a basic underlying assumption about the world: "You never know". Something terrible was about to happen at any moment. Superstitious ("Go outside; turn around three times, and spit. Go."), obsessively careful about money, and everything else. Little new was ever bought. Everything was repaired, resewn, to "make-do". It wasn't until forty years later, sometime in the 1960's -- that she tentatively began to believe she was relatively safe.)

Most people couldn't afford a home. Many who did had to take in lodgers to afford their rent or mortgage payments. Large pieces of furniture were inherited; there was no Ikea in the 1930s. Many rural families didn't have indoor plumbing, electricity, or hot water. 

Vieux Carre, New Orleans LA, 1940

If you rented an apartment in a city, there might be a single communal toilet on each floor; no bathtub. Many people only 'bathed' once a week, with a designated "bath night" -- tin basin to squat in; water heated on a stove, and even then it was only a modified sponge bath. Having a shampoo was a luxury.

Even in 1940, many Americans lived and died within fifty miles or less of the place they were born. Going to visit relatives in another town or state, by train or bus, was done, but flying somewhere in an airplane was unheard of. Or travelling by ship to Europe. 

It wasn't just expense. It was also having the free time from work to make a journey. 'Vacation days' granted by an employer didn't exist. Neither were mandatory rest breaks, paid lunch breaks, sick time, maternity leave, healthcare, or employee savings plans. No regulations about discrimination in hiring involving women, minorities, the disabled; the Deaf Community. Work in America of 1940 was not Woke.

Eutaw, Alabama; 1941

Americans in 2025 have high expectations of the society we live in. We have blogs and substack and Lil' Tukker Sucking Goebbels' Underwear; email and fax and .pdfs. We stream films, episodes of White Lotus, or The Last Of Us, 'South Park', or a Bill Burr special. 

Our general consciousness takes for granted all the technology at our fingertips; our ability to see almost anything, buy almost anything, travel in hours to the other side of the world. Last Thursday, I bought an item on EBay from a seller in Japan. Less than a week later, it's just been delivered as I'm typing this. And I've been listening to a long string of music and podcasts via Bluetooth earbuds, all day.

   

                     

Lower East Side, NYC; 1941

Consider: the people in Cushman's photos have completely different expectations about how their world functions. You didn't hear music unless someone had a record player, which cost $20 - $150 ($440 -  $3,300 today). The records were ~$1.25 ($27.50) each. People listened to radios (cost, new = $20 - $40; $440 to $880).  The world of these people wasn't silent, but no streaming music-on-demand.

USPS would deliver a letter in the 48 States, within days -- a little longer for the Alaskan or Hawaiian Territories. A long-distance telephone call required assistance from Operators, and could cost $0.50 to $2.50 (that's ten to fifty dollars today) -- for three minutes. 

Chicago, IL; 1941

Western Union Telegraph -- delivered by messenger -- could run you up to $20 ($440 today). You can buy clothing and other items from a physical catalog (Marshall Fields; Montgomery Ward; Sears & Roebuck) but USPS shipping could be expensive, and would take a week or more to arrive.

             

Salvage Crew, Teenaged Boys Picking Up Junk; NYC; 1941

My point: A major difference between life in 1940, and our world in 2025, is the instantaneousness of our lives. We swim in an ocean of communication; of consumerism. For the people we see in Cushman's photos, everything which makes up our collective reality, our Now -- hasn't happened yet. 

Black Women And Children On The Street; Annapolis, MD, 1941

The most obvious thing here is how much the women do not want their photograph taken. They acquiesce, because it's a white man's world. But how they feel about it is plain as day.  The children above might be alive today in their late Eighties or Nineties, but statistically it isn't likely.

Saturday-Night County Dance; MacKintosh, OK; 1939

This grabs the sense of every awkward school- or organization-sponsored dance, ever. These mostly young people are sharecropper, farm family kids. They're wearing their 'for-best', their Saturday Night clothes -- dancing in a room with walls of wooden studs, no drywall; literally papered over. 

No idea how Cushman was invited to observe this event and take a flash-photo -- but it happened in Oklahoma, one of the states literally blown away in the Dust Bowl of the Thirties. It feels like something Steinbeck could have described in Grapes Of Wrath -- just history, for us.

Most of the people in the photo were born between the mid-1910s and 1920s. Most of the men would be in the U.S. military, serving in the European or Pacific Theaters, within another two years.

Company Housing Across From A Steel Mill, Johnstown PA; 1940

(Close-Up Of Steelworker's Children, In The Photo Above; 1940)

Indiana Farm, 1941

Latino Boys; Texas, 1941

Lower Clinton Street, NYC; 1940

Not impossible for this man to have been born in the 1860's

Brand New Boeing 307 Stratoliners Being Fueled At O'Hare Airport, Chicago, 1938 

(In WW2, They Would Become The B-29 Bomber)

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MEHR, MIT ANALYSE

In 1940, per the Brookings Institution, seventy-five per cent of adults 25 and over were high school dropouts, or had no education beyond the 8th Grade. 

Only 5 per cent of adults attended college, had a Bachelor's or a graduate degree -- and the majority of them were male.

Unemployment was still high: 16%.  The census showed 53 million persons, 14 and older, as employed. Of them, ~17 million had white-collar jobs -- which typically represented a higher income, compared to 36 million 'blue-collar' workers.

The 1940 Census showed  35,087,440 families in America. 

      Average family income was  $950  ($21,000, in 2025 -- This is net income, not net assets.)

     Lower / Working-Class:  51% of families had income of $1 - $900 ($20,000) / year

     Middle Class:  23% of families made $1-3,000 ($22,000 - 66K) / year

     Upper-Middle Class: 24% of families made $3-4,000 ($66K - $88,000) / year

     Upper Class: 1.59% reported income of $5,000 or more ($100K+) / year

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