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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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"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.

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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.

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(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".)

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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.

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"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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Your Medium-Well Monday Big Existential Decision Point With Fries

Bark Bark Bark Bark

Find The Squirrel In This Photo.  Hours Of Fun For Which You Cannot Be Blamed.

I've been saying for a while: Why should I continue to post, here in The Blogosphere? Most of my observations have already been made by other, smarter humans.  I've recycled posts about the past, multiple times; primarily because things haven't changed much over the past ten years -- except, more people now are frightened, angry, dispossessed, or dead.  For 18 years, I've thought it all smells like Weimar Germany in 1933. My posts reflect that perspective: Downer Dog!

Fellini's Big Conga Line

I'll violate a basic rule of essays, and sum up right here in the second paragraph: My best response to the question, Why write about anything? is, I have a degree of ability as a writer; doing this is who I am, and here's what I'm thinking and feeling. It will resonate, or it won't.

We live in existential times. Statistically, within the next thirty seconds to ten years, I'll be dead.  Our universe is incomprehensible. It could be like Fellini's surreality in the last scene of  8 1/2; or it could be the seedy, run-down illusions of Tim Burton's "Ed Wood". 

"Nobody gives two fucks for Bela"

So, Captain Obvious Downer that I am, I will continue in the Blogosphere. I may reboot -- because even as a nonentity in The Big World, I'm alive and have some things to say. Some of them involve why the topic of whether or not I should keep posting reached a decision point. Let's go there.

And The Rest Is History

This blog appeared in 2008. My posts have mostly been Downer Dog messages -- sarcastic, cynical observations about the state of things -- like finance and economics (I was a financial analyst for a time), crime and law (I was a criminal investigator on the DOJ side), and politics. It's also funny, but the humor is dark.

I manage to present a lot of political-social commentary via whimsical Photoshopped images, my version of editorial cartoons (I'm also a fine art painter).  I've joked that this blog is only read by three people and a superintelligent parakeet, but I've never had presumptions to make money with it, or try to entice readers, or be counted one of the Internet Cognoscenti.

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The Pestident, Speaking To The UN In 2018.

(Superintelligent Parakeet Is At Right)

 

From The Romney Interview Sequence, 2012

I squatted on Twitter. Then came Heeelon, and in the late summer of last year I moved to BlueSky. As with this blog, my social media posts were mostly messages in a bottle, short bursts of cynicism and ad hoc attacks on the American political and religious Right, and a place to share the Photoshopped whimsy.

Everyone In The 50's Remembers The Plutonium Popsicle Truck

BlueSky Can Be Junior High 

BlueSky, after Musk's mutilation of Twitter, was a relief, a great place to be. It still is. Thanks to Heeelon's algorithms, I had a restricted reach, and some 500 Followers. On BlueSky, I was able to add 6,400 Followers, an unimaginable number for me, without much effort -- thanks to moderation lists. 

The Lists were one of BlueSky's truly original inventions, something which separated it from any other social media platform. The list creators identify users with common POV, interests, or who identify as [fill in blank], then post links allowing other users to add these curated lists automatically to accounts you already follow. 

It's an efficient tool to organize and create community -- and through 'Starter Packs', to provide new users with basic audiences of followers. But lists can be created of accounts to block which their creators identified as being wrong and bad. The benefits of moderation lists are obvious -- but with blocking, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? 

Check Back In When I'm 80, If I Get That Far

Recently, I received a message from BlueSky's management: "We've listened to feedback," they said, and were reducing the number of characters I could use to create a post, "Just for the day!", and that I might want to consider being more concise in my writing. 

I'd never seen anything like this on BSky. WTF; what feedback? I thought. I need to be more concise? When did this form of social correction begin on this platform? There was no link or address given to ask for clarification.

Then, I found I'd been added to two lists whose creators identified them as tools to "block common nuisances like engagement harvesters"; that I was identified by them as posting "mostly angry rants" (well, Guilty As Charged), and might even be "[a] bot or troll".

I really did think about this.  I reviewed my posts, going back over a year. There was nothing I could see, nothing I had done, which would put me in any of these categories -- engagement harvesting in particular.  I enlisted a friend to make the same review of my posts; they agreed with my perspective (they also called the list creators Schlemiels; but, still).

I sent a private message to one list creator and asked they remove my account; I wasn't engaging in the kind of conduct they had targeted. They replied, "That's not how I see it."  I didn't respond. There would be no point in starting an Internet feud. They had their opinion, could swing its weight with effect -- even if they were wrong.

Even Xenomorphs Are Confused By The Arbitrarisness

Being stigmatized on a social media platform by the whims of another anonymous Jackass (just as I am, too) isn't as serious as airstrikes in Gaza, or the loss of major animal species on earth. However, it flipped a switch in my limited Dog brain and for a time I was more pissed off than I could say. It's why I have a comment category: I Didn't Go To Southeast Asia For This Shit.

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Finally, A Use For SpazeX

I understand that some persons are fine with cancel culture. Some are fine with allowing any social media influencers to determine what is acceptable personal expression, to declare others' posts as rude or a nuisance, because they say so.

I was happy to see Maga trolls on BlueSky being placed on blocking lists because I'd like the entire political Right in America to [redacted].  But when someone with no real authority declares I'm something I'm not, and adds me to their list -- that seems illiberal, arbitrary, antidemocratic. Something that happens behind closed doors, with no real appeal or due process.

Musk reinstated Right-wing activists, and skewed Twitter's algorithms to suppress Left / Liberal voices.  I understand that BlueSky's making a decision to reduce the number of characters I can use to post -- even if just for a day and for reasons unclear -- isn't the same as Musk's behavior. But they both seem arbitrary, unfair, and a form of censorship.

For while, it felt like being told by the Kool Kids at Valley Middle School that I was a dweeb, and to go somewhere else. Why? What was wrong with me? How could they just do that? Because they could.

Then, I remembered: A basic factor in the design of social media is Popularity.  And, because it mirrored the Nerds-versus-Jocks experience of the Tech Noobs who built the major social media platforms of the past twenty years, we're not talking about political-polling-number, or entertainment-figure popularity -- but Junior High School popularity-contest-level, with all its corrosive jealousies and viciousness and fight-or-flight reflexes -- memories of which are (for many of us) buried for like an unexploded 1,000-pound bomb from WW2, still capable of packing a wallop if jostled sixty-plus years later.

Human group associations are by nature tribal. People are hardwired to seek approval, follow the group's norms and rules  --  because if you're approved of, you get included. If you're not popular, a Dweeb -- then you don't.

You get picked last for team sports, don't get invitations to birthday parties, or hangout sessions in the Walnut groves to drink beer, or smoke grass in a basement rec room when someone's parents were away and the new Mothers Of Invention album had landed. You do not get invited to share your genetic material with Others.  

Social media is designed to promote sociability, clicks and likes, reposts and engagements. More likes means more dopamine hits in our Lizard Brains: Clicks are Good. Likes mean we are liked. Approval and popularity are baked in -- social media says: Get with the program, Bobo.  It's not a conspiracy theory. It's software design.

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That's -30- For This Edition

I've put my posting on BlueSky on hold -- not because a bunch of Kool Kids were mean to me, but because  (a) My anonymous online Dog persona has been a channel for almost twenty years of rants.  It's my Brand, but  (b) Doesn't fully reflect who I am, what I think and feel about real concerns, after seven-and-a-half decades.  

Being an anonymous, sarcastic Jackass may not be the best conduit for that Something Different I think about. And, in its arbitrariness, social media may not be the appropriate channel, either. We'll see.

Thanks for allowing me to Bark.  I'll be back..

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Welcome To Your Locked In Third-Class Thursday

 No One Is Coming To Put Out This Fire

A Short Howl

... he decided that.. he didn't want to leave [a false] passport in his apartment. .. So he opened an account... using the passport for identification, at a Banque du Nord office on the Boulevard Haussmann, then rented a safe deposit box for the passport itself. Three days later he returned... and put an envelope holding twelve thousand Francs on top of the passport. What are you doing? he asked himself. But he didn't really know; he only knew that he was uncomfortable, in some not very definable way ... Somewhere, something was warning him... Hide money, something told him. Arm yourself, said the same voice, a few nights later. But that... he did not do.

          -- "Alan Furst, "Dark Star" (1991)

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It all feels inexorable. 

Down in Third Class, we hear and sense a commotion building on decks above us; the liner is slowing down. Something doesn't feel right. The passenger line has provided a few musical instruments, a few board games like Anchor and Crown to keep us occupied; they turn a blind eye to a bit of gambling. They even gave us a tot of Rum - the good kind, nearly like molasses. Something doesn't feel right, but we keep smiling; let's have more music. Don't spoil the party for others.

And when our concertinas and fiddles pause and the laughter stops: faintly and far above us the ship's orchestra is playing. We can feel the liner has stopped. Then, we hear a series of scraping rattles, like blind curses, as gates to the gangways going up to Second Class and the Boat Decks are pulled out, and locked. 

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Or: From the Salon windows of the passenger gondola, we look out over the plains of New Jersey, all muted mauve greys and purples at sunset, rain clouds dimpling on the horizon in the fading light. We hear ropes uncoiling to slide out of the nose of the airship as we gently make for the mooring mast. There's another low sigh of noise, like a breath, like acceptance or resignation, as water ballast is released.

The Zeppelin company provides complimentary champagne -- a toast; we've crossed the Atlantic! We're all upper- and upper-middle class, highly-paid chroniclers and technicians (passage to America on a Zep in 1937 cost $450 -- almost $10,000 in 2023 USD). The long moment keeps uncoiling, poised between heaven and earth, as in a dream -- when you think you feel the Zeppelin's airframe jolt, just perceptibly, once, like something trying to get your attention.

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With our Planet, our shared climate; our politics (willed helplessness or vicious cruelty); our arts and culture (expressions of existential fear and loathing, and 'christian' mania) ... in almost every expression of human behavior, signs of something rising keep getting louder.  It takes more energy and effort to block it out. My personal lot here in America is better than most, less than some.

Outside America, things are more elemental: I listen to the BBC for a time most mornings, and followed reports made by journalists on scene of the effects of a pointless war between the egos of two Sudanese generals. "I'm looking at video from downtown, central Khartoum," one reporter noted, "and can see a large, modern building. It's the National Bank of Sudan, and it's burning. 

"The remarkable thing," he continued, "is that it's absolutely silent. We can hear gunfire, but otherwise, there are no sirens, no fire trucks, no ambulances. No one is coming to put out this fire."

Obligatory Photo Of Overly Familiar Cute Dog

In Middle Of Blog Rant

And no matter what you think about the war in Ukraine, it is brutal, and it has gone on for over 450 days. The damage is generational: that's how bad it is -- and you could use much the same language to describe events of the past decade in Yemen, Somalia, Syria; Lebanon. 

In Gaza, the endless cycle of repression and revenge and counter-revenge goes on without letup or pity. And, Israelis turned out in tens of thousands to protest a government of malicious ego and religious arrogance, but it made no difference: the Malignant narcissist wins again. I suspect this will become the norm in countries like Israel, Hungary... and eventually France, Austria, America. 

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On the weekend, I looked up from doing another sort of writing and saw, through my living room window, a woman standing at the curb across the street, having an animated conversation with someone on her cell phone. She appeared in her early twenties, and I wondered what her experience of living was like -- prejudices, desires, expectations -- and what her future would look like in another fifty years, when she is as old as I am now. If she lives that long.

I have two degrees in History but have never been good at being a Futurist, at prognostication. That takes a completely different kind of intellect than I possess. Mostly, I bark at what I see, and consider a possible future -- and bark and bark. Few people listen, and that's just how it is.

I don't know what it's going to be like. I only know that two things I keep thinking are absolutely true: The current situation[s] cannot continue, and This cannot end well.

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MEHR, MIT EIN RÜCKBLICK: Much of what I've written since starting this Blog in 2008 has been an extended complaint about living in an absurd, oft-times shabby, and incomprehensible universe. Occasionally it's produced something profound in a minor-key way, or funny, but principally it's just been an extension of that Dog in the neighborhood who barks, and Why Can't His Owners Shut Him The Fuck Up.

This post could have been written at any time during the past two decades and still have seemed relevant. That's both sad ( gosh, Slothrop; you're stuck in a rut, seems to me) and representative of the times we currently live in: All this same shit has been going on at least that long, and what does that tell you?

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MEHR, MIT EIN UNERWARTETER AUSRUF SEINER MAJESTÄT:

CHOOK:  Fuck's sake, Mate; fuckin' Bollocks; this is -- I shouldn't have to fuckin' do this shit, Mate; I'm the King --  an' what the fuck is this 'ere?? Can you just fuckin' move this out the way??  Fuckin' 'ell, Mate; bein' King is Bollocks, I'm fuckin' done with this shit!"

Wouldn't it be Loverly.

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Friday The Thirteenth Random Barking: Up On The Roof

Don't Want To Look Over The Edge

What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left, but to abandon even the hope of truth, and content ourselves instead with stories?
  --  Gregori Legazov (Jared Harris), Chernobyl (Episode 1) 

An aspect of quantum theory has it that reality may be created, moment to moment, in determining one set of conditions of the great cosmic Waveform -- all possible variations in the state of all matter. The world exists in all its multitudinous forms simultaneously: snow falls (hopefully) in the Himalayas, at the same instant billions and billions of other things are happening.

This is where all of us, and novels, live (and the debate whether Flaubert, or Hemingway, or Gaddis, Tartt or Sebald, or Attwood, or Chelsea Handler, described Reality more closely in their works to how it's actually experienced). Terrible, beautiful; it's all going down -- whether you see it, acknowledge it, or not.

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I get up this morning, having watched the first episode of HBO's Chernobyl last night. I kept recalling the scene where a Soviet engineer at the nuclear plant is intimidated, by two Soviet party Administrators, into going up on the Vent Block roof of Reactor Building Four to look down over the edge, directly into the maw of a ruptured reactor core in fission burn.

That was an actual event. A couple of actual, gutless, bullying Soviet party toadies -- Viktor Bryukhanov and Nikolai Fomin -- refused to believe the reactor had exploded. They forced another actual person, Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Sitnikov, to go up on a roof overlooking the blown core and look down into the monster. They sent an armed soldier with him to make sure he did.

Sitnikov received a fatal dose of radiation within seconds. Even after returning and reporting what he had seen, the two suck-ass motherfuckers (products of their system, yes; but motherfuckers all the same) still said Sitnikov was mistaken, and accused him of lying.

Bryukhanov and Fomin did next to nothing. They did not alert anyone about the true state of the emergency. All they were really concerned about was being blamed for something bad, and what effect that would have on their careers as Soviet technical bureaucrats. They only thought about how best to spin things, to protect themselves.

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I also got up this morning to a continuation of news already broadcast the night before -- that Britain has gotten its Little Trump. Stevie Bannon must be so very proud of one of his clients. Our American Pestident, another Bannon customer, has warmly congratulated Boris -- who has only begun to strut and preen and crow.

I don't know enough about the minutiae of British politics to fully appreciate the magnitude of the Tory win -- and the loss by Labor and the Liberals. I fully expect Britain will crash out of the EU -- Boris has said he won't, but he lies (not as much as his friend Donny, but he does), and in the process of Crashing, a lot of Boris' pals will become quite wealth-ier.

What will happen to workers, families, the sick and the elderly?  Once you strip away their lies and gaslighting, the Tory answer is "who cares?" Britain will become a more nationalist, right-wing populist, privatized 'Little England' state: an English version of Trump country.

One of the greatest problems in modern politics, for many democratic states, is that conservatives believe they're voting for the Tory, or Republican, party that's always been.  They're not. The 'new Right' is bereft of values, focused on subduing populations and subverting democracy in order to wield power in a coalition with the Rich and corporations.

In that, they don't differ much from the Democratic party in America,  except that they are more obvious in their purpose, and they put it in a big wrapping of Jesus. Our Democratic party leadership puts things in a neoliberal wrapper, the fig leaf of 'progress': A Great Big Beautiful Diverse Tomorrow. The same wealthy and corporate interests benefit, either way.

But no matter what ideological or theological crap they spew, they're all in it for the Money, a dream of bloodlines, family names, and dynasties. It's what short-sighted humans -- facing the potential end of our species -- can least afford in terms of behavior, but they're doing it.

But to realize that dream, they have to create as much chaos in the public and political sphere as possible  -- their Left opponents, meanwhile, are outmaneuvered by the sheer audacity of the New Right's play for power. That's what we're about to see in Britain, now. It's what we have been seeing in n America. It's not new, but it is Steve Bannon's playbook for a New Fascism.

I expect anti-immigrant sentiment will be emboldened, "Paki-bashing" will increase (some Twitter messages I've seen from among immigrant / persons of color communities in Britain show people are frightened and fear exactly that in the wake of a Tory landslide), and future immigration policies may begin to look like they were crafted by Steven Miller in Washington.

The Unmade Bed Of A Man, And His Captive, Go To The Polls

And the figurehead for it all will be this "colorful" Prime Minister -- a grifter, a liar, a ponce. He will create the chaotic legislative environment, the cover, for other grifters to thrive.  Boris is all about Boris, and fuck the People. And the greatest example of this "who cares" New Britain will be the dissolution of the United Kingdom.

Scotland will very probably force a new referendum on independence -- and I suspect they will vote to remain in the EU and go their own way. Of course, none of that matters to business and corporate elite -- they're only interested in how much profit they can make in a Scottish Republic, and don't give two hoots about its sovereignty or anything else.

For all his wanting to be the second Winston Churchill (who would have fought tooth and nail to keep Scotland 'in the Empire'), Boris doesn't care much about whether Scotland stays or goes. What does it matter? It doesn't pertain to Boris... so, who cares?

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The argument about impeachment is this: The President is a dictator who can do almost anything he / she wants, without oversight or accountability to the Constitution, where the only role for Congress is to rubber-stamp whatever the President desires -- or, he / she is head of the Executive branch of a government with boundaries on her / his behavior set by the Constitution and functional precedents of the office of President.

Trump is a criminal President. His offenses were so egregious that -- no matter the partisan politics involved -- Democratic members of the House had no choice. It isn't hyperbole to say that history required them to act. And Trump is the most recent stop on the long, slow trajectory of the Republican party from conservative to fascist.

The Democrats gave more than lip-service to their oath of office to defend the Constitution against foreign or domestic enemies. If they didn't act, America, as defined by the Constitution, wouldn't exist. It would be another failed state, run by Oligarchs -- and, yeah; I understand there's already enough evidence to use that description, even without letting Trump get away with the abuses of his office.

Articles of Impeachment will be voted on by the full House next week. So far, the process has been high political drama -- primarily due to the frat-boy bullying, little-dick antics of almost every single Republican member of the U.S. Congress. But the Senate is a theater controlled by Trump and his toadies, and it will end with him not being found Guilty. He will remain in office.

Meanwhile, William Barr is pushing the conspiracy theory that the FBI investigation of Russian - Trump campaign connections was politically motivated, that Ukraine was responsible for interfering in the 2016 election, and not Russia. But it's not only a discredited theory -- it's a criminal investigation. Barr will submit indictments and conduct show trials to provide distraction from Trump's crimes ahead of the election. People will go to jail to satisfy Trump's desire for revenge and theater -- except this is the political use of the Justice Department to attack persons Trump perceives as his enemies with fabricated evidence and made-up crimes.

Then, we come to 2020. The Left chooses a candidate who matters, or doesn't. Trump loses, or wins. Even if he loses, he may refuse to leave office, the White House surrounded with Militia (all declared 'Federal Marshals' by The Leader) to "protect the president". Some form of civil war could easily, inevitably, follow.

If certain powerful persons on the right feel Trump is in jeopardy, enough to threaten the power and grift they've been able to to amass,they may decide on some form of coup -- and we may have an actual Republic of Gilead.

(Note: And where would our military stand in all this? The traditional Army-Navy football game was held on December 14; Trump attended, wearing a red MAGA cap. At halftime, West Point Army Plebes and Annapolis Midshipmen sat behind a television reporter, making the twisted 'okay' hand sign, recognized as a white power symbol, for the camera -- and behind the back of a black West Point Cadet sitting in the front row. You tell me where, in case of a civil war, the Armed Services will stand.)

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The political Right keeps raising the stakes of polarization in America, attempting to keep the GOP Base (Trump's, really) at a fever pitch -- but that can't be maintained without the promise of an end state, a victory.

For the Right, it's no longer a "fight the good fight, if we don't win there's always next season" attitude. For 35 years, rightist media has carefully nurtured the Rage of White Joe SixPack, so that "owning the libtards", completely crushing, dominating their opponents, is the only acceptable outcome.

The Left -- meaning, Leftists, immigrants, persons of color, feminists; LGBTQ persons; Muslims; it's a long list -- must somehow be taken care of, once and for all. Dominated, and crushed.

No one knows what will happen. No one wants to go up on the Vent Block roof and lean over. And, from the relative safety of Moscow, or Italy, Vlad Putin and Stevie Bannon are laughing, fit to bust.

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Actor Danny Aiello passed away, age 86.  He appeared in a number of films, including one on my top ten list:  Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Set in 1975 New York, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), divorced Vietnam vet with a PhD in Philosophy, is working in the Postal Service, and may (or may not) be slipping in and out of a series of flashbacks connected to Vietnam in 1971, and the accidental death of one of his three children (Macaulay Culkin, in one of his first film roles). He also begins seeing inexplicable things (demons, things out of a Lovecraft novel) in broad daylight. Reality appears to be shifting and he's frightened.

Singer has lower back issues, and sees a Chiropractor, Louis Denardo, played by Aiello ("You look like an angel, Louie," Singer tells him, "Like a big cherub. Anyone ever tell you that?"  "Yeah," says Louis. "You; every time you come in here").

At one point in the story, Singer is struck by a car on a New York street. His lower back seizes up, his wallet is stolen by a vagrant Exmass Santa; he's brought to a hospital that becomes progressively more nightmarish, a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Louis shows up at the hospital ("What is this, the Middle Ages?" he yells at a nurse when he sees how Singer is being treated) and forcibly takes him out, back to his chiropractic office. He puts Jacob on his adjustment table and begins working on his back.

Singer tells Louis about what he's been seeing, that the hospital was a vision of hell. "Ever read any Meister Eckhard?" Louis asks; Jacob says he hasn't, and Louis is surprised. "Huh. Don't know how you got a PhD in Philosophy without reading that guy.

"Eckhard saw hell, too," Louis continues. "Know what he said? He said the only part of you that burns in hell is the part that won't let go of your life. Your memories; your attachments; they burn them all away -- but they're not punishing you, he said; they're freeing your soul.

"So, the way he sees it -- if you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on -- you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace -- then the devils are really angels, freeing you, from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it. So, don't worry about it. Okay?"

Now he knows what we do not. It's a decent film. Aiello is good in it. Give it a whirl.

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 And to come full circle, I'm reminded of a poem that someone told me long ago, which I've never been able to find -- about a circus, where the crowd was intent upon watching a clown, in the center ring, lighting matches with his toes; they were so fascinated that they didn't realize the roof of the tent had blown away, and the world had come to an end.

Larger questions of existence have little to do with the clowns in the ring.

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