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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Absent Friends

 You Know Who They Are

"We have done so much with so little for so long that we could do anything with nothing forever".

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

"I,  [       ], do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same."

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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.

____________________________

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..

_____________________________

The Morning Of The Day Before, Again

 January 29, 1933

Statue Advertising Restaurant, Northern China

(John Woo, Reuters / 2016)

(This is originally from Sunday, January 19th, 2016.  This history still applies.)

Sunday
(Sh'vat, 5785, for those who do.  Note: The 1933 [Gregorian] calendar is the same as that for 2025.)

Poet Sarah Teasdale dies in New York City after an overdose of sleeping pills. She is most commonly remembered for "There Will Come Soft Rains" (aka 'War-Time'), published in 1920.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound...

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

_________________________________ 

On January 29, Edouard Daladier, French centrist politician, was asked to assume position of Prime Minister and form a new coalition government, which would last from January to October, 1933.

In 1938, Daladier was again a minister in (yet) another coalition government in France, and with extreme reluctance supported the 1938 Munich agreement to cede the Sudeten portions of Czechoslovakia to Germany, and (presumably) avoid a general European war.

Returning to Paris after the agreement was signed, Daladier expected hostile crowds, but was instead warmly cheered. A combat veteran of the Western Front in WW1, Daladier understood: The Great War had been such a monumental bloodletting for the world, a fall of European empires and whole ways of life, that few people wanted to see new monsters on the horizon.

However, Daladier understood that Munich was nothing but appeasement. He had no illusions about the ultimate intentions of Hitler and the nazis -- to him, Munich only delayed what he saw as an inevitable war. 

Seeing the crowds cheering his arrival -- to the man on the street, war over Czechoslovakia had been averted! Yay! -- Daladier turned to an aide and said sadly, "Ah, these morons".

_________________________________

German Chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher had resigned on January 28th. The recently re-elected German President, Paul von Hindenburg, had to appoint a replacement who could form a new government. On January 29th he offered the position to Franz von Papen, who refused.

von Papen had already been Chancellor from June through November, 1932. The possibility of another civil war in Germany between the extreme right and extreme left was growing, and von Papen had tried and failed to resolve tensions. On January 29th he suggested to Hindenburg that Hitler be named Chancellor -- because, he explained to the old Field Marshall, Hitler could be controlled.

_________________________________

The Weimar Republic had survived the 1919 civil war between the Center-Right and the 'Spartikus' Left (which became the German Communist Party, the KPD) only because the Center begged the German army to crush the Leftists.

That bargain linked the survival of a moderate democratic republic to army support -- meaning the officer class, heavily linked to Prussia's landed nobility -- part of the same mixed bag of conservatives which had always been on top under the Kaisers. 

The 1929 stock market crash (Thanks, America! Didn't see that coming!) resounded around the world. By 1932, the Depression had kicked Germany's people to the curb. The most significant aspect of Germany's politics was how most people gravitated to one extreme or the other in the country's political spectrum.

Times were desperate; there wasn't much of a Center left to hold. On the Left were the KPD and Red Front. On the Right were a number of nationalist / conservative parties. The nazis (NSDAP) were the most radical.

Something usually glossed over in summary histories about Weimar in 1932 is the backstage maneuvering by the same traditional conservative layers of German society, attempting to maintain a grip on power. 

In April of 1932, a national election was held: Hitler ran against Hindenburg for the Presidency of the German Republic -- and while the nazis made gains in the Reichstag, Hitler wasn't popular enough to beat the Old Man.  

National elections for Reichstag deputies saw support for the nazis rise to 37% : with the KPD, they were a majority party. Anyone who wanted to govern in Germany's parliament would need their support (Remember, however -- Hitler's stated position was to eliminate all political parties in Germany, except his own).

In May of 1932, the moderate conservative government was frightened there would be an eventual revolution from the Left -- enough that General Kurt von Schleicher, and a previous Chancellor, Franz von Papen, held secret meetings with Hitler to offer a proposal. 

In order to keep the KPD and the nazis from fighting in the streets, the brownshirts and SS had been banned from holding public rallies and marches. von Schleicher told Hitler the ban would be lifted -- also, the Reichstag would be dissolved, and new elections called. The then-Chancellor, Heinrich Bruening, would be dismissed by Hindenburg.  von Papen would replace him... and Hitler would support von Papen's conservative nationalist government. 

Conservatives were just as frightened of Hitler and his NSDAP as they were the KPD. This attempt to appease Hitler -- they would have a real 'seat at the table' -- was really about neutering the nazis and bringing them under control of the moderate conservatives. 

Hitler agreed, only in order to have the ban on nazi public appearances lifted. Bruening was dismissed; von Papen was named by Hindenburg as Chancellor. However, Hitler had no intention of being co-opted into von Papen's government, and said so -- that he considered it a 'temporary measure'.

When the political situation continued to deteriorate through 1932, Hitler claimed to be the only political figure who could hold the Republic together. He requested a meeting with President von Hindenburg so that he could demand to be appointed Chancellor. In a humiliating session, the old Field Marshall treated Hitler like the ex-Gefreiter (Lance Corporal) he was, and refused Hitler's demands. 

The entire episode fed into Hitler's general delusions of power. Being Chancellor became the only outcome he would accept, and made it impossible for the conservatives to offer him anything less.

The nazis and KPD continued fighting in the streets. Hitler and leading nazis (mostly, Goering and Goebbels) kept pushing von Papen and the conservatives: only Hitler could unify the country and control the Communists and political-Left parties. 

_________________________________

von Papen kept pushing Hindenburg, and von Papen said he would become vice-chancellor. The nazis would have only two of 7 cabinet positions; non-nazis in key government positions would contain Hitler. Finally, faced with continuing Right vs. Left violence, Hindenburg sent for Hitler and offered him the Chancellorship.

_________________________________

On January 29th, 1933, the New York Times ran three separate articles about events in Germany.  The first looked at European stock markets, saying “apprehensions [are] generally felt over the fresh evidence of Hitler’s influence in the German situation.”

The second article summarized events in Germany, stating that Hindenburg was seeking a coalition government -- and that Hitler could only be made part of it through a guarantee that his power, and the nazis', would be limited.

Many leading intellectuals in Germany had serious misgivings about any government that might include Hitler -- “a straight Parliamentary government headed by [him]... is not envisaged in sober-minded political quarters.”

The third article was a long piece on Mussolini, Stalin, and Hindenburg. Hitler was only briefly mentioned; the article spoke of Hitler's "extreme policies", and inferred that he and the nazis were not the future of Germany in the same way that Mussolini and his fascists, and the Soviets under Stalin, appeared to be.

_________________________________

Monday, January 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of the Weimar Republic.

_________________________________

When In These Coarse Current Events

 Ein Mensch Ist Kein Tier
(Originally from December, 2016; somewhat updated.)

Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man
Es deckt einen da keiner zu
Und wenn einer tritt, dann bin ich es
Und wird einer getreten, dann bist’s du.

As you make your bed, you must lie in it
No one else makes it so, only you
And when someone kicks, it will be me
And when someone gets kicked, it will be you

--  Kurt Weill / Bertold Brecht; "Meine Herren, Meine Mutter Prägte",
(aka, 'Denn Wie Man Sich Bettet') from Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahoganny (1931)

Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht; Berlin, 1930

In less than a month, a person who wants to be dictator of America will be elevated to Chief Executive of the Federal government -- a person who easily displays his prejudices through a spiteful, narcissistic, adolescent public character which no American now living has ever had to suffer, twice, from an elected official at that level.  Everyone knows what to expect, and the level of apprehension is palpable.

(A friend notes, "Are you referring to [The Duce] or Musk? They both think they are The Leader, and they're both spiteful, narcissistic, and adolescent." Ha ha ha. Ha.)

The apotheosis of such a person, such a known quantity, leaves many people around the world profoundly uneasy. Already, co-Pepsodent Musk has spoken: "Only AfD [the neo-nazi political party] can save Germany", and The Duce has AfD leaders join him at More-Lego, photographed wearing MAGA hats and grinning for der Cameras, na schon? Ja!

An energetic, animated Pestident-elect with neo-nazis

just some average persons at More-Lego, 2024

The Duce's inauguration is expected to be a show of hate, a celebration of triumph -- as he swaggers into Washington, carrying in his wake "decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin ... vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, [and] pimps...". 

The inauguration balls have been paid for by Tech Bros - Jeffy, Sergey, Marc; Zuck; Sammy; Peety; Larry -- all eagerly stepping on each other's faces to be first to give One Million Dollars! each to The Duce's inaugural fund. 

Maybe all this money helps pay the inaugural costs; maybe not. He may use this money however he wants -- as a gift, a bribe ... but, never mind. This is what it's like to be Duce. How fun!

__________________________

I keep thinking about the Juvenal quote: "Yesterday, they were scoundrels and ruffians. Today, they rule our lives. Tomorrow they will wind up as keepers of the public lavatories.".

_________________________

A friend noted that many have just switched off, a turning inward as response to eight years of societal upheaval, recent political events. They suggested we focus on a balance with a wider universe. That we keep family and friends close, and reduce our connections wherever possible to things which nurture us.

For the moment, I've switched off. I don't know how to get through the next space of years -- just retired; living on a fixed income; in my mid-seventies. I have a sense of blood in the air, and I hear a voice that says be ready to run.  I don't have it in me to become a refugee; can't make for the border, much as I might like to. And I have physical limits to the forms my resistance might take.

I do know I can't live with the predations of this fat, waddling, malignant narcissist the way I did the first time. I can't get up every morning and reflexively check the BBC or Guardian UK for an honest reporting of what he did while I slept.

Any insight I possess about what to do is subjective. We each live with one foot in the Cosmos and one foot on our dirty linoleum floor. I may have my own answer to basic questions but they only apply to me. I'm not arrogant enough to believe they'll work for anyone else.

Some time ago, a friend mentioned that the Dalai Lama was allegedly asked by a person who just bumped into him (at a hotel, or some public venue) what he felt the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism to be. The Lama is supposed to have replied, " ' Just do your best.' "

I'm not a Buddhist, but I take the Lama's observation to suggest that Existence is too complicated for any person to say why they Are, and what the end results of their thoughts and actions will be. Be kind; act with compassion. Do the best you can. I'd like to aspire towards that -- so; works for me.

And, as a comparative comment on purpose and values, Albert Camus was at least an Agnostic. He believed in the fact of humankind's existence. For him, that fact was the only justification needed to make a demand for a better world -- and he wrote it in Occupied France, when the nazis still had their boots on the back of humanity's collective neck.

I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning. But ... it has no justification but humanity; hence we must be saved if we want to save the idea we have of life. 

With your scornful smile you will ask me: what do you mean by saving humanity? And with all my being I shout to you that I mean not mutilating us, and giving us a chance for the justice that humans alone can conceive.     

(Resistance, Rebellion and Death, 1944)

Humans deserve Justice on all levels works for me, too.

_________________________

America is about to collectively leap off a cliff into unknown political, and social, territory.  I don't believe it's a time to turn inward; we need to listen to the voice in the pit of our stomachs which says Fuck this; I vote No; you don't do this shit in my name, and we need to act. Collective is good -- in fact, essential -- but, now what?  Kleiner Mann -- was nun?

It's a real conundrum, deciding how you live your values. Everything I hear on podcasts or read online is a variation on "This analysis will explain why we lost" -- more circular argument over who was right and who controls the party, or academic analysis about what the election demographics means. I'm sure that will make a number of professional political wonks feel better, or at least useful.

The sense I get is of a vast, collective indrawing and holding of breath, as we wait for The Thing We Know Is Coming to happen. After it arrives, the values of The Duce and his pack of Orcs will be on full display. 

Then, we will have to do.  Our discussion, our focus needs to be around what. That's where our values will be reflected -- now, and for the rest of our lives. 

I understand that sounds like overly-dramatic hyperbole, but if you don't understand that we are living in a moment of high drama and historic import -- then good luck.  The question -- Quo Vadis? -- stands.

___________________________

Your Holiday Steerage Update For Third Class

 We Had A Good Run 

I've noticed a binary spectrum developing -- with friends; commentors and analysts in the media -- about the arrival of the nazis in January. It's one perspective, or another; there's not much middle ground.

One Perspective: Things won't be as bad as you think. "You got a lot of hyperbole going, there -- and and and and; y'know, that kind of thinking is; well it's just not helpful, that thinking. You're frightening people, you're scaring people. You know that? Scaring them. And no matter how much you hate the Trump people, don't call them nazis. That's an incorrect use of the term -- and why don't you capitalize 'nazi', as a Noun? Thought you knew better. Look: You're being a downer. It's a difficult time; if you can't be supportive, just shut up. Shut up."

The Other Perspective: It is exactly as bad as you think (a group that includes Mary Trump, who is in a position to know whether her uncle is a fascist and dead serious, or not). It's tough, playing Cassandra in a room full of people who want any reason to feel less afraid. And, Things could be even worse than you imagine.

_____________________________

Now It's Done

So, I'll just say it: The United States of America we know is done. It's over. 

That long, persistent idea of a nation -- the one backed by the Constitution, that we studied in school; chronicled by Ken Burns in so many films; the place where we and our families were born and lived; the nation we volunteered (or were drafted) to serve; the place we counted on to be there every morning when we woke up because, at least here, there were limits. Most of us were Safe.

But, 'Safe' depends upon your race, gender, economics; choices; your place in the pecking order of society: George Floyd was not safe. Matthew Shepard, Jazzlyn Johnson, Pauly Likens were not safe. The children at Sandy Hook were not safe. The children abused by the team doctor at Ohio State, or in Catholic churches across America, were not safe. The families of Flint, Michigan (still) drinking lead-tainted water were not safe.

Even so -- in other societies, other countries, there might be armed troops in the streets; identification checkpoints. The press may be censored, muzzled. Mail and communications, monitored. Warrantless searches or raids on homes; arrest and imprisonment, or worse, for opposing the government. 

But in America, we had a Constitution. Our history rested on being a nation of laws. Until, we weren't.

We've always had crazy politicians -- but they were fringe, cartoonish characters, creeping around in the margins. The people we elected to keep America on an even keel (and stay out of our hair) spouted typical Democratic or Republican nonsense. 

But they would never allow The United States to become unstable and unpredictable, like those dreck countries in Asia or Africa, or dictatorships like Russia or China; North Korea. 

This was the United States of America, for fuck's sake; we're better than that. Until, we weren't. 

49% of people casting a ballot in the election voted for a demagogue. A fascist. He told everyone during the campaign what he would do, and showed everyone (as if the previous nine years weren't already proof) who he is. People voted for him with full knowledge: This is what Trump is. And they did it anyway.

49% of the United States put a gun to our collective head -- grinning a manic grin, shouting MAGA !!! MY LIFE FOR YOUUUUUUU !!!! -- and pulled the trigger.

1/20/25 is a red line in the calendar of history: Where we, Americans, ended. Please take note.

_____________________________

Pass The Last Of The Schadenfreude, Please

As you sit down with family and friends over the next month -- consider all the others in past history who suspected they were on the edge of catastrophe, collapse; war; oppression; penury; mass suffering, but gathered together anyway: Peasants of Europe before the Hundred Years' or Thirty Years' wars; the Irish before the Famine; the French before financial collapse and Revolution; the Weimar Germans on Christmas Eve and over Hannukah in December, 1932.

And now, We, The People.  Us.  We're on the edge of... we don't know. We only know it will be bad.

_______________________________

Americans sat down to Thanksgiving on Tuesday, November 20th, in 1941. On the 26th, by proclamation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt established it as a national holiday. Eleven days later, Japanese carriers reached their designated positions northwest of the Hawaiian Islands and launched the attack on Pearl Harbor.

______________________________

"Trumplandia, 'Tis For Thee"

So, our country, with its long and fabled history, much bad and some good, is finished. That America will not exist after 12:00 Noon on January 20th, 2025. "The United States" will be only a label.

Its new Owners should call it Trumplandia, because it won't stand for anything but the twisted, unquenchable greed and violent misogyny and narcissism which will run our lives from this point forward.

Someone once noted that the American Story is one cliffhanger episode after another. The Great Depression was an example: the worst financial collapse in U.S. history. It could have been the end of our Constitutional Republic -- but, at the last minute, we got FDR. It was the New Deal, and a global war, which lifted America out of it. 

The American story remains: How will they get out of this one? And, What next?

______________________________

Leave The Hopeism At Home, Yo

We have never had a dictator become President, not to mention controlling both Houses of Congress and a majority of That Court, before. Never in America have our politics -- our very lives -- been so openly and cynically manipulated by technology. Never have so few arrogant theocrats and technocrats spent billions of dollars so openly, to force their desires on so many.

Democrats, the political Left, will push back. Citizens will fight. It may be possible that this is a four-year, seminal period which America will emerge from battered but wiser, as if struck with a terrible disease and surviving.  It may be that We, The People, endure, fucked over as usual by wealth and power, but that in the end We Get Out Of This One. Maybe. 

We seem to have so much stacked against Us, The People. One thing is true: The shared idea of a nation we've had to carry us this far -- right up to January 20, 2025 -- is going to have to fundamentally change when and if we come out the other side of this. The bullying, the lying and violent greed of the Right needs to be kicked to the curb -- but Neoliberal Happytalk and Hopeism on the Left won't work, either.

When you have this very technocratic, 'Third Way' neoliberal approach, and sprinkle in some anti-corporate, anti-billionaire populism... then you're a rudderless ship. You're not communicating what you are about -- and when you don't have a North Star every single person can point to and say, 'this is what the party is about', then your enemies can portray you as whatever they want.

       --  Hasan Piker, 'Pod Save America'; November 27, 2024

America can't be ruled by a dictatorship -- whether by an individual, or the Proletariat. It isn't the way in our Culture-- as opposed to our Society, which changes more rapidly and dynamically.

Perhaps we need to experience a cruel and vicious politics, to feel unsafe in our own land, in order that We, The People will reject it -- now or ever again. 

Yesterday, they were ruffians / Today, they control our lives /

Tomorrow, they will be the keepers of the public lavatories.

--  Juvenal

Trump and his toadies, the pack of Billionaire tech Bros, do not care about you, or me, or anyone but themselves. America is their social engineering laboratory, now -- and they are literally drunk, gibbering with delight at their power. Americans, as Eeelon said, will "endure hardships". Oh, they can't wait.

I've been rereading various histories of France under the Occupation. I'd recommend it.

_____________________________________

It reminds me of the 1993 film from a Steven King novel, Needful Things: The devil (Max von Sydow) comes to Castle Rock, Maine, opens an antiques / curios shop, and in selling various enchanted items to town residents, sets them murderously against each other. It ends in chaos, flames; madness and death. "Hey," Lucifer tells J. T. Walsh, who calls to confess he's just killed his wife, "These things happen."

There's a scene where von Sydow, his face a manic grin, grips his hands together -- shaking with glee as he literally feeds on the energy of the evil he's set in motion; 'Ave Maria' plays in the background. A few townspeople, including the police chief (Ed Harris), fight back. Castle Rock is ravaged; people are dead, shaken, the damage done; but the devil is finally forced to leave.

Von Sydow's Satan -- Looking Very Much Like Good Ol' Fred Trump

______________________________________

Shaking with glee at their perceived power: Perhaps this is where Trump and his Orcs are now. It may be possible that this moment, before they've even swaggered into the White House, is the Zenith -- that it all begins to fall apart for them from here. 

There's no way we can avoid what they intend to do. That the seeds of eventual failure are being sowed, now, can be a comforting prospect. Earlier today, I heard Mary Trump telling Molly Jong-Fast, "We'll get through this".  Maybe. 

Lee Miller's photo of a local nazi leader and family, having committed suicide, 1945;

One can only hope this is the future of our Fabled Leaders

We'll see.

_______________________________

November 11th

 Absent Friends

You know who they are.  

And none of us went to Southeast Asia for this shit.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

___________________________

Sag' Mir Nicht Adieu; Sag' Nur Auf Wiederseh'n

It's A Crool World
Welcome To Your Post-Electoral America

Tree Roots, Vincent Van Gogh's Last Painting; July 27, 1890

Not A GBCW

I'm considering ending this Blog, partly in reaction to what has just happened -- but also because there's nothing worse than a creative effort which, ultimately, is little better than what that cat shit person shovels into the digital universe.

I've been posting for 16 years, "masquerading as a Medium-Sized White Dog". It's provided an outlet for aspects of myself -- mostly, not that positive -- and releasing a large amount of sarcasm and anger all had some direct benefit for me, but not necessarily for any readers. I've dropped 1,257 posts over those sixteen years, but -- small wonder -- few people have read Before Nine, and few people follow it. No sour grapes; that's just how it is.

Most of those posts have been doomscrolling. I'm not an original thinker; I know facts, but in context of being a writer or social observer, I don't analyze them well.  Before Nine never had a wide readership, never moved opinions, or educated, or persuaded; I don't know what other result I could have been expecting: If you make cookies that taste like cardboard, no one wants to eat them.

Recently, I deactivated my Twitter account. It served much the same purpose as this blog, on a daily basis. I hated what Musk did to the platform; I hated his reinstatement of users who were effectively nazis; his opinions and behavior are personally repugnant. When he announced Twitter would eliminate the Blocking function (making it easier for Rightist crazies, scammers, and some persons with real pathological intent to stalk and harass others) that was all the motivation I needed to leave.

____________________________

Half of the United States electorate just shouted, " Ja ! Ein Volk, Ein Reich; Ein Fuhrer! " They have said, We want Fascism. Unfortunately, 'democracy' worked -- very unfortunately for migrants, People of Color; gay and transgender persons; women; liberals; the elderly; children. If you have been a vocal, visible critic working against That Person, writing and posting and speaking -- were I you, I'd leave the U.S. for relative safety abroad.

Also, it will be very unfortunate for Ukrainians, Taiwanese, the Baltic States, the EU and collective European security; Japan, South Korea, AUS, NZ, and the Pacific Basin.  Unfortunate for Palestinians, for Israelis. It will be unfortunate, eventually, for France, Germany; for any country whose nationalist political parties are hungering to seize power -- now bolstered and energized by That Person's election.

A majority of adult voters in America want That Person in power. They voted for Project 2025. They voted for everything that's about to happen. They voted in favor of lies, violence, and corruption, and I am trying without much success to comprehend it.

A general election in 1932 in Germany resulted in gains for the nazis and the KPD (German Communist Party). Any coalition government had to include both. The nazis maneuvered in the background for months, until Center parties and Rightist parties in Parliament agreed: Hitler could be appointed Chancellor, in January, 1933. He could be managed, controlled. We know the rest of the story.

Now, we've had our election. That Person has been elected president. I fully expect the next 24 months to seem much like the story of 1933 (only That Person may no longer be president -- I expect J. D. Vance, courtesy of the 25th Amendment). America will be run for the benefit of our Oligarchs and old-money Wealthy; and fuck the Peasantry.

______________________________

There will be no resistance; no unravelling of the fascists and theocratists; no calling the fascists to account. No justice. No major media, revealing events. There will be some marching, protesting, but America -- the one I grew up in, served -- is done. January of 2025 is a red line -- and once crossed, the America that exists now, right now, will never come again. 

I can offer my own opinions; but there are better thinkers, writers, observers, than I am. My points of view are similar to some, but not adding anything positive to the sum of human experience in this blog. There don't seem to be reasons to continue -- I haven't decided; not yet. Some of that dithering is simply technical.

According to The Great Curmudgeon, there is an internet tradition known as the Good-Bye Cruel World post (GCBW), where a content creator (nominally, a keyboard warrior type, like the cat shit person) writes a swan song of criticism and grievances, full of acid and bad language -- why not; you're jumping off the ledge, right? -- to explain why they're leaving.

This is not one of those; not really -- but, we're all living in Interregnum America.

Be kind, and be well.

_____________________________

Absent Friends

You Know Who They Are

Last of the Old Unit just got a little smaller.

Mozart: Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra; 2nd Movement, Adiago

___________________________