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Apr 20, 2023·edited Apr 20, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

This was a good piece. Other commenters have mentioned that the US was preparing to fight fascism at this time, but I don't really think that's true. This happened in 1939 and the imperative (and you could argue, popular mandate/support) to get involved in the war really didn't happen until almost 1942 (Pearl Harbor was 12/7/1941).

My take on this is that the intelligentsia at this time realized that promoting mass consumerism was the only real way forward for them to maintain control of the United States. 1939 was still very much a time in which the Great Depression's effects were being felt. Think, for example, of how much the Great Recession still resonated in popular debate in 2017 and 2018. 1939 was the same amount of time away from the Great Depression as those years were for us.

Consumerism, and by extension, control, has thus been used as a primary form of control ever since. Frankly, it makes sense because we're a nation with arguably very little shared history and ethnic ties; the alternative power structures probably look very different, and maybe even less peaceful than they are right now.

The real takeaway for me from reading about this fair is that it's cool to see how people in this time were actively thinking about how the future could be reimagined, different, and potentially better than the present. Look at the design quality that went into some of these exhibits. Have you seen art or design that has struck you the way that it probably struck those in attendance then? I rarely have. Especially not design that was made in the present day.

The future that was presented at the fair may not have been a future everyone wanted, but at least they were attempting to imagine something. I want to see that imagination make a comeback in our society today.

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Apr 21, 2023·edited Apr 25, 2023Author

Glad you liked the piece and I think what you said here is spot on, I totally agree. What draws me to this period is like you said, "at least they were attempting to imagine something"

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It seems if we can "Imagine " something we will create it.

It "Appears " peace is both unprofitable. For the few and peaceful masses are more difficult to control.

Thus we are goaded by fear. Anger, violence.

Peace and prosperity Through responsibilities 🙏

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I also would like a return to the Art Deco style of the 1930's...

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Gaudy and gross

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Good comment, but disagree that the Intelligentia were behind this. It was politicians. This would have been anathema to the intelligentsia, authors, poets, artists, academics, scientists and philosophers of the time.

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Yes, you're right that it probably wasn't the intellgentsia. I think the word "State", with a capital "S", is closer to what I meant.

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The art or design that strikes us (me) now, is of the style that tears down what was built as a result of 1939. A return to necessity and simplicity

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Apr 22, 2023·edited Apr 22, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

This was very well written, informative. I am so glad I stumbled across this site. Keep up the good work Anton!

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I was there! I was only four years old and my memories are fragmentary, but I loved it, particularly the enormous model railroad. (It was O gauge and I believe had three-rail track, unlike modern large layouts which are the half as wide HO gauge.) I remember the Trylon and Perisphere, and my sadness when they were demolished several years later. The area became Flushing Meadow Park and was the site of the 1964 Worlds Fair, which I also attended.

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Wow! That is incredible.

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Apr 22, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

I have often wondered why some people think capitalism is necessary for democracy.

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Great piece, really intriguing about Bernays controlling the desires of the masses — makes sense he didn’t actually like people. I’m doing research about the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair at the moment, so it was really interesting to read your piece about what the thinking was 46 years later.

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Apr 17, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

Very interesting insights and supplement to your Palladium Magazine piece, Anton -- whose provocative title really caught my eye and stoked my interest to learn the answers to Who, How, & Why?: "Midcentury Planners Demolished America’s Social Fabric."

In both pieces you highlight the Futurama exhiibit and Norman Bel Geddes' influence on urban planning with his dream of a nation of superhighways; however, I'd previously learned and attributed that to President Eisenhower's influence via his push to create the U.S. Interstate Highway System (IHS). It would be interesting to discover or learn how, if at all, either influenced and/or complemented or conflicted with the other.

Found a good 2018 summary of Ike's motivations and the history of the IHS at the U.S. Army website:

https://www.army.mil/article/198095/dwight_d_eisenhower_and_the_birth_of_the_interstate_highway_system

[Pull Quote 1:] "In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Lt. Gen. Lucius Clay (instrumental in the logistics success following the D-Day landings) to head the President's Advisory Committee on the National Highway System ... On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed legislation funding the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System (IHS) -- something Americans had dreamed of since Detroit starting building cars."

[Pull Quote 2:] "In order to understand the IHS's importance in U.S. society, let's examine its history. President Eisenhower is widely regarded as the catalyst for the IHS. His motivations for a highway network stemmed from three events: his assignment as a military observer to the First Transcontinental Motor Convoy [a road test for military vehicles and was used to identify the challenges in moving troops from coast to coast on the existing infrastructure], his experience in World War II where he observed the efficiencies of the German autobahn, and the Soviet Union's 1953 detonation of the hydrogen bomb, which instigated a fear that insufficient roads would keep Americans from being able to escape a nuclear disaster."

[Academic Note: You correctly define here the "third places" whose loss Ray Oldenburg lamented as "neither work nor HOME" (per Wikipedia: "Oldenburg suggests that for a healthy existence, citizens must live in a balance of three realms: HOME LIFE, the workplace, and the inclusively sociable places"). However, in your Palladium Magazine piece. you'd defined Oldenburg's "third places" as "those areas of socialization that can be counted as neither SCHOOL nor work" (which actually struck me last week when I'd first read it as making more sense for most of us today in an age of shrinking families, extended families living together, farms & ranches, etc. -- and I only noticed it because just this morning I'd been relating parts of that first essay to my wife. FOOTNOTING This Article FTW! ;-) ]

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Apr 18, 2023·edited Apr 19, 2023Author

Thanks for the comment! I think there's a lot to Pull Quote 2. Eisenhower was certainly inspired by his experiences during WWII (the autobahn especially) and also a need to create the highway for military purposes. In particular, the national highway system has some roots in the Pershing Map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pershing_Map) which initially began as a military plan after WWI.

What's not mentioned there, however, is a crucial player who preceded the highway system, Thomas Harris MacDonald, a real top-dog bureaucrat in Washington in his day and the leading evangelist for national road construction for decades. I mentioned him in my Palladium piece, and he is someone who Robert Moses really admired. Moses, of course, was heavily involved in the 1939 World's Fair and was very familiar with Geddes's Futurama, although he saw it as a bit too fantastical. Still, his later constructions in the 1950s notably look more Geddes-like.

As for a direct link between Geddes and Eisenhower, it is tough to say. One clear link is General Motors sponsored Futurama and the president of General Motors, Charles Erwin Wilson, actually assisted in the planning of Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System. Also, given that Futurama broke records in attendance, it is inevitable its impact on the public imagination influenced policymakers. Geddes's ideas were clearly part of the zeitgeist at the time which can be loosely called "high modernism." Moreover, right in the Futurama video, there is a clear appeal for "blight removal" which did, in fact, happen with the destruction of many working-class areas, around half of which were black Americans, without any substantive plan to resettle them which uprooted many families.

Overall, my main takeaway is that the planning of it all was anti-social both in its design and how it was actually implemented, partly due to malice but mostly due to misplaced priorities from planners who fundamentally did not understand the public's needs. I think Jane Jacobs puts it well, "a growing number of planners and designers have come to believe that if they can only solve the problems of traffic, they will thereby have solved the major problem of cities.”

I would also just add as a last thought... the plan behind the Interstate Highway System could be viewed as a negotiated compromise between the U.S. military after WWII and major corporate entities (like General Motors) - but where was the third and most important group, the actual local public? Glaringly missing from all this, they only started to make themselves seen later when their city downtowns were being demolished to implement the plan!

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Apr 20, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

Wow, thank you for the thoughtful & erudite response, Anton -- fascinating and good stuff!

Would love to have had you as a history teacher were I young again ... and didn't intend to induce you to write what could be another newsletter post. ;-) Ciao!

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No problem, my pleasure :)) thank you for the kind words!

By the way, nice catch - in the Palladium piece it does say third places are "neither school nor work." It should be "neither home nor work," like you said. Somehow my editor and I missed that, I'll have to request an edit to fix it. Thanks!

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The American public was generally in favor of the interstate highway system just as they were in favor of suburban development. Americans were automobile people, and even the Great Depression didn't undo that. You can blame it on Thomas Jefferson, but the American fantasy was a single family home in a relatively low density neighborhood. The automobile and the post-war suburbanization of the US enabled this, though at a price.

The local public loved it. They weren't blind consumers. They had volition. After the Great Depression then World War II, they wanted more spacious living quarters, the apparent ease of suburban living and the convenience of an automobile centered society. It helped that there was a new generation conceived after the Great War and ready to form families and give birth to the baby boomers. If they had been five or ten years younger, they might have preferred a more urban lifestyle.

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That interstate highway system was used to separate people of color from affluent white people. And it's well documented.

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Fair point as that appears to have been the result in many cases; unfortunately, I'm not well-read enough on the subject -- nor aware of the documented evidence to which you refer -- to be able to conclude that it was the primary overt or covert intent of the project (although it may have been a secondary consequence that appealed to some among the planners).

It's hard to believe that the desire for such racial/elitist segregation would have trumped Eisenhower's critical and primary motivations for the project at the macro level, even among racists. But I'm happy to be corrected. Cheers!

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It's not hard to believe for indigenous people and descendants of enslaved Africans. And this form of racism, environmental racism, continues unabated.

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Apr 22, 2023·edited Apr 22, 2023

If one thing is obvious, it’s that this culture embraces anyone who is about property and profit. The notion that America is particularly racist doesn’t hold water. My wife is Ethiopian, and her tribe is being slaughtered right now by another pair of tribes. Oromo killing Amhara. Tigray folk killing Amhara. Identity politics logical conclusion.

We Keep going down that road of color coded victims and oppressors, and tremendous violence will follow.

I have family from Africa who have come here legally and made fortunes.

Like I said, it is less about color and more about values.

This culture values profit above all else. Profit at any price. And skin color matters in humanity as some folks will always see another as “the other”. So, racism will always be with us. But to say that it’s fundamental or pivotal in modern America is delusional.

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Shaine, bloodshed and economic violence have always existed in the US. White supremacy is fundamental in US history and it overlaps with capitalism/neoliberalism. The US is also a neo-colonial nation that exploits people across the world, including folks in Africa. https://sudantribune.com/article33488/

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You’re right. I have no argument with any of that. The weapons being used against my wife’s people came from DC. But the weapons were sold for profit. Not because blacks would die.

What you’re describing is greed. Color was just used as a rationalization. The greed came first. Then color coded slavery followed.

White supremacy has knocked on my door.

In 2008, my wife and daughter were in blockbuster video in Nashville. Two members of the Aryan nation came in and began yelling at my wife and three year old daughter. Calling them both niggers and threatening to kill them.

I’m not denying that racism is alive and well. I’m not denying that white supremacy exists still. I KNOW it does.

But it isn’t daily. It isn’t prevalent.

Greed on the other hand is prevalent. It is daily. All the time.

And greed will always find a rationalization.

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It sometimes missed as it did in Boston where it split the Italian North End from the rest of the city.

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BTW, in just now discussing with the Wifey this final subject regarding the loss of extended families living together -- in particular the old ranch & farm families of our formerly agrarian society -- I was reminded of the popular current non-#Woke television series "Yellowstone" (not to mention its popular spin-offs "1883" and "1923") which fictionally depicts the present "Californication" by leftists of formerly conservative states (ask me how we know here in Arizona) and regions like rural Montana.

Not only are extended family members loyal to, and usually living with, the patriarch -- but those ranch hands who swear an oath of fealty to The Family are permanently adopted into the "Yellowstone Ranch family" -- ceremoniously, VIA BRANDING, LIKE CATTLE!

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Apr 22, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

Excellent content and an essential glimpse at our past looking to the future.

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Fascinating piece! I looked at an earlier, seminal U.S. fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition, through a different lens–leisure–and tied it into the larger impact that amusement parks have played and continue to play in American culture. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22621855/theme-park-amusement-park-disney-coney-island

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Interesting, I’ll check it out!

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Apr 22, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

Fascinating and terrifying! Thank you for the education. Knowledge is power. Let us use this power to change the model. Active participation in democracy will produce a healthier and more sustainable society.

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Great. Love reading psy op stuff!

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Haha right on

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Um…. I served with the 355th psy ops. You don’t mean Psychological Warfare do you? Could you elaborate on what Psy Ops (not invented until WW2 has to do with this article?

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Apr 22, 2023Liked by Anton Cebalo

Anytime Bernays is front and center, a discussion of psychological warfare is as well. American imperialism coexisting with neoliberal pretenses of moral superiority is a product of public relations. And the American propaganda under the Creel Committee of which Bernays was an author/member —leading to a US entrance to WW1–is what inspired the 3rd reich’s “minister of enlightenment”. How can you ask that question unless you think psyops are limited to “service”in theaters of war? Psyops are all the time in every channel. That’s the info war. The public mind IS the ultimate theater of war. And technology has expanded the battlefield and enhanced the logistics of info exponentially. The modern theater of war is in between your ears all the time.

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Very Illuminating and insightful. Thank you.

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The first thing that struck me: the main images were a phallic symbol. As I read that Freud had some influence, I was not surprised. I'm betting that the Masonic orders also played large in influence. Next, the confusion of "democracy" and "constitutional republic" and "consumerism" and "capitalism" are still around today. The Marxist influences are also present: the "masses" can be manipulated, or shaped. This fair happened before I was born, and as we all know, the world changed dramatically with what was then the coming war. Finally, I wonder now what the 2010 Worlds Fair in Shanghai presages for the coming generations, with its theme of "One World."

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They would have me believe I have to choose between corporate capitalism and communism. But my answer isn’t in the choice. My answer is Molon Labe.

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I grew up in the 60s and came to believe early in life that the car (with its gasoline-powered engine) was one of the more intensely problematic inventions of mankind. The idea of building communities around it extended far into the suburbs and was instrumental in creating the habitat destruction I’ve been fighting against for decades. When a developer re-imagined our suburban “downtown” as a mall and giant parking lot, I was that person who gets up and goes to the mike in the big unveiling and says, “I’m sorry. This is is mall. You want to make our downtown into a mall?” And 800 people sat in that room, shocked into silence. “Where will people walk?” I asked. “Where will they socialize?” Silence. I thought, “Geez, what a bunch of sheep. If I’m the only one in the room who sees the problem here, we are in BIG trouble.” Americans are selfish and lazy. We get the landscape (and the government) we deserve. I moved out of that town and never looked back.

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A hundred years ago or so, we crossed a cultural threshold from actively analyzing and due skepticism into passively accepting and consuming. Television further catalyzed this trend with the beginning of the end of print. And the internet particularly with social media has absolutely sealed the deal. Every profitable technology is automatically embraced despite its impact upon our lives. In fact, we are being too negative even if we mention the deleterious effects of certain technologies. The subtext is that technology is progress. Make people fit into technology. Don’t make technology fit into people. And it’s easy to circumvent a people’s freedoms if they can be conditioned and denuded to have no ideas on how to practice their freedom. Our oracles in Silicon Valley and on Madison Avenue and in Hollywood and DC are guided by a spirit of control, power, influence, and profitability. But there is such a thing as good. And there is such a thing as evil. And the purposeful descent into unconscious consumerism is a nuclear arsenal against good. Evil loves mindlessness and consumerism. Thrives on it. I can find no better model of understanding our world than cosmic dualism. And indecency and dishonesty absolutely thrive on screen based tech and mass media culture. I wish it weren’t true. Look at the rise of onlyfans. It probably employs more teens than McDonalds now. Under relative anonymity. Look at the transgender craze subverting biological reality. We are observing the product of mass media manipulation in every facet of American life. We are a terrarium, a panopticon, and an oral fixation wrapped up in a Top Gun poster.

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You are so FULL of yourself!

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An interesting 'flashback' and well worth its while.

Isn't it funny we are so blinded to the reality the individual makes the culture. Care for one and the other thrives....quite the opposite strategy for what has unfolded in this great chemical mistake. In this regard existing society is an identical expression of what was forcefully sold and 'bought' by the masses so totally overwhelmed by the corporate insistence on 'progress' at any cost. Dysfunction cannot succeed at anything but replicating itself.

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What that generation learned was that "grand national narratives told to an eager public" tend to lead to death camps. Better to leave people alone to pursue their own happiness in peace (which, alas, we have *not* actually learned...)

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Very thought provoking and well written. Thank you

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