Two American Families 2024

The Two American Families special on Frontline is beyond depressing. Luckily the Midwestern accents provide comic relief. - XMASTIME

I've rarely let two much time go by without re-watching this brilliant Frontline; they've given us updates of the families over the years and I was thrilled to see this podcast episode pop up (LISTEN TO IT HERE) I'll definitely be watching this nonintoxicating depressing series of two families who did everything they were told to do for the American Dream - that dream merely consisting of working at decent-paying jobs with benefits for their families and maybe the chance to buy their own home - but since the America is pretty much the land of the free and the home of the fucking assholes who can't stand it if everybody else isn't as absolutely miserable as they can be while on their short time on this Earth, this is how they're rewarded at every turn:

- worked hard for years, part of a Union, believing you were working your way into some sort of future?
- sorry! this is America where unions and labor with dignity are for losers, so we're moving that job somewhere else since it can save us 3¢
- but don't worry, we'll train you for another job!
- with no benefits
- for half the pay
- that's physically more demanding
- got kids? fuck you, you can also work the night shift for an extra $1/hour so you never can see them either
- and oh yeah every year we're gonna be lowering your wages so that Todd Fuckballs can have a 4th yacht he'll probably never notice

And on, and on, and on. Here's The New Yorker saying it a lot better & more eloquently back from when I first saw the show back in 2013:

But the intellectually honest response to this film is much less comforting, for the overwhelming impression in “Two American Families” is not of mistakes but of fierce persistence: how hard the Stanleys and Neumanns work, how much they believe in playing by the rules, how remarkable the cohesion of the Stanley family is, how tough Terry Neumann has to become. Both families devoutly attend church. Government assistance is alien and hateful to them. Keith Stanley says, “I don't know what drugs or even alcohol looks like.” In the words of Tammy Thomas, whose similar story is told in my new book, “The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America,” these people do what they’re supposed to do. They have to navigate this heartless economy by themselves. And they keep sinking and sinking.

Both families are in their late 60s/70s now, and just from this podcast you can tell that they're just about as worn down to the goddam bones even more than they were when we first met them in 1992, and they were pretty worn down then. But they kept slogging through, busting their asses any way they could, and now they're pretty much ground down into dust and will probably die without living a fucking day without extreme financial duress. It showcases the best of America - these families - and the worst of America - Americans - in ways that are haunting and while I wish I could also say uplifting, our country's strange demand for unnecessary suffering for people too stupid to be born rich will not let me.

 

Here's the trailer, it drops 7/23.