Letter from Woodstock

Labour Tribune, London

 

“ Halloween Fears”

John Mason, Woodstock,

November 3rd, 2002

 

Up in the Catskills the kids have eaten the last of their Halloween treats, and their parents have put away their party clothes for another year.  While Halloween remains the New York answer to Mardigras with troops of grown-ups parading around in ghoulish attire, this year’s festivities weren’t quite as merry as usual.  Folks brought to the occasion a zeal for the macabre that was a little over the top, indicative, perhaps, of the free-floating anxiety that colors much of American life these days.  Far from being the brash and assertive people we seem to be when viewed from abroad, this Halloween -on the eve of our November midterm elections - Americans are defined more by the sum of our fears than anything else.

Among my middle class neighbors, it was the mid-October reports outlining the losses to their 401K pension accounts that triggered the greatest insecurity. Added to a whopping 25 % decline in stock values since George W’s inauguration in January 2001, privileged Woodstockers are beginning to feel the negative “wealth effect” that the analysts have long anticipated. Down at the corner deli, comments from town employees focused rather on the looming state deficits that threaten draconian cuts in town services and public payrolls.  Given that 43 out of the 50 states are now technically bankrupt – and the fact that New York City alone faces a 5 billion dollar budget shortfall next year – the crisis in state and city budgets makes the prospect of a  “double dip recession” a near certainty.  One might imagine that this kind of economic distress would be enough to place any national administration in jeopardy with average voters – and especially in so far as George Bush, Mr. Enron Conservative, is concerned. But this election season, our economic worries have been eclipsed by an eruption of gun violence that struck closer to home- very much in the same way that Anthrax scare last fall had done.

In October, two gunmen terrorized Washington and its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland, killing eleven people from a mobile sniper post hidden in the boot of their 1990 Chevrolet Caprice. Their terror campaign went unchecked for three long weeks, and by the time they were finally caught they had made a good start on their realizing their threat that “your children will no longer be safe anywhere, anytime.” The shooting spree targeted women shoppers at the mall, homeowners mowing their lawns or “soccer moms” dropping their kids off at school – in brief, all the banal routines of suburban life.  It provoked a lockdown in schools and playgrounds across the nation’s Capitol that proved most ineffectual – thereby giving us a fresh demonstration of our shared vulnerability and of the inability of the state authorities to do much about it. These killings (and the awareness that some 200 million firearms still remain in private hands) cast a pall nationwide. Suddenly attendance at public activities from “trick or treating” to antiwar rallies seemed somewhat foolhardy. Needless to say, all of this along with the drumbeat of daily FBI terrorist alerts only reinforced the impulse to burrow into one’s personal cocoon that has been there since September 11^th, 2001.  This was not helpful in the middle of an electoral campaign.

The two snipers, John Allen Muhammad and his young accomplice Lee Malvo, were not the Al Queda commandos that many of us suspected them to be. Instead, they were homegrown terrorists who ended up delivering themselves into the hands of the police through their thirst for publicity and personal greed.  But their acts of mayhem still stand as a practical illustration on how to bring a major American city to a standstill for any other interested party who’s waiting in the wings. This lesson was not lost on us.  But just in case it might have been, a special task force of The Council on Foreign Relations issued a report this month stating that the administration has made scant progress in addressing the lack of security at America’s ports and border crossings - making us increasingly vulnerable to a crippling terrorist strike at home.

The state of siege in D.C. triggered a media firestorm of “All Snipers/All the time” coverage that went on for weeks.  While this came (almost) as a welcome pause from all the “War talk” we’ve been hearing, it did put discussion of the November election on hold for the duration of the crisis. Three precious weeks were lost to the fall campaign season, thoroughly disrupting the Democratic leadership’s plan to change the national focus from Iraq to the economy.

Most observers now predict a record abstention rate at the polls this November.  Indeed, if we do better than a 35 % turnout of the eligible voters - a total that would be lower than mid-term elections of 1994 and 1998 – it will be surprising.  The key to recent American elections has always been turnout, with higher turnouts generally favoring the Democrats and lower ones the Republicans.  So if the current projections are confirmed on November 5^th, things couldn’t have worked out better for the White House’s electoral strategy. In short, the story of the past month is that of the effective use of the “weapon of mass distraction.”