Written by Lesley   

This election season, and especially after the first debate,I am trying to watch those wonderful bad horror and sci fi movies from the old days now that Halloween is coming. I spent much of my early childhood timidly peeking out from under a blanket at Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, at young Steve McQueen trying to save his town from The Blob, and the Monsters from the Id on Altair's 4th planet. They all ended with the defeat of evil and the triumph of good and lots of really scary stuff in between. Might be better just to look at elections as though they are a horror show (which they have become) and try to be just a little trusting that the worst I imagine may not come to pass.

But it's hard to put that lost innocence back in the bottle. Been down on the planet too long, seen too much. Images rise up in my mind: the four little girls in that bombed out Birmingham church, three mangled bodies laid in the ground, executed for trying to register people to vote (and living now in a time when the right they died fighting for is being challenged again), our jails bursting at the seams with the ruined lives of people who did nothing more than a friend of mine does every day of his life but are the wrong color in the wrong neighborhood; the twin towers shuddering to the ground in a holocaust of toxic dust and human flesh; torn bodies and tortured minds returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Bush's wars, wars we have grown tired of while the young still risk their lives; the police state we now live in since 9/11 where peaceful protesters doing nothing but holding up signs and chanting slogans are assaulted, arrested. harassed, followed and spied upon, placed on terrorist watch lists just for exercising the right of free speech. We can't take any of it for granted, these constitutional guarantees. There are no guarantees.

I listen to the pundits along the spectrum, most egregiously on the left, publicly bashing this admittedly flawed President when we need to rally behind him with our full support for one spectacularly important reason - the alternative is unthinkable. If he wins we will have four years to put his feet to the fire. We have been derelict in our duty both to him and ourselves for not doing so the last four. But we Democrats are an understanding and tolerant bunch who appreciate the pressures a President labors under both politically and from the storms of the unexpected. This ability, or impulse, to walk in another's shoes is our greatest strength and what is exploited by the cynical opposition as weakness. I thought, frankly, Obama was just as jaw-droppingly stunned as I was that Romney suddenly emerged with a smile and completely reversed positions he has been running on for the past 18 months. I can imagine the secret memo that went out to the leaders of his base, "disregard everything you hear tonight. I'm only kidding. Have to pull in those moderate undecideds. After the election it will be too late."

It's hard to say where all this will lead. I used to believe in the metaphor of the pendulum and this long 30-40 year swing to the extreme right would start making its journey back at least to the middle. But there is something wrong with this picture. What is missing, that I remember we used to have - and by "we" I mean the country as a whole (with certain significant exceptions) - was a sense that no matter our differences and failings we were sort of one country, one community who knew how to pull together in a crisis. Now we are so isolated, walking the streets staring into little screens, wearing headphones and not noticing anything of the world around us or the people in it, warmed by the online thoughts only of those who agree with us. How the heck do we figure out who is lying to us any more? Or just not being too careful figuring out what's true.

The other day on the way to work I heard a howling and inconsolable crying and I looked around to see who had that annoying baby so I could shoot them a disapproving look. You know how we New Yorkers are. I finally found the source of this despairing wailing. It was a middle aged woman, lustily crying just like a baby who cannot be comforted, stomping her feet on the floor, searching for tissues in her handbag. And she just couldn't stop, couldn't stop her mournful cry. Some human impulse brought sympathetic tears to my eyes and I suddenly wanted to go to her and put my arms around her. A thousand reasons why not to do it, why I didn't. Still I felt a kind of kinship with this woman for just that moment. I have often felt that the only reasonable response to this world is a bellowing, bawling, unstoppable tantrum. And if the Republicans manage to claw and cheat and steal their way back into power I might not be able to help myself.