Codger’s Column: Boo!
No matter if times be better or bitter, Codger’s Dad always maintained that nothing would ever be as good or as bad as one’s imagination could envision it.
As a know-it-all kid, Codger dismissed that as a father calming an anxious family. As a seen-it-all adult, Codger called that a way of avoiding reality. Nowadays, appreciating senior sagacity, he agrees with the old man.
Nevertheless, he’s had the jitters this week. The combination of Halloween and the scariest midterm election campaign in history has made his knees freeze and his liver quiver. The world is in trick-or-treat mode, he thinks, and it may turn out to be a permanent condition. The trick is there seems to be no treat.
The biggest boo has been the specter that has menaced the election itself. What if the polls are wrong and the Republicans tighten their grip? More war, kleptocracy, inflation? What if Democrats actually win big? Will the Republicans claim fraud and try to overturn the results, plunging the country into chaos? Which outcome is more dangerous, less retrievable? Whoa, says Crone. How did you get maneuvered into thinking so negatively? Codger replies, With my imagination.
It’s the uncertainty over uncertainty that’s given Codger the willies. He’s been searching for metaphors so he doesn’t have to face reality. Which leads him to President Trump’s proposed 240-foot triumphal arch. It will cast a shadow on the Arlington National Cemetery, including the John F. Kennedy Memorial and the Eternal Flame. In other words, there will be a shadow on everything.
Of course, that’s it. Codger has figured it out. The plan was always to cast a shadow on everything, to scare us into turning our imaginations loose on ourselves.
The right-wing influencers have flooded us with lies, rumors and subversive slurs questioning the election process. Why even bother voting when it’s rigged? The bad guys have undermined the democratic process with bribes, the dread of replacement by AI, threats of costly litigation, the terror of secret police in masks. The cowards in Congress have been kept in line by the fear of losing the perks and side-hustle deals that come with selling out their constituents.
A good example is our Representative Nick LaLota, who has distinguished himself by threatening to defund various East Hampton infrastructure, public safety and environmental projects unless the town and village repealed its new laws calling for more transparency in joint local-federal immigrations actions.
Meanwhile, Trump and his family have been setting records for pillaging the taxpayer troughs while pundits debate over what constitutes an emolument. (Crone says it’s not a moisturizer, even though it greases the grift.)
The congressman whom LaLota replaced, Lee Zeldin, has gone to extreme lengths to un-protect the environment he was sworn to defend as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, including weakening clean air and toxic chemical safeguards. Look for Lee to be rewarded with a cabinet post.
Will living in the bubble of Shelter Island be distance enough from the turmoil until everything is sorted out? Will everything be sorted out? Can we wait? That depends. Is that ICE at the ferries? Or imagination?
In conversations lately, Codger has been finding that more and more neighbors want to talk about their fears for the Island. The lack of adequate medical presence, not to mention the absence of a pharmacy, is a prime topic. Finding housing for a resident doctor is critical, but the larger problems of the current national health care system loom as well. As hard as the Town Board seems to be working on the case, federal help is obviously needed. Imagine that. From them.
No wonder Codger has the heebie-jeebies.
Look at what Codger calls Death Valley, the area adjacent to the library, which should be the center of a vibrant downtown municipal area instead of a dustbowl. How did that happen? Codger tends to blame every local administration he can remember for laziness, carelessness, lack of transparency, grift, and the gutless fear of litigation. Crone rolls her eyes and calls for sunshine. O.K., says Codger, how about a public forum to help find ways to renew the eyesores and empty stores degrading the heart of town.
The Halloween sugar high will finally subside and there will be election results. And no matter the outcome, there will be this one big question — what’s next?
There’s only one good answer, says Codger.
Whoever wins or loses, he says, we have to stop imagining what could happen and take back control. Donate to the causes you believe in, stand up, march, demonstrate, now, before the good guys lose heart or the bad guys regroup or your imagination claims all is right with the world — or all is hopeless.
Both wrong. Crone concurs.
