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The "Real" America on Halloween

Fellow Systocrats:
There's been a lot of talk lately about the "real America" and "real Americans."  This year, I caught a glimpse of what the "real America" actually looks like on Halloween: 

 
This is Cedar Street in tiny Belfast, Maine, where any given house welcomed upwards of 800 to 1000 trick-or-treaters.  As you can see from these pictures, this public Halloween festival of sorts started before the sun went down and continued well into the evening, with lines of well-mannered, costumed youths consistently extending 25 or 30 feet from our well-provisioned porch, all the way into the street and beyond.  I had never seen trick-or-treating quite like this before, and I'm betting you haven't either, unless you live in Salem, Massachusetts, the Halloween capital of the world. 
Personally, I had thought that real trick-or-treating was a dying tradition in this country, replaced by more manageable Halloween parties and the like.  In the middle class New Jersey suburb I grew up in, wholesale trick-or-treating passed into memory long ago, after several Halloween candy incidents in the eighties (poison, razor blades, etc. found inside treats). The local matriarchs decided that it was just too dangerous and, with few exceptions, shut the practice down.  In other words, people in many communities decided that they could no longer trust their neighbors to dispense safe treats. 
Scenes like this one are hard to find in the United States nowadays, for the same reason - fear of one's neighbor.  

As a Systocrat, I would like to see the kind of community-oriented sentiment revealed by these pictures in every city and town in America.   I would like to see Americans start to trust each other again.  But this kind of unity and trust can never occur when people are constantly being exhorted by our political "leaders" to fear each other.  For example, suppose you had one of those Muslim "terrorists" living in your neighborhood? What if people in your community are of a different ethnicity or have different political views?  Worst of all, what if you were living next to someone who wasn't a "real American," whatever the hell that means? 
Halloween in Belfast epitomizes what's at stake in this election - harmony vs. division, community vs. factionalism.  As a citizen of this country, you must ask yourself, "what kind of America do I want to live in?"  Personally, I want to live in an America where I don't fear my neighbor, my neighbor doesn't fear me, and where we are not encouraged by our political leaders to be intolerant of fellow citizens who see things differently than we do.
I urge any remaining undecided voters out there to consider their vote carefully in light of these considerations.   Which candidate seeks unity, and which candidate has run a campaign premised on the politics of division and distraction?  Get the facts, and vote on Tuesday. 
To obtain the location of your local polling place, click here.
 

Posted by Tom Douglas on October 31, 2008 05:17 PM |


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Comments

A great post and it really puts this election in the right light. I live in Brockton, MA, a very urban town with about 100,000 residents. We had less than 10 trick-or-treaters this year with all but a few neighbors we knew (and a few teenagers who couldn't believe our lights were on and a bowl of candy was on the porch) opting to take their kids to the local hospital, library, high school, etc. for a "safe" party. We still put our bowl out because we need to keep traditions alive. When my son one year old son is old enough to understand, I want him to be able to walk around with us on Halloween and greet neighbors.

And it's not just about Halloween as you point out. We all just want to get along and should do so without fear every day. The latest RNC commercials saying that "Barack Obama is just too risky" sends a horrible message of hatred and fear of what is different. Perhaps Halloween is a good time to remember what happened in 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts when a few people were seen to be different. I think Obama can help us celebrate our differences and our similarities and help us move forward together. I will be proud to vote for him tomorrow and put in my vote for the candidate who had no message of hatred and fear but one of hope.

Posted by: Mary LaCivita | November 3, 2008 10:21 AM

In a perfect world, it would be great to be able to have a sense of trust in the community. In most populated areas (i.e. below the Arctic Circle), this is almost unattainable at this point.

The population has gotten too large and, with it, the increasing number of inevitable, systocracy-breaking behavioral outliers ruin any potential for trust or community.

Posted by: Chris J | November 3, 2008 11:52 AM

Chris: You reference a good point. Unfortunately, it only takes a relatively small sampling of bad actors to undermine the trust of an entire community, especially when there are no trust-building mechanisms/institutions in that community.

Posted by: TD | November 3, 2008 12:54 PM

I do not accept that smaller communities cannot come together with some effort and organization. My own community is somewhat divided though we do make attempts to know our neighbors and bring about change. You have to start small and not accept the premise that we are too big to know our neighbors and have some trust.

I recently visited my sister and her husband in a Kansas City, Kansas suburb and was amazed to find that in this semi-urban setting they have a close-knit neighborhood and a community of trust. They know their neighbors, they share strollers and food and stories and have parties together. They also watch out for each other. There are hundreds of homes in their neighborhood association and it is a functioning mechanism for community organization.

We need a President who will encourage such a model to be replicated. We do NOT need a President who will spread a message that we should be leery of anyone who is different or the trust will never get there. Let's face it, if we were all the same it would be a boring world. Everyone is different from their neighbor in some way. Different is good but in being different we can find common things that bring us together as a community.

Posted by: Mary LaCivita | November 3, 2008 02:14 PM

Mary: I agree with everything you've said in both of your comments above - you are definitely preaching to the choir - and the Kansas City example is encouraging.

I do believe it's possible for all communities to establish a pattern of trust. The only point I was making is that it is also possible for a few bad actors, through fear, to undermine the trust of an entire well-meaning community. Take the Halloween example above. A few people decide to distribute poisoned candy, and as a result the entire community cancels trick-or-treating. In order to deal with this problem, there needs to be some way to reaffirm the bonds of trust once an event like this has occurred. Right now, I'm not aware of any such mechanism or institution.

Posted by: TD | November 3, 2008 02:38 PM

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