Syndicated Column 6-4-04
We pay big price for our love of New York City

By Alan Chartock
Fri, Jun 4, 2004 4:19 pm

When I was a kid in New York, we used to have “air raid drills” to prepare in case the city ever came under attack. You’d hunker down under your desk until the bell rang and the teacher told you to get up. It was reasonable to expect that if the bombs began to fly, New York would be a big target, just as it was quite reasonable that Moscow would have been among the American priorities. We know now about a few occasions when it almost happened.
Telling a child every day that there is a possibility an atom bomb might hit his or her home takes an awful toll on the psyche of that child. Some social psychologists will tell you that as our characters are formed, this type of anxiety becomes part of who we are. Of course, it’s more than children who suffer. We all do. We know that stress kills and it doesn’t get any more stressful than where we are now.
Right now, everyone with a home in or around New York is aware that Osama Bin Laden and his madmen are intent on doing great harm to New York. Let’s face it – they blew up the World Trade Center twice and continue sending messages that we will be paying a great price for being us. The city leaders can do little more than give pep talks. To do otherwise would mean that people wouldn’t come to New York and spend their money here. On top of that, all of us who spend a lot of time in New York might get slightly paranoid. Taken to its natural conclusion, real estate values might actually drop in a city where the smallest apartments can only be afforded by millionaires. You can hardly blame Gov. George E. Pataki for saying, “Go about your business.”
The FBI, the CIA and all the intelligence people are working hard. But despite all their spies and the billions we were spending, they didn’t seem to have a clue about the fall of Communism. How are you going to stop someone who is committed to blowing himself up?
Some politicians, often high on the Fascist scale, will take advantage of the situation by asking us to give up our most fundamental rights. This is the time when people who are scared out of their wits will do anything that is asked of them. As we just saw on the left coast, some of those in charge don’t even seem above framing innocents who may be practicing a religion not consistent with their own religious belief system.
Each of us has to be just as vigilant today as our fathers, mothers and grandparents were asked to be during the Second World War. Just ask yourself what might have happened if some alert passengers hadn’t stopped a madman attempting to light his shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight. A lot of people might have died and aviation would have taken another black eye that would make us even more paranoid and depressed.
On top of all of that are the constant warnings that an alert level has changed colors or that we have received “chatter” that the bombers and poisoners are on their way. In the face of a presidential election, one can only suspect that there are some very self-serving politics afoot here. The message seems loud and clear that changing political horses in mainstream might leave us vulnerable. On the other hand, many people appropriately argue that Osama would not be nearly as lethal and strong as he and his goons are today had President Bush not taken on his Iraqi strategy. Men who were once considered lunatics are now seen as fighting to preserve Islam.
So these are the conditions under which we live. They will be described and analyzed by sociologists, historians and political scientists in the years to come. That’s all fine, but we’re here now. Think of all those people who live under volcanoes and never move. Hey, I love New York and I’m putting my money right there. We are, however, paying a big price.


- posted by Alan @ 6/07/2004 09:29:00 PM