Paranoia

“Paranoia strikes deep.” 1  — Buffalo Springfield

These days, it's hard to know just how worried to be about everything.   As I write, in mid-October, 2006, polls indicate that the Democrats are about to take back the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate.   I don't know about you, but despite all the faults of the Democratic party, this would make me sleep a little better at night.  

But will there be a fair election?   The other day, just weeks before this high-stakes election, Montgomery County Executive Doug Duncan said that he had “no confidence in voting machines” and urged voters to use paper ballots, 2 which does not exactly inspire faith in the electoral process.  

As we recall, in the 2004 presidential election, there were large discrepancies between exit poll results and the election results.   At the time, these discrepancies were attributed to—what else—problems with the exit polls. 3  But recent experiments with Diebold voting machines indicate that breaking into them and re-arranging their data is child's play. 4  Are our elections being hacked, as some have alleged? 5  Has voting, the essential tool of our democracy, been hijacked?   

Or are we just being paranoid?

In other news, a spate of recent articles reveals that vast prison camps are being built for “unlawful enemy combatants.” Who are the large numbers of combatants expected to fill these new digs?   The recently passed Military Commissions Act of 2006 enables George W. Bush to incarcerate not only foreign nationals but also U.S. citizens. 6  Some commentators imply that if one has ever sent a modest contribution to an organization that could be viewed as unfriendly to Bush, the ACLU, for example, one might potentially end up in a gulag.   The Military Commissions Act also act enables detainees to be held without habeas corpus , a quaint centuries-old convention whose establishment “marks the historical transition away from the whims of a despot and toward constitutional government.” 7  Should those of us who have ever expressed disapproval of the Bush government start packing for Gitmo?

Or should we relax, and trust in the workings of our judicial system, confident that the Supreme Court will rule the Act unconstitutional?

There is no shortage of things to fret about in our modern world: death, taxes, sickness, global warming, war with Iran, war with North Korea, incipient fascism, 8 electromagnetic fields 9; the list is endless.  

Should we all be nervous wrecks?  

Or should we drive to the mall in our SUVs and try a little retail therapy?

Personally, I've always been a worrier.   In my teens and early twenties, I suffered from what I later found out are called panic attacks, a strange and perhaps physiological process in which one moves almost instantaneously from a feeling of mild anxiety to panting into a paper bag.   Panic attacks are very susceptible to suggestion: one need only contemplate the idea of having one only to find that anxiety has moved instantly into high gear.   The process goes something like this: “Wow, I'm feeling pretty good today.   I don't seem to have any anxiety at all.   I'm not worried about anything.   If I were worried, I might have a panic attack, and if I had a panic attack—GAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!”

When I had kids, these attacks more or less stopped, since I was convinced that it would be irresponsible to communicate my anxiety to helpless little creatures, so somehow I willed myself into a perpetually halcyon state rather like that of someone who has just been love-bombed into a religious cult.   Perhaps as a result, my son Horatio * has always been very calm, and is now living in Japan, where presumably he is growing ever more Zen-like.   My daughter Hortense * lives in Paris, which can make a person pretty nervous, but she calms herself by eating cheese and reading Agatha Christie.

Now that my kids are in their twenties (yes, I had them when I was twelve), I find I can go back to the discipline of worrying with impunity, as there is no way to scar them for life any more—they are too old, and too far away. 10 

So these days, almost six years into the Bush presidency, like many people, perhaps most, I am sweating bullets.

Soon, we will presumably know the results of the midterm elections and will have some idea whether voting irregularities got in the way of democracy.   Back in '04, when reports of problems with the Diebold machines first began to surface, people calling attention to potential for vote fraud were accused of tin-foil-hat-ism—but now, even Governor Ehrlich has called for paper ballots to circumvent “crashing” and/or “tampering.” 11  It's hard to dismiss one's anxiety when the concept one was accused of paranoia about a mere two years ago has now been embraced by a Republican governor.  

Indeed, when one has been right about a few things, such as the ill-advisedness of the Iraq war, one is hesitant in general to dismiss one's fears, no matter how far-fetched they may seem to others.

On the other hand, there is enough crazy conspiracy theory out there to turn a person off rampant conjecture.   It may be true, as William Burroughs is rumored to have said, that a paranoid could be defined as someone who has all the facts at his or her disposal, but it's also true that a paranoid could be defined as a person who thinks that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Illuminati.   These days, I don't think we can rule anything out as a possibility, but sure, some conspiracy theories are just nutty .

But if we look at some of the sinister events we know to have taken place in recorded history—the Reichstag fire, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Kennedy assassination—we can see that in reality, all kinds of scary and mysterious things happen, orchestrated by people who are desperate to acquire and preserve power, money, influence, infamy, whatever it is that drives greedy bastards to kill their fellow humans and destroy our planet.   We know that as a matter of fact, these terrible things occur, and will keep on occurring, until we move into the new Aquarian Age or blow up the earth, whichever comes first.

So if we are desperately anxious about the state of our country, our planet, are we paranoid?

Or are people out to get us?  

I guess we'll find out.

Footnotes.

“For What It's Worth,” Buffalo Springfield < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm6NeM-6vBE >

Megha Rajagopalan, “Duncan Urges Voters to Cast Absentee Ballots,” WTOP News, October 11, 2006 < http://www.wtopnews.com/index.php?nid=213&sid=939859 >

Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, “Report Acknowledges Inaccuracies in 2004 Exit Polls,” Washington Post , January 20, 2005: A06. < http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22188-2005Jan19.html >

See Brad Friedman, “Hack the Vote? No Problem,” Salon September 13, 2006. http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/09/13/diebold/

See Brad Blog http://bradblogtoo.blogspot.com/2004/12/breaking-update-clint-curtis-stuns.html

Marjorie Cohn, “American Prison Camps are on the Way,” Alternet October 9, 2006 http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458/

Scott Lehigh, “A Fundamental Right in Danger,” Boston Globe (Web),   October 12, 2006 < http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/
oped/articles/2006/10/12/a_fundamental_right_in_danger/

Just Google “Bush” and “fascism”: I got 4,240,000 hits.

If you're worried about these, try a tin-foil hat (TFH).   I'm wearing one now!   Just kidding.

* Not their real names.  

Someone asked me recently why, if I was a good mother, my children both chose to move so far away from me.   I would have to say that whatever else one might say, I was a good enough mother that they are not both still living at home, curled in fetal position.

Christian Davenport and Ann E. Marimow, “Ehrlich Wants Paper Ballots for November Vote,” Washington Post September 21, 2006: A01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/20/AR2006092001356.html

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