Werewolves. Mad scientists and their freakish creations. Fire-breathing hellfiends. Terrifying perversions of our daily experience which strike fear in our hearts because of the imagined damage they could cause. Humans have always envisioned these kinds of creatures as manifestations of the real dangers that lurk in the dark.
In some ways, it is easier to picture werewolves snapping at our heels than an ICE agent pursuing our neighbors. It is safer to think about Frankenstein and his monster than hedge fund managers cooking up another financial product that could tank our economy and cause us to lose our homes. It is better to consider a fire-breathing hellfiend burning us up than climate change making our planet unlivable.
Scary movies, haunted houses, and all that is involved in Halloween cause us fear in a safe context. They allow us to experience challenging emotions even as we know logically that we won’t be injured.
Halloween on Oct. 31 is safe practice. A manifestation of the real danger comes next week on Nov. 3 – Election Day. My politics don’t allow me to simply paint the Republicans as the threat. True, I believe they represent the most direct peril. Donald Trump represents horror for vulnerable people in our country, and the Republican Party is fully under his control and that of his minions. But Democrats cause their own harms, both by enabling Republicans and by causing damage of their own. Both parties contribute to deportations, homelessness, crushing medical debt, hate crimes, and climate disasters because doing so is in the interest of their corporate funders. Most politicians won’t address the real hurt happening to working people because doing so would ruin their political careers.
That doesn’t mean I advocate for people to stay home from the polls. In many cases, there are real differences between even corporate-backed candidates, and harm reduction, i.e. voting for the lesser of two evils, is a legitimate and rational choice. In some cases, there are candidates who do represent real benefits to working people, such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, and Melat Kiros in Colorado. And in yet others, voting for a third-party candidate may make the most sense when there is no substantial difference between the Democrat and Republican. There are many vital choices we confront in trying to address the myriad challenges facing us.
All these issues are our living nightmares. It makes sense that we need a little escapism, and Halloween provides just that. So dress up, with or without your kids. Eat too much candy. Pull a (minor) prank on someone you know. Live it up.
Next week, it’s back to facing the real ghouls and goblins that stalk our waking dreams.
Jim Schwartz is an Oak Park resident, educator, and a blogger at Entwining.org.
