As it says goodbye and good riddance to 2010, is America also saying so long to depres- sion, both the economic and the psychic varieties? Is double-dip now just another way to get your hot fudge sundae? Riding the Metro North commuter train from Pleasantville to Grand Central Station on the last weekend before Christmas, you’d certainly suppose so. The consumer confidence index had been rising for two straight months now and most of it seemed to be on board, wallets bursting to get in on the action. Heavy-set thirtysomethings on parole from suburbia, fists popping cans of Bud Lite, boomed to all who wanted to hear (Ben Bernanke maybe?) that they were “gonna do some serious shopping DAMAGE dude!” In the month before Christmas Grand Central turns into a retail bazaar, and to the strains of jingle tills vendors selling silk scarves, Thai and Polish jewellery, hammered leather goods and fancy stationery were all doing brisk trade to elbow-working crowds.
Is this Manhattan or is this America? Over the West Side Highway, a habitually witty storage company billboard proclaims – against its own self-interest, you might think – “NY. Where people are openly gay and secretly Republican. Why leave?” But the US lame duck Senate, in one of a series of valedictory superquacks, has just enacted the repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that prohibited lesbians and gays in the military from declaring their sexual orientation. There was some hurrumphing amidst the Marines but a poll of the public showed a majority of those asked believing military morale would improve, not deteriorate as a result.
Ride the train in the opposite direction and rosy scenario, even in New York, gives way to rust-bucket gloom. Upstate towns such as Poughkeepsie and Buffalo have unemployment rates not seen since the war. One in seven adults lives below the official poverty line; for children it is one in three, a truly shaming statistic. Life for millions in burgered America goes on only through food banks and food stamps. Seventy per cent of the population have a close friend or family member who has lost a job. We are still living in 3D America: desolation, devastation, destitution.
