Christmas Eve is a poor time to deliver a dark message of Christmases to come. Yet delivered it must be.
It is prompted by listening to an item on the BBC Today programme early this morning. A month or so ago, a group of people in a typical, fairly comfortable town in England, Watford, had been interviewed about the recession. They had obviously expressed concern at the financial events but they were somehow felt to be remote, something the government would fix and that they could work their way through. Good times would come back, didn’t they always?
To those of us who have followed this recession and looked at many of the projections, it was an unreal reaction that showed the insularity of Middle England, isolated by too many comfortable years of modest prosperity.
This morning’s interview of the group showed some change in that level of concern. In the short space of a very few weeks it had become more aware of the depth of recession that was being faced. It was still felt to be something removed from their current experiience, however. None of them had lost their jobs, although they knew people who had.
One talked of her son and his wife who had both lost their jobs. "How are they reacting?" the reporter asked. "I don’t know" was the reply "I shall know more when they join me for Christmas later today".
The discussion seemed unreal. What made it even more so was one or two questions asked by the reporter that did not connect with them in any way. "Do you sense anger about it all?" he asked.
The question seemed to surprise them. "No, it is a world-wide thing" was the response.
The reporter then asked if they thought there might be civil unrest. In the context of this group it was a non-sequitur, reflecting neither their view of the situation nor their expectation of the seriousness of the future with which they are faced. "We’ll work our way through it" was their somewhat bewildered reaction.
In the United States, the early part of the financial crisis and recession has been felt more deeply and more quickly, if only through retirement investment savings and home repossessions. Yet even where this is being most keenly felt, there is still a sense that the full import of the depth of the coming depression is still not fully comprehended.
Two days ago, the New York Times went to Columbia SC to interview people in much the same way that the BBC did. The main difference was that the bulk of their interviews were with people attending a job fair at the county fairgrounds.
Obviously, amongst those seeking jobs, the anger was more palpable. Yet there was still an unreality to the awareness of people about the uniquely severe threat of this recession.
After a year of unemployment since obtaining an associate degree in medical assisting, the only job offered to a 47 year old woman was as a medical technician dispensing pills to patients at $7.50 an hour. A window installer who had earned $11.50 an hour before being laid off found only one possible opportunity at the job fair, a technician position at an air-conditioning company. The starting salaries were less than $10 an hour. "Even if I work for this, I’m taking a cut in pay," he said.
Sympathetic though one might be to their situation, the opportunity of any job at this time is infinitely preferable to the full nightmare of what is going to happen in the new year as recession turns into full blown economic depression.
For many of our citizens, they are still in a cocoon where the full reality of what they will face is still not visible to them.
Which brings me back to those strange questions asked by the BBC reporter about anger and civil unrest that had no resonance with those he was interviewing. It was clear that they were not thinking in any such terms. I believe the reporter was merely reflecting a real and growing anxiety of what the government in London fears may be a possible result of what may occur as they contemplate the next two years.
A few months ago, our blogs were recording with alarm that a whole military brigade had been withdrawn from much needed rotation in Iraq to train in civil unrest procedures and were to remain on standby for such purposes. Immediately the conspiracy theorists saw in this action an excuse for wild speculation, including such tin-foil hat theories as a possible coup by Bush and his administration. I argued that these were the least plausible reasons, that it was simply reasonable precautions by the US government to protect its citizens in the event of civil breakdown.
I do not know if the government at that time had visibility of the full extent of the economic crisis with which we are now faced or whether the timing was merely coincidental. What is clear that such thoughts were in the mind of the BBC reporter when he asked those questions of the bemused group in a small town in Middle England.
It is going to be a cold hard and very ugly new year in our countries. I am sure that it is the pre-occupation for Obama, if not yet fully of our blogs. The closer one gets to the heart of government, the greater is the realisation of the fragility of our societies. These are societies that have still not woken up to the reality of what is round the corner. Nor should we expect them to realise the full extent of what is likely to hit them; after all, none of us have experienced it before.
I believe that it is this that underlies Barack Obama's holiday message to us. It is not one that it is appropriate for him to deliver clearly at this time. It is one that in its stark brutality we need to be given soon.