Bad Faith, Cowardice, and Terror In A Small Town

I remember lying in the backseat of my 1998 Mercury Sable while the gas pumped in the eerie quiet of a terrorized place. 

It was the fall of 2002, the country paralyzed by the fear of terrorism a year after 9/11, and there was a shadow sniper taking out random folks in the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia region. Just when you thought it was over, a new breaking news report would appear on your TV screen like the most viscerally frightening horror movie jump scare you’ve ever seen, and the gory details of a new sniper shooting would unfold before you. 

Oh hey, that lady was shot in the head near the driving range I frequent. Oh look, that guy was extinguished from the earth at a gas station I pass five days a week. No one knows who is doing this or why they’re doing it. Knowing this guy’s deal would have, for some reason, brought some comfort to the terrible situation. I guess it’s the same reason we ask how a young person died -- we need an explanation that makes sense and helps us pretend to understand the world and all its chaos and fragmentation and senselessness. 

When I needed gas for my gas-hog Sable, I would go to a gas station that had a clear view from all sides, no trees or brush in which a gunman could sit and wait to put a bullet in me while I typed in my zip code on the little gas pump screen. I would frantically get the pump going, then duck into my backseat like the rest of the good, fear-addled folks filling up their cars in the new Age of Terror. The pump would stop and I would scramble to put things back the way they were and gun it out of the station, thinking all the time I could catch one in the back of the head if this sniper was as good as they said. Maybe he’d get me in the neck and I would have to live through my final excruciating moments as blood spilled onto my lap and my Sable veered off the road. These are the thoughts that ran roughshod through one’s mind when terror rules. 

I lived with my parents at the time, and about 200 yards from their front door was a tree-filled hill – a perfect place to camp out and pick off people leaving their homes for work or school. Every morning I would look at those trees on that hill for any sign of rustling. I didn’t have a plan for what to do if I detected someone in those trees beyond pissing my pants and crying. But it made me feel better to be alert. It made me feel alive in all the worst ways. 

That’s my experience with terrorism. 

When The Terrorism is Stochastic 

There’s something undeniably cowardly about the way JD Vance has brought fear and loathing to Springfield, Ohio. 

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