Watching the Flames Reminds Me of Dangerous Fires Closer to Home

Russia’s attempt to obliterate Ukraine, Ukrainian courage, and another “pardon” for the corrupt, right-wing populist Alberto Fujimori (Peru’s former president) trigger thoughts about our democracy.

Vladimir Putin is what happens when we allow one man or small group to amass such power. His information blackout is what happens when reporters aren’t free to report the truth. This war illustrates the difference between patriotism and nationalism.

But let’s not get too proud. Most everything Putin has done, we’ve done, helped allies do, or turned a blind eye to. The U.S. has a long history of bullying smaller nations and toppling democratic governments in favor of dictators who were friendly to us – as Putin does in Ukraine and Georgia.

The excellent How Democracies Die discussed Fujimori at length. Elected President, he abused the office to enrich himself and his pals, while usurping additional power. He’s still popular with some Peruvians, just as some here retain blind loyalty to Donald Trump, another “populist” who tried to remove checks and balances restricting his power.

In my youth, our racism and our imperial conduct (exemplified in the senseless Viet Nam War) appalled me. Although we had “democracy” and “a free press,” those were limited. Blacks effectively couldn’t vote in the South; many urban voters were still controlled by “machines”; and because everything was so vast, information was somewhat controlled by rich folks’ ownership of newspapers and TV networks. Our free press freely helped the government gull the American people about Viet Nam and other blots on our national character.

I experienced some persecution for our views. In the South, I feared the police, for good reason; at college in Pennsylvania, after citizens beat up participants in the town’s first antiwar “vigil,” the cops driving one victim to the police station stopped in an alley and warned him, “You’re the ones we ought to be getting. And we will;” here, an LCPD detective filmed our demonstrations, and law enforcement carefully watched political dissenters. Antiwar advocacy cost some folks jobs. The U.S. didn’t feel all that democratic. Yet there were grounds for hope, including our Constitution.

Our democracy was under fire during my father’s youth, during the Depression, Extremists left and right argued persuasively that our system had failed. Lindbergh, America’s hero, was a pal of the Nazis. The world was engulfed in wars. My father signed the Oxford Pledge, never to go to war. When we were attacked, he enlisted as a Marine pilot, fighting Japan.

Putin reminds me to cherish our democratic values and relatively free press. Some friends insist we’re no different from Russia. Our billionaires get fat even during a pandemic, and we too abuse our international power. But I see significant differences. I’m also sensitive to the threats our democracy faces, as well as to its many warts. That’s why I’m saddened by that blind loyalty to the racist and corrupt Mr. Trump; but it’s also why some well-intended restrictions on free speech concern me. And why it seems important to try to tell the truth to our kids about our beloved but imperfect nation.

To me, the way through seems to be to keep our eyes open, think for ourselves, and reject uncritical belief in anyone or anything, including our government. As my favorite bumpersticker says, “Don’t Trust Everything You Think.” True loyalty looks out for missteps and seeks to correct them, lovingly, as we would with friends and family.

                                               – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's web sit, sub nom "Imperfect Democracy Deserves our Care and Criticism" and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[It’s interesting to note similarities between the above column and Algernon D'Ammassa's column on the same page the same day.]

[Most in the U.S. have likely forgotten Fujimori; and he’s just one of many fallen dictators who got rich with his boot on the necks of his people. (I’d forgotten that Fujimori also instituted forced sterilization of indigenous women. But have we treated ethnic minorities so much better, at times?) But I spent more than six months in Peru a few years ago, and loved the place. So Fujimori’s pardon, just as Putin is committing unpardonable war crimes, seemed relevant; and the spectre of some folks blindly loyal to him, saying he’d helped the economy, reminds me of blind loyalty to a corrupt populist former president here. (Fujimori had been pardoned in 2017, for “humanitarian” reasons, but after intervention by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the pardon was overruled as “political” by Peruvian courts. The president who had granted it had to resign, and is under house arrest pending trial on his own corruption charges.]

[The two comments on the Sun-News website so far this morning on my column both mention that I mention Donald Trump. Once he was defeated, I resolved not to mention him again. I’ve failed to keep that resolution, for sure! He’s a pathetic critter hungering for attention; but, as with Fujimori, his lack of conscience or a feel for democracy, and the blind loyalty some feel toward him, still endanger our democracy. So there’s a reason he come so often to mind. However, on balance, I do mention him too much, and will try to stop!]

 

The Lives of Others - if Texas Would Only Allow Folks to Live Them

Think about all the unnecessary pain human beings are causing each other.

Putin is wantonly killing civilians, destroying a promising democracy, and enforcing laws that make love a crime if your feelings differ from the official norm.

Florida and Texas are not only finding clever ways to undermine democracy, but persecuting those who differ.

Growing up is hard. Harder when you don’t fit in. It must be especially hard when your deepest feelings don’t match those of the other kids, or your skin color seems to be a problem. Discussing, acknowledging, growing to understand who you are, that must be like heaven. Must help you feel you’re as good as anyone.

I’m saddened by the huge overreaction to schools’ efforts to face up to the persistently racist aspect of our history and national character. (Persons of color see daily that racism hasn’t disappeared.) I’m appalled by states’ efforts to control women’s lives, and criminalize those helping women who need to abort a pregnancy. If your body and heart/mind disagree on your gender, you might need counseling; and your medical treatment should be decided by you, your parents, and your doctor – not some political ideologue; but states want to outlaw such counseling and treatment, labeling it “child abuse.” But they permit “programming” you back to “normal.” (Putin would love our recent anti-gay measures!)

I’m sad to see people being punished for trying to be who they are, without hurting anyone. I’m also sad for the folks who live in such constant fear of anything different that they have to act like Putin or Paxton or Desantis. How must it feel to hold such fear of people with different sexual orientations, ethnicity, or opinions that you lash out against them? What’s the fear? Just the unknown? Or do folks fear that if we were truly free, they might sometimes love someone their conscience and upbringing says they shouldn’t?

Fear engenders strange behavior. Folks who identify as “freedom-loving” trample all over other folks’ most personal and essential freedoms. They rage against intrusive government while passing incredibly intrusive laws. Folks who can’t abide the slightest restriction on owning weapons of war are the most eager to extinguish others’ freedoms to be themselves. Requiring masks is Hitlerian, but your insides are state business.

A deeper contradiction is the apparent belief that Jesus would somehow approve of harassing some poor girl outside a health clinic, denying kids in need the counseling and empathy they deserve, pretending that our society isn’t rife with racism, or kicking gays out of restaurants.

Jesus was inclusive. He told us even Samaritans were okay. He said whatever we did to poor folks and strangers, we did to him. That’s not an invitation to quiver in fear and throw people in jail. It suggests we withhold that first stone if we ourselves have ever sinned, and be courageous in meeting people where they are, even fallen women. Maybe we should try to imagine how we’d feel if criminal law forbade loving whom we love. Just as Jesus would have been appalled by people invoking him to justify slavery, He’d be pulling out his hair over how folks in Texas and Florida are misusing his name and words.

He’d invite us to walk along with those “others,” see our common humanity, understand them. He’d say, again, to accept and love.

But it’ll snow in Las Cruces before his followers even hear him.

                          - 30 -

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[Texas’s law allowing private citizens to sure for $10,000 anyone who assists a Texas woman in getting an abortion, even in a neighboring state, is clever but vicious. The idea is that if Texas police aren’t actually enforcing the law, there’s no one to sue for a violation of her Constitutional rights. (Some conservatives opposed the law because they wondered if a more progressive state could do the same with the carrying of guns in public.) Even an uber driver can be sued by someone for the $10,000 reward.

Equally vile is the law urging that if a family tries to help a child whose gender identity isn’t what Texas says it should be, by counseling or medication, the family should be investigated for child abuse. Meanwhile in many states families who want to program their son’s or daughter’s gender identity out of existence can use means that amount to torture.

Two Texas Supreme Court decisions this week bear on these issues.

Friday, the Texas Supreme Court closed a narrow window for possible challenge to the law by holding that although state medical-licensing authorities normally had the power to discipline doctors or clinics who violated the law, since this law didn’t let them do that, they couldn’t be sued either.

I hope sanity will prevail once a Texas court awards some snitch $10,000 for “privately enforcing” the law. Texas courts are instrumentalities of the government, the Texas State Legislature passed it, and the Governor signed it. Legally, since at this point it flatly violates the U.S. Constitution, how is it different from a state law saying that citizens can sue a Jew or a Black person for walking in the wrong neighborhood? Or a law setting a $10,000 “reward” for proving someone had burned the flag, gone to a mosque instead of a church, or failed to get vaccinated against a communicable disease? Could Texas argue there too that since the law is privately enforced, there’s no Constitutional violation?

The other decision was more welcome, but hasn’t reached the Texas Supreme Court yet: a Travis County (Houston) judge halted enforcement of the law calling for investigations of families with transgender kids for possible child abuse for using medically-accepted forms of treatment. The decision enjoins such inquiries until after trial of the case (currently set for July), and is effective statewide. Such decisions include a finding that the law is probably (there’s a “substantial likelihood”) unconstitutional. The State immediately appealed. The Texas Supreme Court may or may not agree. (At this stage, it could not make a final decision on constitutionality, but could reverse her order and allow the investigations pending trial.)]

 

   

 

Rooting for Ukraine

Bees are essential to pollination for 90% of wild flowering plants, and much of our food. Bees are rapidly disappearing, because of human activity. One nation is so intent on maintaining ancient bee-keeping methods that 1.5% of its population is involved. It’s the largest country in Europe, and had a flourishing civilization when Moscow was a mud village.

Ukraine has a young democracy that its people are also desperate to maintain. While we poison our democracy with partisanship and conspiracy theories, Ukrainians have fought to wrest theirs from corrupt authoritarian pals of Vladimir Putin.

Russia is in a difficult and dangerous position: steadily sinking to a minor economic role in the world’s economy, with privation at home, while possessing powerful weaponry. Historically, most major wars have been started by a once-proud failing state.

For most, this war is a rude surprise. After centuries of terrible wars, Europe seemed settled. (Our world is now so interconnected that when Russian drivers with electric cars stop at a Ukrainian-made charging station these days, they get no juice, but an on-screen message urging Putin to perform an anatomically impossible obscene act, solo.)

Those earlier wars were long, bloody and costly. Russia and Ukraine suffered far more than we did in World War II. So Putin is telling Russians that Ukraine is a Fascist nation persecuting Russians. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky’s paternal grandfather was the only survivor among four Jewish brothers fighting the Nazis.

We’re seeing a nation of heroes. I respected Zelensky telling the U.S. he didn’t need a ride, just weapons. “Why does it matter to us?” ask a few isolationists, saying they “care more about our southern border than about Ukraine.” Gee, so do I; but I can almost see the border, and there ain’t 90,000 Russian troops massed there.

Unlike many foreign situations we’ve manipulated for the profit of U.S. businesses, this distant crisis matters because peace and democracy, after growing for decades, are threatened by Mr. Putin and other authoritarians. (Even our country elected a fellow who thinks Putin’s just swell.) Ukraine keeps grabbing at that brass ring, freedom, and repeatedly pays the costs. If a larger neighbor can simply swallow it, the world as we know it is endangered. And, although leaders shouted, “domino theory” to the point of idiocy during the Cold War, Ukraine might not be all Putin wants of the old Russian Empire.

This won’t be pretty. How will it end?

Will the Ukrainians remain resolved, and persist in armed resistance if the Russians occupy their cities? I believe they will. But in cities of rubble, with most civilians dead or fled, how do you blend in to fight on?

Will NATO and the U.S. continue strong sanctions, despite inconveniences? I hope so. Russians accepted Putin because he seemed a shrewd, savvy guy returning Russia to prominence while avoiding war. Severe economic pain and frustration could make everyday Russians and Putin’s fellow oligarchs ask hard questions.

Can Putin’s propaganda keep citizens blindfolded? Soldiers call home and describe what they see. Russian control of the Internet is less complete than China’s, but Putin’s pressuring big tech to help him lie. A few brave Russian news outlets have spoken truth; but this week Putin shuttered TV Rain and Echo of Moscow.

If all of us are resolute, oligarchs and popular discontent could oust Putin. Here’s hoping Ukrainians won’t already have disappeared, with the bees they strive to save.

                                                        – 30 --

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 6 March, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[I started this column a week early, before the invasion. The draft from the day before I turned it in was more positive: Ukrainians holding out; sanctions working; and some combination of Russian body bags, shocked soldiers calling families, and internet posts perhaps cluing in clue Russians. (The disappearance of TV Rain, Echo of Moscow, and Novaya Gazeta should tell folks something.) But the next morning the news seemed all worse. More of Ukraine in rubble, Russian progress, and the muzzling of the last vestiges of Russian press, plus stronger pressure on Facebook, Google, and the rest. But as soon as I sent it in, news seemed sunnier: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said the sanctions were working; Russia’s second biggest gas company, Russian chess grandmasters, and others spoke out, breaking with Putin. Meanwhile, retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindeman called the invasion the beginning of the end for Putin. And the U.S. population seemed to realize that the Biden Administration had done a masterful job of building consensus with allies. (Positive views of Biden jumped 8 per cent after the State of the Union, an unusually large change.)]

[So I’m no expert. And can offer no very well-founded predictions. And I can’t stop reading the latest news, but that news twists me around like a flag in the wind.]

[I do find that I care, greatly. I’m rooting for the Ukrainians the way I rooted for the Dodgers and Jackie Robinson at 9. Like Lindsay Graham, I keep hoping some set of oligarchs will take Putin out, now that he’s kind of a liability. I can say that. Senator Graham shouldn’t. But he’s right.]

[Rarely, I think, has such a war been so clearly the madness of one man. Even Hitler had a lot of Germans behind him, feeling he would make Germany great again. Putin has few supporters. Not only are those who can distancing themselves from him, Russia’s silent majority would prefer peace and stability, and is only silent from fear and because they’re told Putin’s saving Russians in Ukrainia from a fascist regime. “What a hypocrite! He says he’s coming to save us but he’s slaughtering us,” said one Russian-speaking Ukrainian. Hell, Zelensky grew up speaking Russian. But maybe Jews don’t count.]

[I’m glad most Republicans are not taking the isolationist view on this. I’m sure glad Trump isn’t in office. I can’t help contrasting Zelensky’s character and courage with the superficial egotism of Trump, who saw Zelensky and the Ukraine as simply a possible tool to smear Joe Biden with. Both Trump and Putin have now tried to intimidate the comedian, and found him stronger than expected. I wonder if much of that comes through to good U.S. citizens who believed Trump.]

[A recent Foreign Affairs article, also citing Russia’s mistaken assumptions and tactical blunders, notes quotes Roman historian Tacitus, “They made a desert and called it peace.” So may the Russians, if they destroy much of Ukraine but still can’t govern it.]

 

 

Our Recent Dead

Sorry, this morning I’m with my recent dead.

John Spence and I met in the fall of 1964, college freshmen. Soon we were immersed in fighting racism and trying to end the Viet Nam War (unaware that even those running the war knew it was stupid). And smoking grass. And teaching ourselves to shoot photographs up in Boston. Then Spence went to Viet Nam. A soldier. In the thick of it. A gentle sort of guy you couldn’t picture killing anyone. Guess he learned. Fast.

On a cross-country motorcycle ride ten years later, I reunited with friends, including Spence, now a probation officer in Iowa. Married, with a kid. Trying to help those he could, bending rules toward human kindness when possible. Not the revolutionary we’d thought we were, but trying each day to make the world a little better.

Spence bicycled across the U.S. at 70, and he bicycled across Cuba with his son. Now he’s dead. He died a good death: conscious, aware, accepting.

Gone too are John Lindeman, Dick Tallent, Darrol Shillingburg. Regular guys, good-hearted and thoughtful. Beloved not only by their families, but to concentric circles of people who knew them, laughed with them, listened and learned from them. Felt better because they were in the world.

John Lindeman

When I started playing bridge tournaments again, I met John Lindeman. He could recall bridge hands from decades ago, and recount the play. He’d read all my columns, and knew me better than I did. Sorry he can’t read this one. There were delightful lunches on Nopalito’s patio under the trees: John, Ron from Minnesota, and me, just three old guys discussing the world.

We met Dick through a friend he was advising. He was a deeply loving family man who also cared about community and country. We spent one perfect evening with him and his many friends and family in August, celebrating his recovery from a stroke. The loss of Darrol is a loss for our entire community. He was a plant whisperer, a steward of heirloom seeds, and a reluctant guru to local vegetable gardeners and growers. He was instrumental in growing our community gardens.

I’m also thinking about our loss of Sidney Poitier and Thich Nhat Hanh. I respected Poitier not just for his craft, nor his continuing activism over decades, but also from reading his autobiography. Imagine growing up on an island, in a village where everyone but the storekeeper is Black, and “race” just ain’t even thought of, then having to fight your way to success in a racist nation. (Whenever In the Heat of the Night plays on TV, I still find it gripping.) I’d long admired Thay’s “engaged Buddhism” and read his books. His biography of the Buddha humanized the Buddha for me, as Last Temptation humanized Jesus in my youth.

I’m grateful that I got to ride along with these folks a ways on our journey from birth to death. I’m glad they existed. Let’s recall their gifts as long as we can. And honor them by embracing life, as they did. Savoring each moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote, “Birth and death are only notions.” That wisdom is hard to remember while feeling pain and grief. We honor our dead by recalling them with a smile as we stride forward, alive, not by letting the notion of death slow our steps. Let their light illuminate the next stretch of road.

                                          - 30 - 

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 February, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[ Whether it’s the pandemic or being well into my 70’s, I feel like I’m hearing “So-and-so died,” almost as often as “Good morning.” When my long-time close friend Jimmy called from Pennsylvania, the moment I saw the area code I wondered who had died. One of the leaders in the Belton Bridge Center recently sent around a list of members we’d lost recently, including John Lindeman. It wasn’t short. Death is always all around us, but we’re sometimes we’re unusually conscious of that. We care, but there’s nothing profound to say. A long time ago, after my mother died, I gave my father, who was a lifelong atheist who made fun of Buddhist vegetarians, the book, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. (That is distinct from, and more contemporary than, The Tibetan Book of the Dead.) I thought it a good and perhaps helpful work for someone to read who was grieving for a loved one. Surprisingly, Father thought so too. I also have one other recommendation, specifically for one who’s lost a long-time spouse, but, really, for anyone. Retired Minister Chuck Harper and his wife moved here years ago. I met Chuck in our poetry workshop. I was particularly moved by one he wrote about sitting and reading, and looking over at his beloved wife of many years, recalling stuff. Soon after that poem, she died. At some point, Chuck started what became a series of poems, including dialogues with her both during her lifetime and when hiking (with her) after her death. I won’t give away the last poem, but I think Conversations with Pat is a great read for anyone who feels, but particularly for anyone whose lost someone close. (Although Chuck’s other books are available here, to order Conversations with Pat; her Life and Afterlife with Me, email charles@harperpoetry.com, or call Chuck.)]

John Spence

[I hadn’t seen John Spence for years, though I kept hoping some day we’d drive to the Northeast by way of Iowa and I’d get to see him again. His obituary reminds me of what a great guy he was, and the obit itself is fresh and natural, unlike so many of those. (It also reminded me that he served as a medic in ‘Nam.) Knowing the young Spence, I can visualize the care and concern he must have felt and showed for folks he counseled as a family therapist, and the appreciation nieces and nephews felt for his “laid-back attirude.” Both Dick Tallent and John Lindeman were friends I met very late in life, but we connected. (My Sun-News columns helped, because both men shared a lot of my concerns. Dick’s celebration of recovery from his stroke moved me, and I wrote about it.]

Dick Tallent

[Anyway, I’m not sure this was really a newspaper column, but these folks were on my mind. I could also have written way more about Poitier and Thich, and should have included Desmond Tutu, if only to add a link to a very short piece on Ubuntu, which I learned of yesterday.]

 

New Mexico's Legislative Session - and U.S. Hyper-Partisanship

I welcome several things the Legislature did in its 2022 session; but we’re still in trouble.

We finally capped short-term loan interest at 36%, found a reasonable compromise on taxing social security, set aside money to clean up uranium sites, raised teachers’ salaries, and did other good things.

But there’s a lot we didn’t do. We didn’t do much to confront the danger climate wackiness poses to us and our descendants, and to creatures who can’t vote but may face extinction. I doubt we invested enough in dealing with the current drought, which scientists say is the worst in at least 1200 years. We didn’t go forward with a state bank, because bankers put on a full-court press. We didn’t correct the unfairness that New Mexicans buying goods or services pays 8.3125 percent in gross-receipts tax, while high-fliers who buy tickets to space won’t pay state tax. Damned few folks who can pay $450,000 for the exciting pleasure would forego such a trip just to avoid paying our state $37,406.25. (Does the GRT keep you from attending a movie or buying a television set?)

By and large, our local state legislators are an earnest, caring, competent, hard-working set of folks. I also agree with their policy views more often than not. The old pattern of folks running for office to help their businesses (particularly lawyers, who couldn’t advertise) and grow their egos doesn’t hold today. Most of these folks are retired, or work for non-profits.

But we’re still in trouble. Our state usually lacks funds and depends too much on a source of income that’s cyclical at best and is endangered by the urgency of decreasing the rate at which we poison air, water, and land.

Our country is in such deep trouble that life often feels schizophrenic: New Mexico doing sensible and socially beneficial things while the nation pulls itself apart.

The U.S. is like a movie protagonist, maybe the kid of a poor widow whose coal-miner husband died in the mines, who fights like hell to scratch out a living however s/he can, takes some risks, treats most folks pretty well, and reaches some form of success.

But, like most tragic heroes have fatal flaws, such as disloyalty to friends, abusing employees or spouse, or letting ambition curdle into greed. In the case of the U.S., one tragic flaw was our complete disregard for the rights and interests of folks who didn’t look like us. We enslaved Blacks, exploited Browns, and arguably committed genocide against Reds. And we haven’t treated poor Whites all that well, either.

Owing largely to a naturally rich continent and a safe distance from other powers, but also to our cleverness and organizational skills, we became the most powerful nation in the world, a pleasant but unsustainable experience. Now, we’re paying the piper. Other nations are challenging our preeminence, and our own arrogance is helping them. Nonwhites are about half of us, and get to vote (pending current legislation in swing states). Our hyperpartisanship is endangering our democracy. (I recommend a short video by Adam Kinzinger’s Country1st.com.)

Mr. Trump can’t magically raise U.S. white male Christians to unfair heights, but neither can the San Francisco School Board erase the good done by Abraham Lincoln, Paul Revere, and John Muir because they were white and imperfect.

We’re a nation. We’re imperfect. Our differences are both our greatest strength and a grave danger to us.

                                                 - 30 -

 

 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 20 February, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[The Adam Kinzinger video about our situation can be viewed, I think, here. Nothing profound, perhaps; but sadly accurate.]

[Europe’s version of our problem is “The Great Replacement Theory” espoused by rightists, the idea that we white masters (and mistresses, perhaps) are being gradually replaced by “others,” largely Muslims. We European Caucasians gained preeminence partly through arms. Putin is currently reminding us of just how ugly that is. Even he will not treat Ukrainians, fellow Slavs, as badly as we treated Africans, Latin Americans, many Asians, and the Sioux, Cherokee, and Navajo who lived here before we arrived. As I mentioned recently, we invented “race” and “white supremacy” to justify enslaving other human beings; and now we’re trapped in our own bullshit.

However, there’s also a double-edge to the capitalistic free-enterprise economic system: it can aid material progress, and make some people very wealthy, but by definition it inspires a feeling that others (and the land, air, water, and wildlife) are for us to manipulate for our worldly profit. It’s not very Christian. It requires a heavy dose of caring about other people to work without creating a miserable, angry, sick, and violent underclass that makes life inconvenient for the better off. Or troubles consciences. Or revolts. The U.S. and other nations have tried, over the centuries, to find the right

balance. Maybe Capitalism is like a violent guard dog that needs to be leashed or fenced in.]

[The San Francisco Board of Education created the School Names Advisory Committee in 2018 to “engage the larger San Francisco community in a sustained discussion regarding public school names.” Instead, the panel considered existing school names and issued rulings, apparently with little input from the wider community, including students. And the very least “sin” was enough to disqualify a historical figure from being in a school’s name.

I have reservations about judging historical figures by present-day standards, partly because I suspect that in 50 or 100 years, if we still exist, a new generation will judge you and me very harshly for stuff we had no clue about or just didn’t figure we could do much about. They’ll be suffering from climate weirdness, caused or exacerbated by humans, and not only a factory owner or oil company executive will be in disgrace, but so will folks like us who knowingly kept using gas-powered automobiles more than we absolutely needed to. Or they’ll have come to respect wildlife and our environment enough to banish us from memory for our destruction of our natural world. Or something I can’t even imagine will bar us.

But I’m also aware of some pretty egregious situations, where Black kids have attended schools named for militant racist politicians who kept their states segregated long after that was illegal, or Confederate military leaders who fought to maintain slavery. White male Christian U.S. citizens may lack a full understanding of how it feels to be a Jewish kid growing up where vicious anti-Semites are respected citizens, or a Black kid going to the George Wallace Elementary School, or maybe a Sioux attending a school named for George C. Custer or Andrew Jackson. It matters; but you don’t necessarily know that if you don’t experience it or know folks who do.

To me, how to draw the lines between what statues get destroyed or banished and which don’t, or what school-name is insulting and demeaning to the schoolchildren, is a tough but necessary task. It’s difficult, or should be, to folks capable of thought and empathy.

San Francisco provided a poor example. Even the use of a word now considered “inappropriate,” was enough to get someone banned. Robert Louis Stevenson got it for using “Japanee” instead of “Japanese” to make a rhyme work in A Child’s Garden of Verses. Paul Revere got axed because the idiots read that he participated in the Penobscot Expedition, an anti-British action named after Penobscot Bay in Maine, and thought it meant he’d been part of an action to steal the lands of Penobscot tribe members. Naturalist John Muir was “Racist and responsible for theft of Native lands." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow “wrote poems & prose with stereotypes of nonwhite people.” Lincoln’s out because in these folks’ view, “the majority of his policies proved detrimental” to Native peoples. You’d think at least one of his other accomplishments might outweigh that fact. But it doesn’t. Unless . . .

Someone suggested that Malcolm X, a one-time pimp, had participated in subjugating women; but the committee ruled that his later career redeemed him. Frankly, I think both Malcolm and Abraham deserve to have schools named after them, and to be remembered, despite their flaws. So does George Washington, if I’m on the committee.

Anyway, it was sad, though the changes were rescinded. Three school-board members got recalled.]

 [Photographs © Peter Goodman]

There's No Such Thing as "Race," but Plenty of Racism

Senator Ted Cruz called President Biden’s promise to appoint a Black woman to the Supreme Court “an insult to Black women.” Mississippi’s Roger Wicker insisted Biden’s appointee will be a “beneficiary” of affirmative action. “I want a nominee who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog.” said Judiciary Committee member John Kennedy.

New Mexico recently had an independent, advisory commission on reapportioning legislative and congressional districts after the 2020 census. Many of us observed that, as usual, none of the nine members lived south of Belen. If the governor promised to appoint at least two southern New Mexicans, would that “insult” us?

These jackasses would say, “That’s different. That’s geographical, not ethnic or gender-based. Correct, but just as southern New Mexicans would bring a unique view to that commission, a Black woman brings a fresh and underrepresented perspective to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“We’re not racist,” the jackasses protest. But they never objected to Trump’s promise to name a woman to the Court. Unless they dared not say in front of wives and daughters that women were inferior, they are betraying a belief that no Black woman could measure up. How is that not racist? In any case, I’d love to put any of them in a room with Staci Abrams. She’s one of the most intelligent politicians, including all genders and ethnicities.

If these folks really believe what they’re saying, they think Blacks are simply not as intelligent (or as capable of wisdom and good judgment) as whites. This is the legacy of the “race” concept Europeans had to invent to justify enslaving Blacks in the modern world, particularly under Christianity. It has no scientific reality.

If Cruz and Wicker feel unfairly excluded, because this specific seat will not go to a fellow white man, they might consider the Blacks, Hispanics, women, Asians, and others for whom unfair exclusion has been the predominant fact of life in the United States. (I haven’t heard any female Republican U.S. Senator object.)

In fact, what these gentlemen feel is annoyance that anyone other than an extreme conservative may be appointed to the Supreme Court; that their 6-3 majority won’t grow to 7-2 this year; and that they must oppose Joe Biden’s selection on any grounds available. “Race” is always quite handy. They hold that popular views on justice, ethnic and gender equality, and women’s health choices are too dangerous to let Justices hold.

Why should Biden add a Black woman to the Court? Because he can: there are highly-qualified candidates, and there’d be more but for historical racism. Because a Black woman brings a new perspective, and experiences the other justices have not shared, and the ability to inspire a new generation, particularly young Black girls. When I was in law school, the school observed only its 25^th year anniversary of the admission of the first woman; and there were almost no female professors. A Black professor who’d gone there had plenty to say about the school’s earlier disregard for Blacks.

A recent internet meme showed our nation’s history with a long red line marking the centuries of slavery, a yellow line marking the century of segregation that followed, and a short green line marking the period from 1960 to 2020. It was sobering. I commented that the green line should have been a shade between green and yellow, because racism remains.

Cruz’s Wicker’s, and Kennedy’s recent comments are examples.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 13 February, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[It now looks possible that, as my radio colleague Walt Rubel has predicted all along, Biden’s nominee may win a handful of Republican votes. I’ve guessed that while that might happen if confirming her was going to happen anyway (that is, a party-lines 50-50 Senate vote with the vice-president breaking the tie), it wouldn’t if, at the time of the vote, the Democrats are still down a senator because of our junior senator’s stroke. (Biden has narrowed the field to three. None are ideologues, and all are qualified, and one in particular is noted for bringing folks together.) That not being too visibly progressive may win confirmation is nice; but it continues the trend that while Democrats nominate good judges who aren’t extremely progressive, the Republicans, in the Federalist Society’s pocket, nominate extremists mostly. Something seems wrong with that picture.]