Our Challenging Times

My first column written in 2022 is a chance to contemplate how we’re doing.

We still face a pandemic, a powerful internal attack on our democracy, and economic inequality that’s grown to absurd levels, while climate change looms like Death in The Seventh Seal.

Yet we’re persevering. How can we do that better?

The pandemic endangers our health and economy, as well as our mental-emotional equilibrium and our patience. The Trump-inspire attack on our democracy is the worst we’ve seen for 160 years. The violence a year ago was designed to support a coup, in which politicians would veto the electoral vote. It failed narrowly because some Republicans chose democracy over thievery. Other Republicans are changing election laws in swing states to facilitate a similar theft in 2024.

Today I’m less interested in debating details than in assessing how these and other challenges are affecting us personally, and how we can maintain our ability to communicate.

Everyone knows today’s excessive political partisanship (which has turned the pandemic into pigskin) endangers our civility, and our democracy. You can’t run a country, city, or radio station without talking AND LISTENING to each other. Economic inequality is not only bad for poor folks, and for our economy, and just-plain-wrong, it widens the chasm between people.

I’ve no answer to all that.

But let’s start by admitting we’re falling into mindless team loyalty. Let’s also admit we’ve each helped create that, or deepen it. No matter how firmly we each feel we’re on the side of Science, God, Truth, Democracy, or Justice, we’re mostly being jerks about it. We’re so determined to score political points that we don’t hear each other. Meanwhile, the pandemic-based isolation is wearing on us.

It’s easy to point out that the Trumpists’ Herculean efforts to uncover material faults in the 2020 election failed. Trump himself appears not to believe it, but rakes in huge contributions and creates great political energy by shouting “Election Steal!”

The harder part is to recall that the folks sending Trump money and praising him on the Internet are fellow human beings, fellow U.S. citizens, fellow community members; recognize that most of them love many of the same things we do, and are NOT evil; and do the hard work of ‘sussing out why our friends, neighbors, and cousins are believing such blatant lies. From the start of this sad six-year episode in our history, it’s been clear that Mr. Trump did not invent the real problems and perceived slights that groomed these folks to follow him like the Pied Piper.

Without understanding why people follow Trump, and why many believe non-Trumpists are evil, we’re lost. We can beat them, or lose to them; but we can’t erase this toxic partisanship that’s poisoning us and our well of democracy. So let’s redouble our efforts to seek out our “opponents” and hear them. Some are violent, some are racist, some are political opportunists or con artists; but most are folks just trying to survive, as we are.

I don’t belittle the danger we’re in. With encouragement from significant government officials, a violent mob forced its way into the Capitol, threatening death to political opponents, battering and even killing police, trying to overturn a presidential election. Now a significant minority of Congresspersons and right-wing opinion-makers deny it happened, blame Antifa, or suggest it was just a picnic.

That’s scary – and magnifies the importance of understanding each other.

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[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 9 January, 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 kind of wanted to avoid writing about last January 6^th, but then felt I had to. (For another perspective, from a local conservative whom I know as thoughtful and independent-minded, read Randy Lynch’s What Ever Happened to Personal Responsibility? in the Sun-News. Viewing “personal responsibility” as a key Republican value, he asks why it doesn’t apply to January 6^th.) I also felt that I wanted to not say, “Republicans bad,” but discuss, without whitewashing or exaggerating the events of a year ago, the political chasm that helped enable those events.

A subscriber, already this morning, pointed out on the S-N website that my own description of some of what happened or is going on now tended to help widen that chasm. I had regretted that, in writing the column. As I wrote to the subscriber, I found it tough to thread that needle: while I cannot excuse the conduct of Mr. Trump and other “leaders” cynically profiting from challenging the legitimacy or the 2020 vote or minimizing the events of January 6, I sympathize with many who listened to those voices, particularly some who got tricked (“I’ll be with you!” Mr. Trump shouted; and he was, in spirit, watching on TV) into criminal conduct. They should be sentenced, as I’d say of someone who committed similar acts for a cause to which I was more sympathetic; but they were gulled. I am interested in talking with more of those folks; but I can’t pretend January 6 didn’t happen, or blame it on black folks. There’s an obvious tension there. ]

[ In passing, let me than the American Association of University Women (for inviting Nan Rubin and me to brief them on what’s going on at Las Cruces Community Radio [KTAL-LP, website URL above] and promote an event, the NM Alzheimers Association’s all-day virtual caregivers’ workshop on Saturday, 29 January, which a representative of the group will discuss with us on “Speak Up, Las Cruces!” at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday the 26^th. This week’s show, 8-10 a.m. Wednesday, will feature a discussion of the state’s water situation with two excellent experts, starting at 9.]