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.
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[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.
[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.
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]
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