A QUESTION OF LITERACY & A PUZZLE OF NUMERACY

    I started out to write a blog on the annual failure of the Las Cruces Public Schools to educate most students to levels of proficiency in basic subjects.  Their scores in reading (39%) and math (22%) are well under 50%.  These results are not surprising because neither School Boards nor Superintendents nor teachers stress education and educational achievement.

Consider the LCPS Mission Statement: “The Las Cruces Public Schools provides a safe, caring, equitable, and student-centered learning environment that cultivates civic and community engagement, promotes excellence, and honors diversity.”

 

Consider the LCPS Core Values:

Be accountable for every child.
Foster growth and innovation, grounded in research and evidence.
Guide all decisions through the lens of equity, sustainability, and respect.
Commit to the inclusion and success of every student.
Maintain a safe, healthy, and caring environment.
Cultivate and maintain partnerships with parents, students, staff, and community members.

Embrace the power of collaboration.

 

Now notice that the word “education” does not appear in either statement.  The mention of a “learning environment” does not mean that learning occurs or achieves proficiency.  Disgraceful.

 

Tired of berating these LCPS self-servers, I chose to present a question of literacy and a puzzle of numeracy for the entertainment of my readers.  The answer to the first challenge depends on cultural knowledge long forgotten which sometimes underlies the familiar.  The answer to the second challenge depends on a basic fact of a simple mathematical process.  I shall provide the answers to these challenges in a future blog or, on request, by email.

 

At the lowest level, literacy is the ability to read and pronounce the words of a text, from a bumper sticker to the Bible.  Chuck Schumer, in his Antisemitism in America, tells the story of his pre-Bar Mitzvah preparation, which included enough study of Hebrew to read aloud the words of the text assigned to him for the service.  He admits to learning that much but not to knowing what the words meant.  Obviously, or not so obviously, that definition of literacy may result in attractive statistics, but not in a measure of real-world literacy.

 

Here is a simple example.  Most people know Clement Moore’s The Night before Christmas.  Or think they do.  I have asked dozens of people a simple question about it to which none yet has had an answer.  In the poem, the narrator goes to the living room, sees St. Nick, and describes him.  Then he observes, “A wink of his eye and a twist of his head / Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.”  My question is, why did the narrator have fears which these hints allayed?

 

Again, at the lowest level, numeracy is the ability to count and read numbers.  The inability to perform even simple computations is widespread, never mind those computations ever more challenging.  From a doctor’s office no less, I received the following instructions for soaking my feet for a plantar wart: “begin soaking foot in solution consisting of: One part Apple Cider Vinegar and five parts lukewarm water (20% solution).”  Wrong.  One part plus five parts are six parts, and one part is one-sixth of the solution.  One divided by six is 16.67%, not 20%.  Someone had trouble in math or chemistry or both.  Fortunately, I was not getting a prescription for internal consumption of mixed pharmaceuticals.

 

Here is a math puzzle which requires no mathematical skills beyond those at the elementary school level to solve.  A student runs low on funds and sends the following message for cash to the folks back home:

 

    S E N D

   M O R E

M O N E Y

 

How much is their child requesting?

 

(The words should line up flush right so that the letters line up: D-E-Y; N-R-E; E-O-N; S-M-O)

JUDGES VS. JUSTICE

 I had the chance to be a lawyer.  My father’s lawyer promised me, then a college sophomore, a partnership track in his niche firm as soon as I passed the state bar.  I also had the good sense not to take it.  Still, I find myself fascinated by accounts of legal cases.  I read Clarence Darrow’s Attorney for the Damned and Louis Nizer’s My Life in Court for pleasure in my college years.  I diligently read the news about important legal cases.  President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi are keeping me busy keeping up with their legal escapades and court rulings on them.  (Those interested in Trump-related cases might read Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse, Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket, and Glenn Kirschner’s Justice Matters.)

Two things jump out at me.  One, the lower the court in the federal system, the better the verdict.  District courts have done well in most cases.  Appellate courts have been a mixed bag; they have rejected some solid opinions like Judge Charles Breyer’s opinion in the California case of Trump’s use of national guard troops in Los Angeles.  The Supreme Court has disgraced the very idea of justice, its decisions often dictated by the ends desired by its conservative members and rationalized by their spurious interpretations or inane spur-of-the-moment judicial doctrines.

 

Two, the judicial custom granting deference to the president is a pernicious one.  Of course, he must be accorded some latitude because he must often determine policy or action based on a difficult judgment about what the law allows and circumstances require.  The critical word is “judgment.”  When considering the president’s policy or action, judges must consider not only the law and the circumstances, but also his judgment.  In doing so, they must consider such factors as his character, his official purposes, and his political attitudes, beliefs, conduct, and motives.  One assumption of the Constitution is that the officers of the government, including the president, act in good faith and in the national interest.  Trump’s performance challenges that assumption.  So judges must now consider his judgment before granting heretofore customary deference to the president, who remains, rhetorically and theoretically, an equal under the law.

 

Very simply, the courts at any level cannot do their job if they reflexively defer to a president who has stated that he will take retribution upon those who he believes opposed, are opposing, or will oppose him.  Or if they defer to a president who has made the Department of Justice an implement of his personal or political retribution.  Or if they defer to a president who is taking, expanding, and exercising his power over the government in defiance of the Constitution and in contempt of the courts themselves.  If they do defer, they aid and abet the presidential abuse of power.  It is no secret that President Trump and California Governor Gavin Newsom are at odds on many issues.  So when Trump unilaterally and arbitrarily determines that he must federalize the California national guard without consulting with the governor, he must be suspected of acting, not to enforce the law or protect federal personnel or facilities, but to enhance his power and score political points.  Unrestrained by law or the courts, Trump declared that he would target large cities because they were the bases of political support for Democrats.  It is not an “official” function of the president, pace SCOTUS, to use government resources to target perceived personal enemies or political opponents, whether individuals or institutions.

 

I have suspected the political tendencies of the Supreme Court for years.  Now, the present court, which includes six Catholic-born, conservative, Republican justices with anti-democratic biases, confirms my suspicions.  Their religious background inclines them (but not all Catholics) to favor centralized authority.  Their rulings have diminished the authority of Congress, which represents the people, relative to the authority of the Executive and Judicial Branches.  Their deference to the president, whom they exempted from criminal prosecution for official conduct in office, and their many reversals of precedents, which include Roe v. Wade, Chevron, show a contempt for the law, settled or not, and for prior justices no less and probably better qualified because of their relative political impartiality.  Reversing Roe v. Wade is the most damaging to individuals, and reversing Chevron is the most damaging to the country because it undermines the ability of agencies to make complex decisions based on technical expertise and puts those decisions in the hands of judges neither qualified to make them nor accountable for them.  They interpret the text of the Constitution as if its words were inkblots on a Rorschach test.

 

I have never had any respect for the Chief Justice John Roberts.  Ever since, in his Senate confirmation hearing, he offered up his view of the role of judges as just calling balls and strikes, I knew from the limitations of his metaphor that he was pretending to a judicial impartiality not his.  Umpires can favor one team or pitcher over another.  Roberts has never shown impartiality.  Yet this privileged, sheltered elitist has the presumption to ask Americans to respect his court, which discards precedents with abandon and contains at least two justices—Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—corrupted by conflicts of interest.  Courts, like fish, rot head first.

 

I do not know the history of the German courts before the advent of Adolf Hitler to the Chancellery, but I know that after it, the courts, whether already corrupt or soon corrupted, gave legal support to his regime.  I know the history the America’s federal court system will narrate a similar history of legal subversion by Republican efforts to put judges corrupted by partisanship on the courts in the federal court system for the past four decades.  The first notorious instance was President Ronald Reagan’s 1987 nomination of the extreme conservative Republican Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.  The second was President George H. W. Bush’s 1991 nomination of Thomas.  The third was President George W. Bush’s 2005 nomination of Alito.  A notorious instance was Senator Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider President Barack Obama’s 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court which McConnell held open in the hope that Trump would win the presidency and nominate a conservative Republican.

 

If democracy survives Trump 2.0 and the damage done by him and his Republican enablers, and if Democrats sweep to political power, they must undertake a Second Reconstruction.  As they oppose those now trying to destroy America’s democracy, so, when the time comes, they must punish those who tried.  Priority one must be to reform the federal judicial system and law enforcement agencies from the top down.  They must not be squeamish.  I shall not elaborate the steps to investigate and, if the evidence warrants, charge and prosecute—and, I hope, convict and incarcerate—every judge, official, staff, and agent who have tolerated, allowed, directed, or committed violations of the law or the Constitution.  Since Trump will pardon many of these people, Congress must find ways to hold them accountable.  Anything less than a vigorous cleansing and thorough reform will further contribute to the decay of, and further undermine Americans’ trust in, the legal system and the rule of law which make democracy, “with liberty and justice for all,” possible.

LCPD CHIEF STORY TELLS ONE STORY BUT NOT ANOTHER

Las Cruces had two rallies on consecutive dates, on Friday, 13 June, and Saturday, 14 June.  The first rally, attendees predominately Hispanic, protested ICE and its thuggish apprehension, disappearing, and deporting of people.  The second rally, attendees predominantly white, was a “No Kings” protest of President Trump and his administration, mainly for their immigration policy.  The first rally had no identified leader, no permit, no coordination with the LCPD; the second rally had what the first rally did not.  On Friday, police armed with rifles mounting sniper scopes were stationed on rooftops on buildings overlooking Albert Johnson Park; on Saturday, a few police officers walked around or rode by on motorcycles or in cars.

 

At the 16 June City Council Meeting, Police Chief Jeremy Story’s story was that the LCPD received threats to the Saturday rally, not to the Friday rally.  I would like him to publish those threats; having lied to me about police records, he might now be lying about threats.  He said that it would have been foolish to think that the threats to the Saturday rally might not also apply to the Friday rally.  That makes sense.  What does not make sense is having fewer police less armed and none in fixed positions for the Saturday rally, which was permitted and threatened, than for the Friday rally, which was not permitted or threatened.  Story and later Mayor Eric Enriquez stressed the difference between groups having or not having permits, but permits have nothing to do with the relative absence of police on Saturday and their obvious presence on Friday.  There are two explanations, both possible simultaneously, for the difference.  One is that the police expected trouble from Friday’s protesters, not Saturday’s—which, despite the usual denials, would support the opinion of several speakers that the difference was racist.  The other is that the police were signaling that they did not appreciate the anti-ICE position of the protesters—which would align with some speakers’ concerns about the allegiance of the police to the public.

 

Story, clarifying his words cited in the Albuquerque Journal, also said that the police on the rooftops should have kept their rifles out of sight.  The first thing to say about his comment is that it adversely reflects on LCPD training or management.  It implies that the rooftop snipers were not properly instructed or supervised for their deployment.  From the testimony of several speakers, Story’s comment tells only a small part of the problem.  They said that snipers were in tactical dress and that the rifles, presumably loaded, were aimed at the protesters, not held at the ready; they did not say, but they might have, that the rifles were liable to accidental discharge by a finger inside the trigger guard and that the bullets might have struck some protesters.  Which again raise questions about police training in the proper handling of firearms in turbulent circumstances and their concern for public safety.  Moreover, if the police were supposed to be seen, presumably as a deterrent, but their rifles were not supposed to be seen, the time for the police to recover their rifles, locate targets, aim, and fire might have been too long to do any good.  Even so, in readily imagined scenarios, police firing rifles overhead might increase the confusion and panic of the people in the crowd, presumably running to escape danger, and increase the risk of the snipers’ wounding or killing someone in the crowd.  Which again raises questions about police training in using rifles in such scenarios.

 

For all the fine, high-flown talk by Story and Enriquez about the police serving public safety, the police on Friday night were actually, not merely perceived as, a clear and present danger to public safety.  Many speakers testified that the police frightened them—evidence that public safety is not working if people fear the police.  They also objected to what they perceived as the “militarization” of the police and the “politicalization of public safety”; some questioned whether the LCPD was prone or even preparing to cooperate with federal agencies.  Instead of replying to citizen comments—such is Council’s custom—, these officials made appeals to “police patriotism” intended to disarm criticism of the police.  Story’s efforts were just pathetic pity-party stuff; after saying that many speakers despise the police, he said that the police would nevertheless continue to serve—a short variant of the old line “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”  Enriquez was worse; he recognized no concerns raised by many speakers and relied entirely on what he claimed were police intentions to ensure public safety.  In effect, his words were those of one of the police to a protester asking about their presence on Friday, “Fuck off.  Go away.”

 

Story and Enriquez revealed both Council’s callous indifference to citizen complaints and its lack of a care and its lack of a clue about what constitutes public safety and how to achieve it.    When councilors—Mattiace, Graham, Corran, Flores, Bencomo (McClure was absent)—spoke during the time reserved for their comments, only one acknowledged speakers’ feeling of fear of the police, not their feeling of greater safety.  That one was Mayor Pro Tem Bencomo, who noted the difference between what Story claimed the police intended and how they actually impacted citizens; she went on to commit to working to develop a protocol for dealing with protests—a very constructive suggestion.  (I love giving her credit, probably for the first time.)  Bottom line: Council is more dedicated to defending and serving the police who have no idea how to serve the public without scaring them half to death than it is dedicated to the public safety of the people who constitute its constituency.

 

There is a related story which Story has not told.  It is about militarizing the LCPD, thereby making it a threat to public safety, and setting itself up to be an ally of federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, DHS, FBI, BP, and ATF.  Early this year, Story requested that City Council seek half a million dollars from the state to acquire five SWAT vehicles.  The nature and size of his request prompts many questions.  Why so many?  What capabilities?  What armaments?  What purposes?  What scenarios?  I addressed some of these questions to Chief Story and got no answers.  I asked my Councilor, Cassie McClure, if she could get that information.  She sent emails to LCPD officers and got no answers.  I doubt that her requests were made in good faith because she did nothing more and did not seem disturbed that LCPD officers had not honored her requests.  When I asked her why she voted to support Story’s request, her answer was that she assumed Story had a good reason for it.  That assumption reflects her failure to exercise due diligence.  I assume that none of the other Councilors exercised due diligence on Story’s request.  I have not heard whether the state is going to fund the city’s acquisition of five SWAT vehicles, but LCPD’s possession of them is not going to make anyone in Las Cruces safer or feel safer.  I am waiting for Story to tell us another story. 

TRUMP’S HATRED OF AMERICA PROJECTED ONTO DEMOCRATS

      Many commenters have long observed that Trump projects onto others his own attitudes, beliefs, and conduct in an effort to distract from his own and to discredit others.  One notable instance is his repeated accusation that Democrats hate America.  In a normal world, so improbable an accusation would be immediately dismissed as nonsense.  In this world, it makes sense to Trump’s dedicated MAGA followers as more than a conventional effort to smear his opponents.  But Trump’s projection of twisted logic and perverse content makes the accusation persuasive to his followers.

Consider the America which Trump claims that Democrats hate and are destroying or trying to destroy.  According to 2024 U.S. census data, the population was 340 million people.  By race, whites 58.4%, Hispanic/Latino 19.5%, black 13.7%, Asian 6.4%, other 2.0%.  By sex, female 50.5%, male 49.5%.  By religion, Protestant 40%, unaffiliated 29%, Catholic 19%, Other 7%, Christian other 4%, non-responders 1%.  “We the People” are a mixed bag and will, per most projections, be a minority-majority population by 2040, when whites will be less than 50%.  These demographic statistics prove that the population is heterogeneous, not homogeneous.

 

Trump, his administration, Republicans, and MAGA supporters favor homogeneity or, at least, a white, male, Christian hegemony for America.  They have their work cut out for them, and they are working at it.  Both in speech and in action, they have embraced racist, sexist, and so-called Christian policies, and building up or tearing down programs, depending.  They seek to deport millions of Hispanics or Latinos; they are reducing the franchise and hindering voting access—actions which most affect women, minorities, seniors, and students; they are increasing public financial support to parochial Christian schools; they are attacking LGBTQ+ people.

 

By contrast, Democrats are an amalgamation of demographic groups; heterogeneity is the result, one much to their liking.  Although individual Democrats might be racist or sexist, the party itself is not.  Notably, Democrats tend to predominate in urban, especially metropolitan, areas, with their mixtures of demographic groups.  These areas attract, accept, and accommodate immigrants and support an expanded franchise and voter access.

 

Trump’s repeated charge that Democrats hate America is the highest profile instance of his projection.  From his perspective, Democrats, who like America with its demographic diversity, like what Trump and Republicans hate and fear.  They hate this diversity because they view it as corrupting or destroying an America in which white, male, Christians once fully enjoyed, now only partly enjoy, hegemony.  They fear this diversity because they view it as eroding what remains of this hegemony and replacing it with a multiethnic, multicultural society.  Trump, who pledged to be their “retribution,” links together and thus attacks Democrats, DEI, woke, and cosmopolitan lifestyles of education, arts, and sciences (e.g., NPR, NEA, NEH, NSF), and reflexively rejects truth, reason, and law.  As he hates this diversity which he associates with Democrats, so he projects that their embrace of what he hates implies that they hate America.

 

A modest digression.  Democrats are surprised that the liberal largess which constitutes their social programs—Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.—has not secured them all the votes which they think such programs should.  The implicit materialism underlying their surprise resists the empirical evidence that value-laden matters of culture, identity, and religion—the culture war issues—are important, even more important, to many people.  Which goes a long way to explain why Republicans still support Trump despite many Republican policy failures.  His Big Beautiful Bill might test the limits of their allegiance.  Still, unless and until Democrats realize that many voters vote their interests, not what Democrats think should be their interests, they will not understand and appeal to the people whose votes they need to win elections.

 

Unfortunately, this analysis does not lead to a bumper sticker or other short-form rebuttal, but it has some value.  First, it serves as an alternative to defensive, ineffective protestations that Democrats do not hate their country but love it, its flag, etc., by exposing the underlying motives of the Republican accusation.  Second, it gives Democrats a rebuttal to the insidious suggestion that, because of this accusation, they are traitors, not “real” Americans, and do not deserve the rights to which they are otherwise presumed to be entitled under the Constitution.

 

All very well and good, but, in present and likely future circumstances, rationality of this kind is not going to have much effect.  As long as Trump repeats the absurdity that Democrats hate America, it might remain an accepted cliché of political discourse. If so, it will remain a danger to democracy.  We are already seeing it as part of Trump’s rhetoric indicating his intent to send various repressive forces to major metropolitan areas—not only Los Angeles, but also New York and Chicago.  I am afraid that America is entering a period in which life, or at least political life, will become, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

 

As I have suggested in previous blogs, if there is a civil war, it will be less likely to pit armies against armies than to pit gangs against gangs and neighbors against neighbors.  Republicans will win that war; they have the non-governmental paramilitary groups and the preponderance of weapons, especially large-magazine, rapid-fire weapons.  Democrats will lose that war but lick their wounds by consoling themselves that they were right.

 

Between now and then are the scheduled 2026 elections.  I have strong doubts that they will be free and fair, and not rigged to ensure Republican wins; or, if Democratic wins seem likely, that they will occur at all.  The critical factor determining between rigged and canceled elections is the prospects of party control of Congress, especially the House of Representatives.  Currently, Republicans are making efforts across the country to control election results by gerrymandering, disenfranchising voters, intimidating voters, hindering access to voting which differentially affects some groups of the population more than others, and perverting the counting of ballots either in the states or in Congress.  If these efforts look unlikely to succeed, the Republican fallback position will be to prompt protests or disorders which Trump can call insurrections, rebellions, or whatever as justification for intervening in elections with military forces or for delaying or canceling elections.  Republicans agonize that Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill will anger not only Democrats and Independents, but also many Republicans, even MAGA Republicans; and jeopardize their re-election chances.  So they have to hope, even trust, that one or the other of these alternatives will save their seats.

 

Anything is possible when Trump can distract from his hatred of America and project it onto Democrats.  The accusation discredits Democrats, their party, and their representatives; delegitimizes their policies and legislation, and endangers the rights and the lives of Democrats.  They must combat this canard or be complicit in their defeat and the demise of democracy.

LOCAL VIPS DISLIKE ME; SO WHAT?

 The deplorable attitudes of the governing toward the governed in Las Cruces has been a theme of many of my blogs.  Whereas those blogs discussed others, this blog focuses on the contrast between responses to me by various VIPs in Las Cruces and VIPs in McLean and Fairfax County, Virginia.  The purpose of the contrast is not to elicit sympathy because local VIPs do not like or respect me, but to explain why I feel sorry for Las Cruces that its VIPs do so little to elevate the quality of the community and its political life.

Peter Goodman, blogger, local columnist, radio moderator and commentator, and pickleball player, has a certain shtick in some conversations with me.  If I tell him that some VIP does not like me, he is sure to tell me—I can only guess why—that many people do not like me.  He is right, as I know better than he, but he would be wrong to think me obtuse, oblivious, or in denial.  I just do not mind, not because I am arrogant, but because I am confident about who I am.  I am the same person here as I have been elsewhere as an activist, blogger, or columnist.  Whether I am liked or respected depends on the character of the VIPs.  Two of them surprised me by writing me in a way almost no one who has reached the age of discretion has written me.

 

One is Bobbie Green, president of the local NAACP chapter—which is odd.  She knows that I have been a lifetime NAACP member since ’68—probably longer than she has been alive—, supported her when NMSU treated her shabbily, and agree with her on police reform and other issues.  But my blog, “What Does Affirmative Action Affirm? A Personal View,” triggered her second of two vitriolic attacks though it did not criticize or even mention Green.

 

“It interviewed four women classmates, all less qualified than I, for the position” and “Few have been as well schooled as I was.” These are your words, and they wreak [sic: reek] of white privilege. While your sense of entitlement is typical, it renders you ill-equipped and unqualified to weigh in on affirmative action. The SUNY Albany English Department did its students a tremendous favor when they bypassed you.

 

I can only guess what explains Green’s ignorant and intemperate meltdown.  There is no “white privilege” which she imputes to me.  The four women are all white; knowing them, I can judge our relative qualifications.  In one of the country’s best and, even then, integrated public-school systems, I received an excellent education, not “white privilege,” not a “sense of entitlement.”  Even so, neither would prevent me from having an informed opinion about affirmative action; she simply denies the worth of my experience and reflections because they differ from hers.  I suspect that my being an old, white, male, and a Jew to boot influenced her response to my blog.  If not to vent her prejudices, I do not know what explains her response to my blog.

 

The other is Heath Haussamen, blogger.  He was triggered by my most recent blog, “Political Acquiescence Reflects New Mexico’s Historical Legacy.”

 

“Years ago you attacked me by comparing me to Hitler.  I ceased any contact with you at the time.  You recently added me to your email list a second time.  After I read this most recent, misinformed and racist email — an email that attacks my spouse, my daughter, my city, my state, and my culture — I again have no desire to be on your list.  I appreciate you removing me from it immediately.

 

Again, I can only guess at a reason for this out-of-the-blue attack about a long-ago conversation (2011) during a lunch at Giro’s.  I do not recall such a comparison; what I do recall is Haussamen making an antisemitic comment which prompted me to respond, not by comparing him to Hitler, but by identifying his comment as antisemitic and me, to his surprise, as a Jew.  The conversation ended our relationship as blog editor and contributor.  My reply to his email noted that his allegations that my blog is “misinformed and racist” are unsupported: no answer.  Neither “misinformed” nor “racist,” it discusses historical and cultural influences on society.  I added that, to be racist, it would have to state or imply that one group is inherently superior to another as a matter of character, intelligence, or morals; it does not.  His comment that I attack “my spouse, my daughter”—how?—, “my city, my state, and my culture” (emphasis mine) implies that I, known by him to be a Jew, am an unassimilated alien who does not share city, state, or culture with him.  I queried him with a simple “why”: no answer.

 

What did Green and Haussamen want their emails to achieve with their emails?  Hurt my feelings?  Cancel my views?  Did they think that attacking me instead of addressing my opinions would change my mind?  Their only messages to me are that they dislike me bigly and think themselves important enough that I would care.

 

Imagine how much more the members of past and present City Councils and other city officials must dislike me and, from their perspective, for good reasons.  A recent blog identifying and criticizing councilors for their despicable remarks about citizens petitioning for a referendum on the “Realize Las Cruces” rezoning plan must have raised hackles.  Previous blogs and speeches criticized Council for ignoring large-scale waste in Public Works operations at Brown Farm, doing nothing to address police misconduct and reform the LCPD, and operating a secret committee in defiance of the Open Meetings Act.  I also won an IPRA case against the city which cost it about $150,000 before I filed a complaint with the New Mexico Department of Justice for its OMA violations (investigation ongoing).  I have criticized Councils; Mayors Ken Miyagishima and Eric Enriquez; and Councilors Tessa Abeyta, Johana Bencomo, Becky Corran, Kasandra Gandara, Becki Graham, and Cassie McClure (in addition to City Managers, City Attorneys, and Police Chiefs).  I have never criticized Bill Mattiace, but he no longer responds to my occasional email.  Unlike Green and Haussamen, all others are too savvy to write to reveal their true thoughts and feelings about me.  But their vibes have made clear their resentment and their hostility to me because of my speaking my truth to their power.

 

Their responses differ from those of VIPs in McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia, where I lived for 23 years.  The residents of both city and county adjacent to the District of Columbia are highly educated, very articulate professionals in government, industry, and business; many are officials or activists in local affairs.  Differences of informed opinion in smart discussions are common.  Local governing bodies encourage citizen participation and are responsive to citizens.

 

While I lived there, I was a guest columnist and civic activist frequently writing about or speaking before the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and the Fairfax County School Board.  I was more often critical than commendatory of proposed or on-going programs or budgets; I did not often need to address successful programs or prudent budgets.  My criticism of the school district’s computer program and budget led to my appointment to a committee to overhaul them; I devised their restructuring and was credited with saving the district $15 million.  My continued criticism of the district’s initially popular merit-pay program from its inception led eventually to its termination.  Yet even those whose feet I had held to the fire were among those electing me to the Fairfax Committee of One Hundred, a social honorary for VIPs in civic affairs.

 

So like me, dislike me—reactions of Las Cruces VIPs and McLean or Fairfax County VIPs to me or my criticisms reflect on their character and the communities which they represent.  Which makes me a kind of touchstone of local government.  Where they dislike me, they dislike others, and indulge and act on personal or self-serving political motives; where they respect me, they respect others and serve public interests.  Indeed, what I have been able to do elsewhere is what citizens can do here if local VIPs deflated their egos, governed themselves, respected their constituents, and created conditions for their contributions.

 

The president of a company for which I was a consultant for 21 years operated on the belief that “all of us are smarter than some of us.”  That inclusivity made the company a national treasure, and that belief, if acted upon, might do much to improve Las Cruces, a city very much in need of improvement.

REFLECTIONS ON RECENT AND NEAR-TERM POLITICAL EVENTS

The past few days have been quite remarkable, among the most portentous in American history.

 

President Trump has resorted to federalizing a state national guard over the objections of California Governor Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.  Doubling down on Trump’s uncalled-for action, Defense Secretary Hegseth has sent a Marine battalion from its 29 Palms base.  They are doing two things in Los Angeles: almost nothing because there is almost nothing for them to do and inflaming the situation.  This military incursion into America’s second largest city sends a message to the rest of the country—Trump’s order is not limited to California—that militarized occupation and political repression are coming for majority-Democratic cities (mostly in the North).  America has seen nothing like this since the Reconstruction Era for two decades after the Civil War.  During that period, northern armies served to protect those working to promote democratic government and incorporate freed blacks into it, from guerilla groups, including the Ku Klux Klan.  Now, 160 years later, the “South” is rising again.

 

Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., is unprecedented.  There have been both major and minor military parades before, after the conclusion of major wars, in honor of local military events, or in tribute to veterans.  I know of none which involved a display of massive weapons like tanks.  The parade occurs on Flag Day, on the 250^th anniversary of the U.S. Army, and on Trump’s 79^th birthday.  He has made it clear that no one will be allowed to spoil his parade by protesting him, its militaristic message, its multi-million-dollar cost, and its damage to roads and malls.  Indeed, he has threatened protesters, peaceful or not, with a very forceful response.  No TACO moment: the military will inflict injuries or fatalities on protesters.

 

The violation of protesters’ First Amendment rights to speak and assemble in such a situation will raise difficult questions with undemocratic answers.  Thanks to the Supreme Court, Trump cannot be charged because he has immunity from his “official” acts.  A claim can be made that presiding over a parade is not an official act within the scope of presidential responsibilities, but it is not likely to be persuasive to the six Republican regressive justices.  Moreover, Trump would likely pardon those charged for constitutional violations.  Given his displays of disrespect for the courts and his resistance to court orders, Trump is likely to disregard court decisions not to his liking.  Courts might issue legal or constitutional rulings to restrain him, but to no avail; fine opinions, except for the record, will be ignored.  Although the six GOP SCOTUS justices, especially Chief Justice John Roberts, corrupted the court to achieve “conservative” objectives, Trump’s public contempt will still dishonor it and thereby humiliate these feckless justices.

 

Many hope that the elections of 2026 and 2028 will enable the country to recover from the ruination which Trump has visited upon it.  But there will be no elections.  Trump knows that his policies have made him far more unpopular than he has ever been, that the opposition to him is growing is size and intensity, and that he has endangered the strength, perhaps even the survival, of the Republican Party.  His increasingly authoritarian conduct can mean only one thing: he and the party cannot remain in power after another election or two.  Current Republican efforts to disenfranchise or hinder voters will continue, but he and the party will hold the cancellation of the election in reserve if those efforts do not give them assurance of electoral success.

 

I offer this advice to all as a public service announcement.

IMMIGRANTS ARE THE NEW JEWS

During the Tsarist-prompted pogroms in the late nineteenth century, District police came into a small village to find and arrest Jews.  This small village (I have forgotten its name) was a farming village with a general store run by and lived in by its only Jewish family.  The store sold groceries, clothing, supplies, hardware, etc.; the owner also provided credit to the residents in hard times.  When the police whisked them away, the town was stricken.  The mayor and other town officials decided to go to the district headquarters some distance away to plead for the family’s return.  In so many words, the mayor said, “we don’t like Jews any more than the Tsar does, but they are our Jews, and we want them back.”  The police released them, everyone returned to the village, and the villagers celebrated.

 

The story is not typical of the Tsarist campaign against Jewish Russians.  Several hundred thousand Jews fled Russia.  In doing so, they gave substance to the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland.  One result, until recent abominations under Benjamin Netanyahu’s rule, was that these immigrants to the British Mandate (i.e., Palestine), created a thriving, modern state now with an educated and skilled populace, and an economy based on cutting-edge technologies.  Meanwhile, Russia languishes in a past which is always its present: a despotic state, a repressed people, a weak economy, and a reliance on aggression to unify its demoralized population.

 

Thirty years or so later, Hitler exploited the latent antisemitism of most Germans.  He roused the populace by blaming Jews for Germany’s defeat and post-war suffering, the weakness of the Weimar Republic, and the “cosmopolitizing” of Germany.  Although Jews had been residents of German lands for centuries and had been full citizens of the modern German state when its lands were unified in 1871, Hitler roused and made virulent the latent antisemitism of Christian Germans and turned them against Jewish Germans.  By then, Jews had established themselves in the legal and medical professions and the universities.  Many of Germany’s brightest scientists, including Han Bethe, Max Born, Albert Einstein, James Franck, Klaus Fuchs, Fritz Haber, Hans Krebs, John von Neuman, Rudolf Peierls, Erwin Schrodinger, Leo Szilard, Edward Teller were Jews (names italicized).  Had Hitler not attacked the Jews, many of these scientists would have helped Germany develop the atomic bomb which they helped develop for the United States.

 

For Trump, immigrants—he thinks mostly of Hispanics--serve much the same purpose.  He regards them variously as criminals, degenerates, lunatics, animals, and pollutants to American blood (shades of Dr. Strangelove), and claims that they are invading this country, swarming through cities, and eating peoples’ pets.  His purpose is to set immigrants with or without criminal records, with or without documentation, apart from other residents, as outcasts who should be deported, as unpersons (the German word was “untermenschen”) who do not have constitutional rights like due process, free speech, assembly, and petition.  To deport them, he uses state power to arrest in violent ways and “disappear” those who appear to be immigrants regardless of their legal status; separate them from their families, and children from their parents; transport them to places unknown to them; isolate and incarcerate them under inhumane conditions; and deny them access to attorneys.  All of these actions are conducted quite openly, first, to intimidate potential victims and, second, to inure and secure acceptance by others to such abuses of the law and the Constitution.  The last thing which Trump wants is for the country to welcome, accept, advance, and benefit from immigrants and their contributions.  Why?  They defeat his desire for a white, Christian, male-dominated America.

 

But immigrants are not Trump’s only targets for purging from the populace those whom he regards as undesirable.  A special notice must be taken of the LGBTQ+ people, whom Trump is also targeting (as Hitler targeted them in Nazi Germany).  And there are many others: Muslims, Sikhs, those of other smaller minority groups, and, of course, Jews.  Trump also wishes to debase those whom he cannot incarcerate or deport, like women, whose integrity and autonomy he wishes to end, whose participation in society he wishes to throttle, and whose vote he wishes to eliminate.  By requiring an exact match of current and birth certificate names, the SAVE Act might disenfranchise married women who took their husband’s name.

 

Such is the context of the raids and kidnappings by DHS, FBI, and ICE agents happening from coast to coast.  All are thugs, masked, heavily armed, and aggressive; they are provocateurs who intend to prompt violence and permit their greater reactive violence, justify criminal charges, and terrorize communities into acquiescence.  (I would like to have a bumper sticker which reads, “Melt ICE.).  These agencies are also securing the support of state and local police forces.  Two interesting questions about the LCPD are why a recent (30 May) Albuquerque Journal story about sanctuary cities in New Mexico did not mention Las Cruces and why Police Chief Jeremy Story requested City Council to seek state funding for five—five!—SWAT vehicles.  (I asked him about their capabilities and equipment, but received no answer.  When Cassie McClure asked for that information on my behalf, she received no answer—itself a curious fact.  When I asked her why she voted to approve his request, her answer was that she accepted that he must have had a good reason for it.  Due diligence, anyone?)

 

One line of resistance to Trump (and his evil angel, Stephen Miller, ironically, a Jew) is respect for others and a recognition that, as Joyce Vance reminds us, “we’re in this together.”  So the words of Martin Niemöller are worth recalling:

 

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Substitute “immigrants” for “socialists” and “LGBTW+” for “trade unionists,” and you have a message updated to match the current threat to American democracy and freedom.

POLITICAL ACQUIESCENCE REFLECTS NEW MEXICO’S HISTORICAL LEGACY

      The longer I live in Las Cruces (since 2007), the more dismayed I am by the conduct of its residents and their elected representatives.  These residents’ primary interests—family, friends, and football—are divorced from larger concerns about the community or city and thus give members of City Council the latitude to do as they please.  Knowing the historical context of this conduct, I should not be dismayed.  For this social solipsism goes back at least as far as the pueblo days, when each pueblo lived independently of others.  As a result, they did not band together to resist the Spanish conquistadors in the sixteenth century.  Decades later, they did unite in the successful Pueblo Revolt of 1680, but, by 1692, only twelve years later, they had dissolved their bands of unity.  Spanish armies returned and repressed Pueblo residents to a submissiveness ever after a part of their cultural heritage and of New Mexico’s.  It paralleled the submissiveness which characterized the underclasses of Spanish society at the time.  Such is the historical legacy of today’s Hispanics who constitute the majority of the Las Cruces populace and about half the population of New Mexico.  It is also a major cultural influence affecting non-Hispanics throughout the state, in which acquiescence to dominating officials is characteristic.

Thus, in Las Cruces, the police murders of Antonio Valenzuela (2020), Amelia Baca (2022), and Teresa Gomez (2023) failed to arouse this majority of residents.  After a few brief flurries of protest, the only citizens attempting to hold LCPD police accountable were Peter Goodman (white), Bobbie Green (black), and Earl Nissen (white).  Their approach was to seek reforms by meetings with the mayor, city councilors, and the police chief—to no avail.  Meanwhile, I had offered unwanted advice: seek the support of local organizations which presumably have an interest in the good of the city.  They ignored my advice perhaps because they knew better than I that those organizations would not be interested or able to rally their members to lobby City Council for a citizens’ police review board.

 

Of the three murders, Officer Jared Cosper’s particularly outrageous murder of Baca failed to prompt large and sustained protests against the efforts of law enforcement officials to do everything they could—and succeeded in doing—to clear Cosper of murder.  Instead, it elicited only a muted public reaction.  Yet protests other than transitory virtue-signaling demonstrations might have prevented these officials, who resist accountability, from rigging his exoneration.  LCPD Police Chief Miguel Dominguez delayed an account of the murder for about a week, during which time he devised a highly biased audio-visual defense of Cosper.  Presumably clearing Cosper, the Multi-Agency Task Force report to Dona Ana District Attorney General Gerald Byers caused him enough political discomfort that, though having promised a decision to prosecute or not in a few days, he turned the case over to New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez.  In turn, Torrez hired Steve Ijames, “a nationally recognized expert in the field of police officer use of force, who has reviewed approximately 3,000 use-of-force cases,” to investigate the murder and clear Cosper.  The NMDOJ report omitted Ijames’s record; about ninety percent of his work had been testifying as an expert for the defense of officers accused of excessive use of force.  His report resembles Swiss cheese but served well enough as a document passing the “thud test” to everyone who wanted the case to go away without further embarrassment.  Not a peep from the Hispanic or Progressive communities.

 

Not only are Progressives silent and restrained about such offenses, but also their representatives on City Council commit lesser offenses against citizens.  At the 27 February Progressive Voters Alliance (PVA) meeting, Councilor Cassie McClure termed those opposing Realize Las Cruces as “riff-raff.”  No one present objected to this slur on citizens petitioning government and exercising free speech, and the PVA minutes elide this unsavory language.  But the word got around.  One speaker at the 3 March City Council Meeting identified herself as one of McClure’s “riff-raff”; McClure looked uneasy, but, when she had the chance to deny using the term imputed to her, she said nothing .  As I have blogged, several Progressive councilors at the 19 May City Council meeting accused opponents of Realize Las Cruces of misrepresentations, lies, and fear-mongering; Councilor Johana Bencomo went farther to insinuate that opponents were racists.  Again, no one present, either in Council or in the audience, spoke up to protest these evidence-free accusations or slurs.  (Years earlier, under the Mafia-like practice of omerta, no councilor discussed or questioned my claim of antisemitism in the LCPD—a showing of their own antisemitism.)

 

Between the lethargy of citizens and the disdain of officials for them, it is no surprise that governance in New Mexico is incapable of effectively addressing the state’s problems.  The result: in many domains of public affairs—childcare, crime, education, economy, health care, homelessness, poverty—, New Mexico remains ranked at or near the bottom of the best or the top of the worst.  As long as New Mexicans choose to be apathetic, disaggregated, disgruntled, resentful, yet silent and compliant, so long their discontents will go unaddressed by officials except by performance posturing or pontificating.  The less things change, the less they will change.  Perhaps, it having been this way for centuries, they are content with their discontents.  As an outsider, perhaps also I should not give a damn and just pipe down.  Not likely.