SCHOLARLY EXPLORATIONS AND DISCOVERIES IN SHAKESPEARE

 [Note: This blog is a change from recent blogs on bad news at the federal and local levels, a change which I imagine many of my readers will appreciate.  However, it might not be the change which they would want; it requires some familiarity with two of Shakespeare’s major tragedies, Macbeth and King Lear, and some interest in scholarship and its importance.  I take the risk of losing many readers because I also needed a change and thus resorted to subjects which have engaged me for years.] 

Recently, a friend of mine expressed horrified incredulity that anyone—of course, she meant me—would be a Shakespeare scholar.  I was so surprised that I stammered an answer which I cannot now remember.  We went back to watching a men’s college basketball game and our drinks.  Afterwards, I pondered what sensible response I could make to the many people who scorn researching, writing, and publishing articles and books on sometimes arcane or trivial literary topics as far removed from the world of consequential events.

 

There are two main replies to my friend’s horrified incredulity.  First, if not an academic, a Shakespeare scholar is simply a hobbyist, like a gardener, a quilter, a stamp collector, a participant in battlefield reenactments, anyone who finds inherent interest in his pastime.  As an independent scholar, I enjoyed Shakespeare’s plays, read them with an eye to what other scholars had ignored or overlooked, and liked asking questions and answering them for myself and others.  One “discovery” of mine, to be discussed below, is “godsonne,” a word appearing only once in Shakespeare’s works.  In the many editions which I have consulted, no editor (and no scholar or critic—I use the words interchangeably) comments on this unique occurrence.  But Shakespeare must have meant something by it in King Lear.

 

Second, a Shakespeare scholar can be one committed to advancing human understanding and cultural enlightenment.  Addressing the foremost literary writer in western civilization can—and, I think, should—be a moral undertaking with both aesthetic and ethical ends.  Literary criticism of Shakespeare’s plays should be a cogent exposition of what is artful and insightful in his representation of a selection of the human experience, with the aim of developing a reader’s sympathy with, if not acceptance of, people unlike themselves in societies and cultures which might be unlike their own.  In a world shrunk by technologies of communications and transportation, the success of scholarship to these ends is not a negligible contribution to humankind.  I offer some of my scholarly works as examples of either the hobbyist or the aesthetic and ethical impulses of my Shakespearean scholarship.

 

Three of my publications are those of the hobbyist.  They address issues arising in the peculiarities of an unusual Elizabethan dramatic manuscript known as The Book of Sir Thomas More, three pages of which some attribute to Shakespeare.  One is a note which attempts to sort the loose manuscript pages into the order of composition and only indirectly concerns any role which Shakespeare might have had in the play, which, by the way, was never performed.  The attempt required a careful study of the watermarks and chain lines of the folio pages—nothing hair-raising about that research or its results.

 

The other two are articles, 40 years apart, which address the handwriting of those three pages.  Both articles are part of an intense scholarly debate with high stakes in a small field.  The debate is between traditional scholars and Anti-Stratfordians, who believe in Anyone But Shakespeare as the author of the plays conventionally attributed to him.  ABS types have offered more than 80 alternatives!  Whether Shakespeare’s handwriting appears in these three pages is critical.  Traditional scholars argue that the handwriting is his—which proves that Shakespeare authored the plays attributed to him—, and ABSers deny it and thus leave room to deny his authorship.  My position is a lonely one between the two sides.  My 1975 article challenged traditional scholars’ attribution to Shakespeare by arguing that there is no basis for comparing the handwriting of Shakespeare’s six signatures and the handwriting in the three manuscript pages.  Traditionalists take less comfort from my article than ABSers do, both sides regard it as sine qua non in the field.  Then, 15 years later, my article was itself tacitly challenged by a distinguished paleographer at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.  Circumstances kept me from reading his article for 25 years; when I did, it appalled me.  I reacted by writing a comprehensive refutation of old arguments reiterated and of new arguments reflecting sophistry, both kinds accepted by the unwary or unwise.  Pointedly, the editor of the Shakespeare Quarterly, a Folger Library publication, placed it first in the 2016 summer issue.  I am proud of both articles, but neither is going to enlarge or enhance anyone’s appreciation of humankind.  They do, however, disabuse scholars of an untenable approach to the authorship question.  It is my belief that there is enough strong evidence for the traditional attribution that it need not rely on—indeed, is weakened by—spurious arguments to prop it up.  They also spoil the fun or dissipate the profit of the worst kind of pedant who proliferates quibbles for publications; one actually criticized me for my scrupulous attention to fact.

 

Aside from a few articles which directly address challenges to Shakespeare’s authorship, most of my other articles and my one book, Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance, address issues about the meaning of some of his plays.  My scholarship rests on an approach which has been out of fashion—indeed, distinctively unfashionable—for half a century.  Instead of interpreting his plays for relevancy in terms of race, gender, and class, I avoid ulterior motives by relying on a literary tradition still popular in Shakespeare’s time: English chivalric romance.  Its motifs serve as a language to convey meaning.  Reviews of my book grudgingly acknowledge the merit of its interpretations but criticize them for not following current critical fashion.  Not blinded by fashion, but following evidence in the texts as a scholar should, I made discoveries which support my innovative interpretations.  I offer two examples, one from Macbeth, the other from King Lear.

 

Heretofore, all scholars of Macbeth have regarded the long scene between Malcolm and Macduff as irrelevant to the play except as didactic discourse on the ideal king, a pause before the rapid action of the final act, or padding for an already short play.  This criticism struck me as impertinent.  I did not believe that Shakespeare devoted over a tenth of his shortest tragedy to an unimportant scene since length is a sign of importance.  Concurrently, scholars have found Malcolm to be “a milksop” or a “voice” of political platitudes.  Yet, when he first appears, probably in battered armor, he credits the sergeant who fought against his captivity as he fought at great risk against rebels.  Later, when he meets with Macduff in the English Court, he utters lines overlooked by these critics; he claims that he would “tread upon the tyrant’s [Macbeth’s] head,/Or wear it on my sword”—claims implying his ability to defeat Macbeth in combat and which Macduff silently accepts as plausible.  Much is at stake in this scene.  It is the turning point in the exile-and-return motif of chivalric romances in which the legitimate heir proves his worth to succeed a dispossessed father.  Malcolm’s test of Macduff’s loyalty is really a test of Malcolm’s acumen in ascertaining the reality of loyalty beneath the appearance of it, a test necessary to demonstrate his superiority to his father, who lacked such insight.  Malcolm succeeds and prevents the prospect, had he failed, of history repeating the past, of a treacherous thane overthrowing a legitimate king.  The scene also dramatizes the struggles of two worthy men deeply concerned about the welfare of their country but suspicious of each other to find ways to overcome their distrust.  Not to recognize Malcolm’s complete success is to undermine his triumphant ascendancy and to insinuate that the kingship remains vulnerable to betrayal.  The difference between these competing views of the play is the difference between Shakespeare’s affirmation of the succession of kings leading to James I and modern cynicism about political success.

 

Return we now, in a round-about way, to “godsonne.”  Such a cynicism taints most interpretations of the end of King Lear, which most scholars view as dominated by the pathos of Lear’s death with his dead daughter in his arms and the apparent nihilism of it all.  My scholarly approach does not dismiss the power of his grief, but it does dismiss the idea of nihilism.  The last scene has much more to it than his agony and nothingness.  Even in his grief, Lear, said not to know himself, reveals in a moment of triumph an important part of his personal identity and establishes the terms of recovery and restoration of the kingdom.  That much more is the clustering of motifs from chivalric romance which lead to the recovery and restoration of right rule in England from the forces led by Edmund, Goneril, and Regan.

 

At its beginning, the play establishes two plots involving fathers and their children: Lear with Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia; Gloucester with Edmund and Edgar.  The older children are villains who undermine the younger sibling.  Critics note the parallels between the two plots but discount Edgar because his platitudes make him appear to be someone not to be taken seriously.  So they ignore the decisive fight between the two brothers.  Appearing as an unknown knight—the scene makes much of his concealed identity—, Edgar defeats Edmund.  By doing so in single combat, Edgar establishes his identity as a family member and settles issues of governance between rivals to power—all according to chivalric romance motifs.

 

Then Lear, sent for as an afterthought, enters, howling in grief.  He claims he might have saved Cordelia, but the only justice he could attain was to kill the man who hanged her.  When an attendant vouches that he did so, Lear speaks up with pride: “Did I not, fellow?/I have seen the day, with my good biting falchion [a machete-like sword often curved]/I would have made him skip”—thus identifying himself in his youth as a knight.  Scholars have ignored Lear’s self-identification and Edgar’s knightly performance: Lear a knight, Edgar a knight, both bound by the moral and religious guidance of godfather to “godsonne.”  Edgar’s succession to the throne vanquishes the idea of nihilism and promises better rule for England.

 

I need not claim that my scholarship is impeccable and my interpretations infallible.  I need claim only that nothing discussed above justifies horrified incredulity.  What has been gained by my scholarship?  Something, but nothing earth-shattering.  A better understanding of two of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.  An appreciation of a contemporary perspective from contemporary cultural materials—a start to understanding others, not contemplating ourselves in our parochial terms.  I am a small-d democrat, but I can admit that Macbeth and King Lear demonstrate that, in specific times and places, reasonable people can respect, even revere, monarchy.  I know that I can live in a world with democracies and monarchies if their people accept them.

STATE OF THE LAS CRUCES PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND TWO SUGGESTIONS

      In May, Superintendent Ignacio Ruiz delivered an end-of-the-year State-of-the-District address.  I have not heard or read it, but I have no doubt that it pleased everyone.  I imagine it to run along the lines of, every day, in every way, the District is doing better and better.  In response to my recent speech to the School Board and my follow-up blog, senior District personnel have invited me to make my suggestions for improvement.

Just to be clear, I preface my suggestions with remarks which will provoke the Pollyannas in the community.  I do not hold or seek office, so I do not have to placate the perpetrators and before- and after-the-fact accessories about the District’s performance.  I speak my truth to their power and leave it to the District to respond constructively.

 

In the college grading system of yesteryear, 60 was the threshold between a passing and a failing grade.  Against that standard, the District’s continued record of student performance, with 4^th-grade proficiency percentages of 33% to 44% in reading and 22% in math, can be regarded only as a failure, indeed, as a really bad failure.  Continued official denial will not lead to anything better.  This failure clearly implies the failure of elementary school teachers to teach reading and math.  (I know that not all teachers are failures; I know that exceptions prove the rule.  And, if most were good, why are most results bad?)  There are many reasons for their failure—ignorance or incompetence in the subjects taught, lack of confidence in themselves, and lack of commitment to educating students—and many excuses to cover their deficiencies: poverty, hunger, abuse parents, broken homes, yada, yada, yada—and low salaries (apparently, Senator Bill Soules cannot raise them fast enough).

 

But as the educational revival of former state competitors for the worst education system shows, these excuses are just that—excuses.  Mississippi, flanked by Alabama and Louisiana, are now doing a better job of educating their students than some states thought to lead in public education.  According to Nicholas Kristof, “These Three Red States Are the Best Hope in Schooling” (New York Times, 9 Feb 2026),

 

• Once an educational laughingstock, Mississippi now ranks ninth in the country in fourth-grade reading levels — and after adjusting for demographics such as poverty and race, Mississippi ranks No. 1, while Louisiana ranks No. 2, according to calculations by the Urban Institute. Using the same demographic adjustment, Mississippi also ranks No. 1 in America in both fourth-grade and eighth-grade math.
• Black fourth graders in Mississippi are on average better readers than those in Massachusetts, which is often thought to have the best public school system in the country (and one that spends twice as much per pupil).

 

And New Mexico: still last and doing its best to stay so.

 

*      *      *

 

I make two low- or no cost proposals to address two problems:

 

Truancy.  Truants learn nothing when they are absent from school, and the schools do not get revenues based on their attendance.  Everyone loses.  The District has programs which attempt to persuade students and their parents to ensure attendance, but they have had only modest success.  One additional means to improve attendance is the use of the state’s truancy law.  This law should be used only as a last resort, but the threat of using it may be sufficient in many cases.  Given the context of ICE’s and CBP’s violently inclined personnel, truant officers should dress and act in a completely non-threatening manner, and give assurances to make no reports to federal agencies.  To this end, the District should work with the City, including the police department, to develop an effective counter-truancy program.  The point of using the truancy law is twofold: one, reduce or end truancy; and, two, make clear that the District is committed to public education and its importance to students.

 

Teacher Preparation.  In this broad topic, which abuts others related to it, I focus on only NMSU’s School of Education (SOE).  I assume that it is staffed by the well-intentioned.  But I know that its good intentions, possibly well described as according with the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI: which a blog of mine has strongly endorsed) and evident in teaching methods, have little or nothing to do with ensuring that SOE graduates, especially the many prospective elementary school (ES) teachers, are competent to teach the subjects required at grade level.  Most elect an English and take the same two English writing courses required of all NMSU students.  But that 100- and 200-level course sequence is about college writing; it has nothing to do with the fundamentals of English which ES teachers need simply to comply even with the woefully inadequate state curriculum.  To correct this dereliction of (what should be) SOE’s duty, the District should enlist the support of Senator Bill Soules and the Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce to get NMSU’s SOE to develop courses the content of which prepares its students to teach the subjects for which they will be responsible to teach.  (It would be entirely appropriate for ES teachers to take a course which ensures mastery of grammar.  As Superintendents Rounds and Trujillo admitted to me, ES teachers do not know grammar; obviously they cannot teach even the bare minimum which the state curriculum requires.  Not that either enforced requirements or cared about ES incompetence.)

 

Another suggestion, one not related to academic performance, is the restoration of parental and community involvement in District governance.  Before Maria Flores and Stan Rounds secured passage of a District rule eliminating standing committees, the School Board had a few such committees.  The current Board should establish a handful of committees—examples only: budget, library, health, transportation, athletics—with meaningful work to do and the right to present annual reports directly to the public.  Not only would such committees provide a useful “second opinion” to the Board, but also they would involve the community in the schools and educate citizens, some of whom would run as informed but independent candidates without the predispositions of former teachers.  Public education cannot be public if it is a closed shop.

NOTHING GOOD CAN COME FROM FORGIVENESS OF ANTI-DEMOCRACY AMERICANS

On 9 April 1965, General Ulysses S. Grant generously allowed the surrendering soldiers of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia to retain their firearms and their horses.  In return, when they and other defeated rebels returned home, they adopted means to resist the freedom of former slaves.  Later that year, they formed the Ku Klux Klan, which is known for  lynchings, killings, and firebombings; targets were blacks, Catholics, and Jews.  Bigots were not exclusive to Dixie, which included Texas, but most of its white population were racial and religious bigots.  Before and after the Civil War, poor whites left the South for the Pacific Northwest.  One result of this demographic metastasis is proto-fascist groups (e.g., Aryan Nation) mainly in northern Idaho, eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and northern California.  (In northern California, the separatist movement to create the state of Jefferson derives its name from Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, not Thomas Jefferson, author of the phrase “all men are created equal” and the US third president.). During the Great Depression, blacks and whites moved north for jobs in the industrial cities in Pennsylvania and in the Upper Midwestern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan.

 

Another result of Dixie’s sustained racism was shifts in southern political allegiances.  After the Civil War, blacks aligned with the anti-slavery Republican Party; whites, with the anti-reconstructionist Democratic Party.  But, a century later, when the national Democratic Party, with support from some northern Republicans, passed the various civil rights laws in the mid-1960s, this political orientation reversed.  Blacks transferred to the Democratic Party, and white racists switched to and were welcomed by the Republicans.  In his 1968 and 1972 campaigns for the presidency, Richard Nixon adopted a “southern strategy” to win their votes.  Today, the Republican Party is indelibly biased against people not white and Christian (Jews get a pass for the time being).  Trump has unabashedly encouraged bigotry against people of color, non-Christians (mainly Muslims), women, and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, asexual, etc.  During his two administrations, Congressional Republicans have endorsed Trump and his administration’s assault on democratic norms and principles, the Constitution, and the rule of law.  Most of them are not the cowards whom Democrats take them for.  If they were, they would be leaving Congress in even larger numbers, but most remain.  Although many find Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and others offensive, most do not find their policies, practices, and prejudices contrary to their own and to their desires for total political control.  Much the same might be said of Trump’s MAGA followers, though they are far more receptive to his vulgarity, vitriol, and violence.

 

When Trump dies in office or otherwise finally leaves it, this rump of unregenerate enemies of democracy will remain.  His 77.3 million voters and probably that many more in favor of him constitute a considerable portion—probably about 40%—of  the population and the electorate.  Political troglodytes on social media and in the ranks of billionaires will continue to rouse these political regressives throughout the country.  They live everywhere among us, in neighborhoods and families.  So the question is: if the country is not to remain perpetually vulnerable to fascist subversion and domination, what to do?

 

My question, what to do, is a difficult one, and I lay no claim to the only or the best answer.  Mine begins with distinguishing between two groups.  One is the group of Republican officials who have served Trump and his administration; the other is the group of MAGA or low-information, low-intelligence, or little-interested followers with various inane reasons or none at all for following Trump.  I am sure that, after a “blue wave” defeat, the members of both groups will remain aggrieved and will be sullen, hostile, or vengeful.

 

A restored democratic government seeking to recover from the effects of a dozen years of Republican misrule must seek total transparency about what happened, must insist upon the maximum accountability, and must take steps to prevent a recurrence.  All three options must lead to the political neutralization of those who served Trump and his administration, whether in or allied with it.  First, the government must vigorously prosecute all officials and their staffs who can be charged with federal or state crimes; it must not accept any plea agreements which would eliminate incarceration after conviction.  (If the little fish want to go to jail and not testify against the big fish who will scorn them as suckers, let them.)  The government must seek the disbarment of every lawyer who signed or supported government misconduct.  Second, the government must discharge or bar from government employment all DHS, ICE, CBP, DOJ, and FBI personnel who have acted in immigration or law enforcement operations.  They must be banished, directly or indirectly through private employers, from government contracts.  Third, all private prisons or privately-run facilities holding federal detainees for deportation, and their personnel, from CEO’s to administrators, must be aggressively investigated, maximally charged, vigorously prosecuted, with plea deals or settlements ruled out, and banned from any government contracts.

 

Simultaneously, the government must address the fact that Trump’s supporters tolerate, favor, or embrace both fascist beliefs and behavior, and, underlying both, bigotry about the superiority of some group of people over other groups: whites over people of color, Christians over Muslims and Jews, men over women, straights over LGBTQQA+, etc.  The government must also understand that their bigotry reflects, not a lack of information, but a personal need to believe themselves superior to others.  They may have any amount of information about others but believe others morally inferior.  The government might try persuasion by public programs which question why they think themselves superior to others because they are white or male or Christian, why being white or male or Christian is the basis of superiority; and, without assuming its superiority, why Christianity is superior to other religions.  In that effort, it must restore DEI policies and programs.

 

But government cannot do everything; indeed, it cannot do most of what needs to be done.  Decent, democratically inclined citizens must do their part in their everyday interactions with Trump supporters.  Their interactions will require moral courage to overcome their reluctance to dispute their political opinions and disapprove of their prejudices.  Politics aside, many of Trump’s supporters are nice people.  But decent people must question just how nice these go-alongs with Republican officials are.  After all, they tolerated, approved, or enabled efforts to curtail or eliminate everyone’s constitutional rights; to tell everyone what to read or not read, what to think or not think, what to say or not say, what to do or not do; and to limit everyone’s freedoms to live, love, and labor—and vote—as they see fit.  Decent people must fortify themselves with the fact that these nice people meant to undo our democracy, ruin this country, and harm the people in it, or did not care about this undoing, ruin, and harm.

 

If America is to remain—if it has been—“the land of the free and the home of the brave,” decent, democratically inclined citizens must find the courage to put the right thing politically over the easy or comfortable thing personally or socially.  Otherwise, if we pretend that a “blue wave” will teach fascists a lesson, we shall be right back where we started, with them more determined and better prepared to seize power in the future.  Whatever we do, it must be effective and persistent.  We must not relent; they must relent and sincerely repent, or remain political pariahs.  Kumbaya will not stop them.

 

 

A Note on Election Fraud

 

Decades ago, at a special fraternity luncheon, one of my brothers took a heaping plate of food and then ate little of it.  Another brother, in reproach, commented at his waste of food when millions of Chinese were starving.  To which the former tartly replied, “name one.”

 

Which is the proper reply to Trump sympathizers who claim voter fraud, mostly by illegal immigrants to explain Trump’s defeat in 2020 and Democratic victories in elections since.  (By the way, Trump’s objection to immigrants is invariably racist, to those of color, not to white ones from, say, Norway or South Africa.)  There is no way to prove a negative—here, the non-existence of voter fraud—; in truth, we must admit that there is some voter fraud.  But it is very rare, at the level of not even a handful of ballots cast by unqualified people among millions of ballots.  Ironically, a few years ago, when Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, notorious for railing against voter fraud, identified a single case of voter fraud, the perpetrator turned out to be a Republican.  We piously declare that every vote counts, but no federal election has been decided by five votes.  According to an AI summary on Wikipedia, “The smallest margin of victory in the national popular vote for a U.S. presidential election occurred in 1880, when Republican James A. Garfield defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock by a mere 7,368 votes.”

 

So, for all the hoopla about the ballots of unqualified voters cancelling out the ballots of qualified voters, the effect of this problem is trivial compared to the disastrous and notably Republican-favoring consequences of legislation (the Save Act or the MEGA Act) to achieve ballot purity.  Moreover, the idea that millions of legitimate voters should be hindered by identification requirements trying to achieve such an unattainable goal is a pretty good definition of unreasonableness, if not insanity.

 

The claim of voter fraud can be proven in the ordinary way: identify the illegitimate voters.  There is no need to spoil Thanksgiving dinner by pounding the table and shouting back and forth about voter fraud.  Just ask your “crazy uncle” claiming voter fraud to cite specifics.  Advise him to contact any state attorney general, secretary of state, or clerk of public records for the names of those charged, tried, and convicted of voter fraud.  Suggest that he start with red states (he will think blue states complicit in voter fraud).  Give him until the following Thanksgiving dinner to collect this information (i.e., put up or shut up).

MURPHY’S NEW LAW: IF IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, IT CAN HAPPEN HERE

     Let me begin with a digression to declare myself a “domestic terrorist.”  Others march and wave placards to protest police and other governmental abuses; I file complaints and write blogs to protest government misconduct.  To each, his own, I say.  I am safer; the police are not likely to claim that my desktop computer looked like a handgun.  But if the pen is mightier than the sword, then I attempt massacres.

At a time when the federal government is perpetrating outrages and trying to secure the cooperation of state and local governments, I write this blog as warning that, in New Mexico, state, county, and local governments seem predisposed to capitulate to federal pressures.  I cite previously discussed incidents to stress the failures of the legal establishment and law enforcement in Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, and New Mexico.  Some of these incidents resemble those which have occurred elsewhere and augur ill throughout all levels of government everywhere.  If New Mexican citizens do not take the threats seriously, the threats will assuredly take them seriously.

 

Few New Mexicans give much thought to law and order.  By not thinking about it, they do not have to do anything about it.  Their reason: they like to think that abuses at the local, state, and national level in the name of “public safety” do not happen in the Land of Enchantment or happen somewhere else.  In a state noted for its persistent inability to address its major problems directly and effectively, such a response is entirely in character.  In other areas of public services—food security, health care, social services, public education, New Mexico ranks near or at the bottom of national assessments.  Seemingly, no one cares.

 

Elsewhere, many care.  The ICE and CBP killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretty have aroused citizens in Minneapolis and St. Paul to take action to protect and support their neighbors who are people of color.  The killings are discrediting the Trump administration and the MAGA movement, probably because both victims were white and both killings were abundantly covered.  Obviously, many whites, in addition to people of color, now realize, if government thugs can kill innocuous whites on public streets in broad daylight, they can kill anyone anywhere for any or no reason.

 

One problem with public safety—law and order—is interlocking jurisdictions committed to protecting police officers from accountability.  One example: the response of the public safety community to LCPD Officer Jared Cosper’s killing of Sra. Amelia Baca in 2022.  First, LCPD Police Chief Miguel Dominguez responded with a pre-investigation creation of a highly edited recording and narrative which sought to justify the killing by representing Sra. Vega as a threat to Cosper.  Second, Dominguez convened the Multi-Agency Task Force to analyze the event.  According to a Memorandum of Understanding by the agencies involved—state, county, city, and campus police—, the LCPD, whose officer was the subject of the investigation—a clear conflict of interest ignored by all members of this group—led the investigation.  Third, the Task Force report went to Third Judicial District Attorney Gerald Byers for his determination whether to prosecute Cosper.  After promising a decision within a few days, Byers took several weeks before sending the case to Attorney General Raúl Torrez.  Fourth, Torrez hired Steve Ijames, an expert witness in use-of-force, who, in three-fourths of his cases, has defended officers charged with excessive use of force.  His report exonerated Cosper with problematic claims about mere possibilities to justify Cosper’s claims of fears for his life.  So, in a highly publicized case in which the unedited audio-visual recording persuaded most viewers that Cosper recklessly and aggressively killed Baca, public safety agencies rallied at all levels of government to protect the police officer.

 

In my far less dramatic case of police misconduct, local and state officials went out of their way to protect a police officer and to deny my constitutional rights.  Officer Juan Valles made five false allegations of code misconduct; the warning notice was placed in my file.  Internal Affairs took over five months to investigate my formal complaint; it found the allegations unfounded—that is, false.  But the LCPD hid the results; Police Chief Patrick Gallagher neither sent me IA’s report nor reported its findings, which I obtained only after filing an Inspection of Public Records Act request.  On the basis of that report, I filed a complaint with IA about a violation of due process; it was rejected.  I then filed a complaint with IA about bias-based policing; it was rejected on the grounds that it was no different from my previous complaint.  I filed both complaints separately with the New Mexico Office of the Attorney General, which did not acknowledge either complaint.  When I asked LCPD Police Chief Jeremy Story to remove the warning notice from my file, he first lied that there was no such file.  When I said that I could prove the file existed, he asked that I send him the proof; when I did, he promised to look into it, but he broke that promise and neither responded to me nor cleared my file.  I have to think that Story deals similarly with other citizens in minor matters and would very likely tell bigger lies and break bigger promises in major ones.  I pushed my case to make a point: police officials and senior attorneys go to great lengths to avoid accountability for themselves or co-professionals whenever possible.

 

Another instance of colleague protection: when I filed an 11-page complaint with 48 citations of supporting documents about Las Cruces City Attorney Jennifer Vega-Brown with the Disciplinary Board of the New Mexico Supreme Court, Deputy Disciplinary Counsel Christine E. Long took fewer than 20 days to reply that my complaint lacked “insufficient evidence to support allegations that Ms. Hays [sic!] has violated the Rules of Professional Conduct.”  The quality of the investigation is evident in the typographical error.

 

In short, the legal establishment and law enforcement exist to protect themselves before protecting public safety in matters large and small.  The New Mexico Office of the Attorney General investigates and prosecutes civilian and commercial violations of codes and laws; it avoids investigating or prosecuting violations by government officials.  Instance: I filed a complaint about evident violations of the Open Meeting Act by the three members of the Las Cruces City Council on the Public Safety Select Committee.  My complaint was first assigned to an intern.  Upon my criticism of that superficial treatment, my complaint was assigned to a regular attorney, who reported many citations to rationalize its secret meetings over a period exceeding 3 years.  However, the attorney did not address four major issues: the need for a secret committee; the failure to deliver, as chartered to do, information or recommendations to the City Council; an account of what the committee was doing instead; an explanation for its sudden closing after its secrecy was exposed.  I infer that the reason for rationalizing the committee’s secrecy was the threat posed by my complaint to the candidacies of two Democratic politicians running for office: former Las Cruces mayor Ken Miyagishima and current incumbent District 2 congressman (and former Democratic senator Martin Heinrich staffer) Gabe Vasquez., both of whom participated in this secret cabal.

 

Locally, in emulation of the federal law enforcement policies and practices, Dona Ana County Manager Scott Andrews, with the presumed  concurrence of County Commissioners, is allowing abuses at the Dona Ana County Detention Center which match or exceed those at ICE detention camps, including Camp Montana East at Fort Bliss, where the death of one internee was recently ruled a homicide.  Likewise, Story is emphasizing petty crime to justify militarizing the LCPD.  He requested state funding for five SWAT vehicles but refused to explain his reasons to me, City Councilor Cassie McClure, and State Representatives Joanne Ferrary and Nathan Small.  LCPD officers pointed rifles at Hispanic demonstrators last summer in the name of providing security to them.  He is exploiting Dominguez’s lowered recruitment standards—minimums: 19 years of age, high-school diploma, no college—by using film clips of police chasing fugitives to attract those, mostly young males, with aggressive propensities.  Worst of all, he invited federal police to help the LCPD deal with local crimes and justified it with the falsehood that such cooperation is commonplace.  In the context of current federal police policies and practices, I suspect Story of establishing his credentials for advancement with federal enforcement agencies.  I wish him well (elsewhere).

 

This reiteration of old facts and this revelation of new ones intend to suggest that the abuses of justice nationally have parallels at all levels of New Mexico government.  It is easy enough to point out the abuses by Trump and the agencies under the direction of his administration.  But it is more difficult to face up to such abuses and the potential for more abuses closer to home.  Because of the cultural propensity and the abundance of sand, New Mexicans are likely to bury their heads to avoid worrying about what can and seems increasingly likely to happen here.

IS ISRAEL A COLONIALIST OCCUPIER? TA-NEHISI COATES AND THE MESSAGE

     Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Message is a widely acclaimed collection of four essays, one on journalism, three on problems in African and Asian countries.  The essay on journalism is a statement of Coates’s philosophy, which, as I understand it, boils down to the need for clear-eyed confrontation with the truth and its communication to serve social justice.  The problem with this philosophy is the potential conflict between truth, which is always assumed to be objective truth, and social justice, which cannot be assumed to mean the same thing to all people; a commitment to social justice might distort the truth.  In The Message, Coates tells the truth but not the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

The last and longest essay is a treatise entitled “The Gigantic Dream” on the Middle East conflict between Israel and the Arab-Muslim population in the West Bank.  The truth, as Coates presents it, is Israel’s efforts to colonize the West Bank and its brutal occupation.  The social justice which Coates seeks is the end of both.  But the truth is more complex, and social justice is likely chimerical.  Although Coates and Progressives generally regard Israel as a colonizer, they misconceive the concept of colonization and thus misapply it, yet differently.  Coates applies the concept to Israeli occupation of the West Bank; others apply it to Israel itself as well as the West Bank.  Although the fact of Israel’s brutal occupation is undoubted, its link to colonization is doubtful.  Most occupations are more or less brutal, but they need not precede or follow from colonization.  Coates’s analysis is marred by his bias in selected historical sources, his misconception of colonization, and his misperceptions of the occupation in his ten-day visit to Israel, the West Bank, but not Gaza.

 

•      •      •      •      •

 

In this ancient land, the old question—what is truth?—looms large and ominously.  Apparent facts might not be real facts.  Context in that place and in this time matters greatly in interpreting the “facts.”  Coates is unaware that context is hard to come by on a short visit, no matter how many conversations he had with Palestinian residents.  And he is less interested in the truth than his philosophy suggests.  Thus, he declares that he is not interested in listening to the rationales of what he regards as Israel’s colonial existence and oppressive occupation.  “I had no interest in hearing defenses of the occupation and what struck me then as segregation” (p. 148).  “What struck me” might be a long way from the truth, as impressions often are.  The result is not truth, but opinion, “facts” filtered through and shaped by preconceptions and biases, as suggested by his frequent references to slavery and segregation in the United States.

 

Coates’s comparison of the conditions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation to those of slaves under plantation regimes is more rhetorical than historical and more designed to smear Jews as if they were Simon Legrees.  But there are significant differences in these conditions.  Israelis control much in the lives of West Bank Palestinians but do not deprive them of all rights and property.  Slaveowners controlled every aspect of the lives of blacks, who had neither rights nor property, even possession of their own or their blood relatives’ bodies.

 

Without context and without background in both sides of the conflict, Coates can see and report details, but he cannot see—that is, understand—them.  For example, he notes the many checkpoints at which Palestinians must endure long waits and close inspections, while Israelis move through them unimpeded.  (A parallel might be more voting places in white areas than in black ones.)  He sees these checkpoints as instruments of occupation and segregation.  Yes, but he does not acknowledge the long history of Palestinian terrorism which has plagued Israel for decades and which makes checkpoints a sensible precaution against violence against its civilians, mainly Jews and some Muslims.  I doubt that there are many such instances, but I offer this one, not to exonerate Israel from the many and serious abuses of Palestinians in the West Bank, but to explain that observing something does not guarantee understanding it.  Coates sees the checkpoints and the different lines, but he does not see the reason for them, only their apparent similarity to Jim Crow practices in the United States.

 

Given the dynamics of conquest and occupation, the ways of rationalizing them and subsequently oppressing and exploiting the conquered, Israelis differ little from other conquerors who, throughout world history, have invaded other countries and dominated their populations.  Typically, they denigrate the indigenous populations and rationalize their abuses because they regard the natives as inferior.  Coates lacks this broader and unbiased historical perspective.  He thinks Israelis reflect a Euro-American mindset—conquest and occupation justified by white Christians suppressing savage and uplifting uncivilized natives—of the recent half millennium or so.  But the dynamics are universal and eternal, and not necessarily linked to colonization.  For instance, he apparently knows nothing about Japanese racist thinking prior to the end of World War II.  The Japanese thought themselves a master race and those whom they conquered and controlled inferiors, if not savages, who would benefit from Japanese domination.  But the Japanese established no colonies, at most enclaves to support exploitation of local resources.

 

•      •      •      •      •

 

In the current of present-day Progressive thought, Coates sees Israelis as colonizers in the tradition of European colonization.  He is not alone in this opinion; many demonstrating against Israel’s excessive reaction to the Hamas attack see Israel in the same way.  The point of the accusation is to discredit and reverse the Jewish project realized by the state of Israel—thus, the campus protesters’ rallying cry, “From the river [Jordan] to the sea [Mediterranean], Palestine will be free.”

 

To see Jews as colonizers implies that they are alien invaders, with no legitimate claim to the land.  The implication depends on the fact of the influx of European Zionists and Holocaust refugees into Palestine.  But these Jews supplemented the Jews living in Palestine as they always have.  Jews cannot be colonizers because they have held claim to the land by virtue of long residency.  There are two truths here.  One, since prehistoric times and long before Islam arose as a faith, Jews have lived in the “Holy Land,” which includes Judea and Samaria in the West Bank as part of “Greater Israel,” and have claims to it.  Two, non-Jews have always lived in this land, too, so their Arab-Muslim descendants have a solid claim to the land as well.  This situation in the “Holy Land” might be unique because of the multi-millennial coexistence, cohabitation, and contention of two peoples in the same land.  In short, Jews are not invaders and colonizers; they are developers.

 

In some sense, the land of Palestine belongs to no one and to everyone.  From time immemorial, invaders have conquered the land only to be evicted by other invaders or revolts by the residents.  From a historical perspective, the cycle seems never-ending and establishes a context which should qualify anyone’s claims to legitimate exclusive possession of the land and writers’—Coates’s—views of those claims to it.

 

In that cycle, Coates sees Israel’s emergence as a state, and its conquest and occupation of the West Bank as evidence of its imperialist/colonialist intentions from the beginning of the twentieth century.  He selects the writings of notorious but minority Zionists like Ze'ev Jabotinsky and incidental quotations from mainstream Jewish leaders to support his case.  But facts argue that Israel’s intentions were neither imperialist nor colonialist, at least not before 1967.  Although Israel routed larger Arab armies in its War for Independence in 1947-48, it retained only modest parcels of land beyond the boundaries of the UN Partition Plan for the division of the British Mandate.  For twenty years, it did nothing to extend its holdings into the West Bank or Gaza.  The tragedy of the Six-Day War in 1967 was that Israeli military power, justified by Egypt’s acts of war, succeeded in defending the country but corrupted it thereafter.  As they say, nothing fails like success.  As I have argued in a recent blog, Israel’s conduct in its occupation of the West Bank (Gaza held, then released) has betrayed the country’s and the Jewish religion’s principles and values.  Only slowly did Israel’s occupation of the West Bank evolve into incremental development.  Again, the concept of colonization does not apply, for Jews have always lived in this land and thus have a historical claim to the lands of Greater Israel.  Coates, in the myopia of a brief visit and little background, sees the present moment as typical.  What he does not see—he did not want to see—is that Israel, despite today’s grave flaws, still struggles to improve, as protests, legislation, judicial decisions, and law enforcement opposing the government’s conduct suggest.  Progress is not smooth, swift, or assured, but he nowhere recognizes the resistance to Israeli oppression and the efforts to alleviate or eliminate it.  Whether Israel of its own initiative will abandon the illegal settlements remains to be seen.

 

Coates offers no suggestion for going forward.  Instead, he offers finger-pointing and anger—“rage” is a word commonly used throughout—as if targeting one group or another can solve any problem or, according to his writer’s philosophy, reflect truth and promote social justice.  Is rage the message?  If so, he is one of many angry writers, especially self-righteous minorities and women, who justify themselves by expressing their anger and accusing someone else of exclusive responsibility for the world’s ills.  Even as an old, white man, I accept radical critiques of American society; even as a Jew, I accept radical critiques of Israel.  But I reject and resent anger- and hate-based ideological, especially Progressive, analyses which impede understanding, antagonize the parties to the conflict, and hinder them from negotiating their differences.  To put it bluntly, I think that writers like Coates, with pretensions to truth and social justice, should shut up or shape up, for right now they are in the way.

 

Otherwise, Coates might have suggested that the international community, which established the state of Israel and defined its borders, should enforce them and its other resolutions curtailing Israeli expansion by its illegal settlements.  Although the lands of the West Bank include the previous Jewish lands of Judea and Samaria, Israel must be enjoined to accept the loss of those lands to which it has some historical claim, not as colonists, but as residents, in order to restore peace in the “Holy Land.”  If a consortium of states can effect the return of Israel to the confines of the UN boundaries only by boycott, divestment, and sanctions, so be it.  The enforced end of Israeli occupation of the West Bank would be a small price to pay for that peace.

“IN THE FIRST PLACE, GOD MADE IDIOTS. THAT WAS FOR PRACTICE. THEN HE MADE SCHOOL BOARDS.”

     Contrary to popular belief and AI summaries, Mark Twain must have been born and raised in Las Cruces.  He must have known the town, as it was then, to be “the first place.”  So it is no surprise that latter-day idiots recently returned three incumbents to the Board of Education who have no serious interest in public education.  Their interests are facilities, equipment, administrators, administrative staff, coaches, and teachers.  Their interest is not education; they are not concerned with policies about curriculum, teaching, or standards of educational achievement.  They have two concerns about students: attendance, which is the basis of some state funding, and graduation rates, which mean to placate parents and state officials.

These views elaborate the implied message of the citizen comment which I delivered Tuesday, 20 January, at the School Board meeting.

 

My name is Michael Hays.  I am a resident of Las Cruces.  I speak from an extensive and diverse background in education.  I have to elaborate however immodest it may seem to be.  I was a teacher for 45 years in private single-sex and public coed high schools, and in community colleges and 4-year universities, in nine states, including New Mexico, and in the District of Columbia.  I have a master’s degree in secondary education from Cornell University, permanent certification in New York, and an award for distinguished teaching from the University of Michigan, from which I received a Ph.D. in English.  I am a published scholar in my field, with a book and about a dozen articles.  In addition to being a teacher and scholar, I was a long-time PTA activist in public education.

 

As a community member, I read with interest the 21 November Las Cruces Bulletin account of the views held by the three re-elected board members.  I am unimpressed by what they say is most important—none of it new—and am appalled by what they do not say at all.

 

Absenteeism remains a problem; no one can teach students not in class—a point to which I shall return.  Commendable but not mission-critical are continuing efforts to make transportation flexible enough to accommodate tutoring and extra-curricular activities.  Also commendable are continuing programs which prepare students for non-college career tracks after graduation.  But I suspect that such programs also serve as excuses for not expecting proficiency by all students in all basic academic subjects.  Graduates in technical education should not be hindered by their lack of proficiency in these basics from advancing in their career, changing career, or seeking additional education.

 

Here’s the rub.  Some board members believe that the District should accept that not all students can master basics like the multiplication table and should be satisfied with any learning which they acquire.  I have no idea how many such students there are, but I deplore board members’ low expectations which reflect a student-centered approach to education and their disregard of reasonable standards of academic achievement.  No re-elected member even mentioned the District’s continued record of poor student performance, with percentages of average proficiency in reading in the 30s and in math in the 20s.

 

In my view, anyone employed by the District content with this dismal level of academic performance is contemptuous of its students and indifferent to their education.  In closing, I offer the conjecture that absenteeism might reflect absentees’ belief that a school district which teaches so little and cares so little about teaching so little is not worth their time or trouble.

 

The audience reaction was what I expected: silence, stoney faces, and stares forward to avoid looking at me as I left.  I credit Dr. Wendi Miller-Tomlinson, Deputy Superintendent, who accosted me in the hall outside the auditorium, with inviting me to meet with her to discuss my ideas for improvement.  Although we had met previously, I declined another meeting because, as I said to her, she was the professional, she knew what needed to be done, but she faced a Board and probably a Superintendent with no interest in the effort to improve student education.

 

Still, I did make two of three or four points which I would have raised again.  I stressed the importance of the basics in both English and math.  I said that, although the state curriculum implied the study of grammar, District teachers, especially elementary school teachers do not know it and, of course, do not teach it.  I said that a capability in grammar was not just to avoid errors or note others’ lapses, but also to improve reading, writing, and thinking because a capability in grammar focuses attention on words.  I noted the high correlation between ignorance of grammar and poor reading proficiency.  I added that not ensuring the basics of math in the elementary grades promised difficulty or failure in later math courses and on-the-job tasks which might involve math (like making correct change).

 

As I talked with her previously, I would have repeated the importance of reading, not snippets in the current core-curriculum compatible textbooks (designed for testing purposes), but works—poems, short stories, plays, novels—in their entirety.  At a time when students get little more than snippets on social media, they should be engaging more, more extended, and more challenging effort in school.  If the District were at all serious—I doubt that it is at all serious—about critical thinking, it would realize that it can only be achieved by thinking based on knowledge in many subjects, not digesting assorted bits and pieces to pass proficiency tests.

 

The alternative to these and other subject-matter-oriented reforms is more of the same, more of what we already have: students poorly educated, with little knowledge, few skills, and no aspirations worthy of the name—that is, what God made them.