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.

A HAPPIER NEW YEAR?

Wishing for a happy new year is a stretch.

 

The revival of spirits on the Left and in the Middle because of Trump’s declining popularity and Democratic electoral successes in 2024 is the calm before the storm.

 

A recapitulation of Trump’s assaults on the Constitution and the country is superfluous.  His contempt for the rule of law and his corruption of the Department of Justice, including the FBI, are now well-known.  Trump has converted the Department of Homeland Security and its subagencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol (BP), into units of a national gestapo.  His foreign policy is a failure, alienating allies and undermining national interests.  Likewise, his domestic policy is demoralizing increasing numbers of Americans and harming the wellbeing of tens of millions. The non-legacy media has been doing an excellent job of describing and analyzing these assaults; the legacy media—New York Times, Washington Post, ABC, CBS, and NBC—not so much.

 

Assessments of Trump himself pre-occupy many but are pointless; they provide no means to curtail his impulses or arrest his conduct.  But the singularity of the man makes it necessary to at least characterize him in general terms: personally, a sociopath; socially, a vulgarian; and politically, a vandal.  His destruction of the East Wing and his debasement of the Kennedy Center say it all.  Altogether, he resembles nothing so much as a mob boss.  He surrounds himself with people who are or have been reduced to lickspittles.  How he will respond, if, as many expect, a “Blue Wave” in the November election overcomes their efforts to rig the outcome, is problematic.  He will do everything possible to reverse the results—to include the use of military forces to intimidate or interfere with votes, before the courts can act.  (My fear is that troops, in the event of protests, particularly election-related protests, will fire on civilians, ala Kent State, 1970.)  Failing his attempts, he will not only be angry at a loss of political power, but also afraid of revelations by House or Senate hearings.  Even if he pardons all of his political appointees, immunity from prosecution will not protect them from having to testify under oath without the refuge of the Fifth Amendment.

 

The original sins of SCOTUS should be laid to the machinations of Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell, now sidelined by the MAGA-aligned Congressional leadership of John Thune, who shepherded unqualified presidential nominees through confirmation.  But the real culprit is the Chief Justice John Roberts, a smirking preppie of privilege, who has, for two decades, bankrupted the law by increasingly corrupting legal reasoning and judicial conduct in favor of the rich, the white, and the well-born—and against the rest.  Under his leadership, SCOTUS has rendered decisions impairing democratic elections, civil rights, gender equality, abortion rights, and more, many curtailing or reversing precedents.  Recently, many such decisions have responded to administration claims of “emergencies” by resorting to and expanding the use of the “shadow docket,” by which the Court ignores legal reasoning or routine judicial processes and publishes diktats without justifications or hearings.  The accelerating drift of the Court in these decisions has been to embrace the “unitary executive theory,” which centers all power for running the government in the President.  What is surprising about this development is that the Roberts Court has embraced this theory during the presidency of the worst occupant of the office in American history; one can imagine realizing the theory during the crisis-riddled presidencies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt—but Donald J. Trump?

 

Trump’s use of the military is frightening.  This aging, unwell man, unhinged to any cause higher than himself, has shown himself willing to abuse the military by deploying it against Americans, all the more so since he plainly deploys them against majority Democratic cities whose residents Trump deems “enemies of the state.”  Although he promised to end ongoing wars and not launch new ones, he has criminally bombed Iran because of its nuclear program, is criminally attacking civilian boats on the high seas, has criminally bombed Venezuela and abducted its president and his wife, is threatening criminal intervention in Iran in support of Iranian protesters, and is, no doubt, disposed to additional military adventures.  No less ominous is that, in the face of a real threat to our national interests and our allies and alliances, he is behaving erratically and unreliably in assisting Ukraine in its defense against Russian aggression.  Indeed, the parallels between Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Trump’s incursion into Venezuela are obvious and ominous.  There can be little doubt that his misuses of the military, past, present, and future, reflect not only his authoritarian inclinations, but also his calculated use of these forces as a distraction from his political misfortunes, not least the unfolding and increasingly threatening revelations suggested by the Epstein files.

 

There is no reason to think that these conditions, developments, or propensities will not continue into the new year.  Indeed, Trump’s declining popularity even in his base from the pressures of the Epstein files, the rise in inflation and unemployment, the failed tariffs, and the increase in ACA insurance premiums, among other issues, will make him more, not less, reckless.  His losses on all fronts, though celebrated by his opponents, mean that he has less to lose by increasingly authoritarian actions and greater reliance on military and paramilitary government forces.

 

Unhappily, the likelihood that the Democratic Party will respond sensibly to electoral successes in 2026 and 2028 is slim, for three reasons.  The party, known for its demographic and political diversity, will not achieve a consensus on its priorities on basic issues.  Hopes that it can undo the damage done by Trump and his administration will be dashed by quarreling about which reforms matter most.  Moreover, Republicans surviving a “Blue Wave” will think themselves invulnerable if the electorate does not repudiate them for their allegiance to Trump; so, unless Democrats eliminate the filibuster in the Senate, Republicans will obstruct Democratic reforms.  Finally, an electorate which re-elected Trump to a second term after a 4-year interval allowing it to assess his performance is not an electorate which is smart or sensible enough to restore democracy under duress.  Trump’s re-election suggests to friends and foes alike that America is politically retarded, unstable, and untrustworthy.

 

Meanwhile, SCOTUS has set the example for at least one generation that the Constitution and the laws are malleable, even dispensable, and will thereby disillusion it about democracy and make it skeptical of its virtues.  SCOTUS reform will have no immediate effect in restoring confidence in the rule of law.  The result will be legal uncertainty, instability, confusion, and conflicts of all kinds for decades.  It would be naïve to expect anything else.  Needless to say, as a confidence-building measure in a restored government, all departments and agencies, especially Justice, Defense, Homeland Security, and State, must be purged of Trump’s political appointees and loyalists.

 

The election of a Democratic president in 2028 will be no assurance that the central feature of Trump’s presidency will not persist.  That feature is the expansion of presidential power consistent with the unitary executive theory.  Historically, every president has built on the expansion of his predecessor’s power.  The threat to democracy will remain if Trump’s Democratic successor retains the powers which Trump centralized in his office, even if that successor does not enlarge upon them.  To reduce that threat, the president must be willing to do the unprecedented: renounce and reverse the powers which Trump and some predecessors have amassed in the presidency.  The list of such powers is long, but we can give thanks that Trump’s abuses of his office have identified many weaknesses in the Constitution and the laws, and in SCOTUS.  Trump’s Democratic successor must encourage Congress to reduce the powers of the Executive Branch, especially the size and authorities of the White House.  He or she must encourage Congress to re-examine and revise the scope of SCOTUS’s authority in light of its illegitimate decisions and the corrupt conduct of its justices.  He or she must also encourage it to pass Constitutional amendments to redress those weaknesses which cannot be redressed by laws.  Without radical reforms of the Constitution and the laws of the land, democracy will remain vulnerable to anti-democratic forces which have undermined it for nearly half a century.  Like former confederates, who maintained their allegiance to the “Lost Cause” and metastasized in the KKK, MAGA devotees, even in defeat, will remain loyal to Trump and his political heirs.

 

The only way 2026 can be a happier year is work to fulfill the promises of the Declaration of Independence: the political equality of all people and their free and unfettered consent in their governance.  We now know that such work requires a willingness to support radical changes in the Constitutional and legal implementation of these promises.

POLICE CHIEF’S ACTION UNDERMINES CITY COUNCIL’S POLICY

[‘Tis the season to wish you the happiness of the holiday of your choice: Hanukkah (starts at sundown 14 Dec), Christmas (25 Dec, of course), and Kwanzaa (26 Dec).  Forgive me for not knowing about other holidays at this season.  Saturnalia is, I think, no longer observed.  I may take a break from blogging until the New Year, but I am probably kidding myself if I think so.  If I do, I take this opportunity to wish you and yours the very best for another year.]

 

Rarely are Las Cruceans presented with differing opinions on the same topic by local columnists.  So it is revealing to read Heath Haussamen’s 20 November column and Peter Goodman’s 23 November column on the recent arrest of Neil Garcia.  In a note to his column on his website, Goodman acknowledges Haussamen’s column but does not discuss the similarities or debate the differences of their opinions.  I make the inevitable comparison.

 

Haussamen’s column, “Police chief’s viral videos put Las Cruces at risk,” is longer and more detailed, and is entirely focused on two related issues.  One is the legal problem posed by Garcia, a repeat offender of various crimes, from shoplifting to destruction of property to assault and battery.  The other is the problem of the Las Cruces Police Department’s Police Chief Jeremy Story’s involvement of federal law enforcement officials in Garcia’s arrest and incarceration.  Goodman’s column, “A Controversial Federal Arrest,” not only is shorter and less detailed, but also digresses on the inadequacies of local and state laws, and on the promise of local and state programs to deal with repeat offenders like Garcia.

 

Haussamen reports the basic facts.  The police charged Garcia with over 70 crimes in a 3-year period, but he was convicted of none of them.  Several state judges found that he was not competent to assist public defenders in his defense.  So he was released and returned to his illegal occupations.  Everyone is frustrated by the release of repeat offenders like Garcia because respect for constitutional rights allows perpetrators incompetent to stand trial to go free and thereby repeat their crimes.

 

In response to this situation, Story appeared in an LCPD video on 28 October in which he declared Garcia a danger to the public.  According to Haussamen, the video was intended to go viral on social media; Blaze News, a right-wing news outlet, carried it.  Story appeared in another LCPD video on 13 November between two federal law enforcement officials: Ryan Ellison, acting U.S. attorney for New Mexico, and Justin Garris, the FBI special agent in charge of the FBI in New Mexico.  Each  indicated the cooperation of federal and local law enforcement agencies and their shared determination to address repeat offenders.

 

Haussamen reports the unusual law used to arrest and jail Garcia until his trial, and notes the approval of some at Story’s innovative approach to the problem of repeat offenders whose incompetency enables them to elude accountability and likely conviction and incarceration.  Haussamen disapproves.  He warns Las Cruceans about the present dangers to Las Cruces during the Trump presidency of involving federal law enforcement in local and state criminal affairs.  He suggests that Story is operating in ways favorable to the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to crime at the local and state levels.  He questions whether Story, a Republican serving under a Democratic/Progressive City Council, is not undermining its policies about relationships with federal law enforcement agencies, which policies intend to protect Las Cruceans from their abuses.  He concludes, “Story is way out of line.”

 

Goodman’s column is biased in his usual asperse-the-civilian, sympathize-with-the-police, way.  Remember that he tried to moderate criticism of Jared Cosper, killer of Amelia Baca, by saying that Cosper did not wake up that day intending to murder anyone.  By characterizing Garcia as “reportedly [as if there is room for doubt; emphasis mine] not sharp enough mentally to help his defense attorney,” Goodman omits the determinations of several state judges that Garcia is not competent to stand trial.  His omission obscures the fact that Story’s actions skirted those determinations.  Noting that some applaud Story’s “solution to a difficult problem” and others roast him “for it at city council and on social media,” Goodman states his sympathy for Story without giving reasons for doing so.  Indeed, dodging the issues raised by Story’s solution, his conduct, and the involvement of federal agents in local crime, he shifts the blame to “all of us, for failing to solve a tough problem: how can we protect citizens from people who repeatedly harm others but can’t fairly be tried in court?”  He concludes with a discussion of state efforts and programs to address the problem of incompetent defendants.  The result is an incomplete, unfocused, diffuse response to this “controversial federal arrest.”

 

Both columns fail to address some important questions which frame this controversial arrest.  Why did Story make the first video?  How did a right-wing news outlet and federal law enforcement officials come to see the video?  Was it by chance or by contact initiated by Story?  Did he contact Blaze News to alert it to it?  Did he contact the federal officials who appeared in the second video?  Either way, it is not best police practice or even appropriate behavior for a police chief to avoid the usual channels in local government to address a matter of police policy and to resort to public relations stunts to influence it or invite federal intervention.  As we have seen elsewhere, cities and states have resisted federal efforts to intervene in local affairs in the guise of fighting crime.  Haussamen, but not Goodman, stresses that Story’s actions are contrary to City Council’s efforts to limit interactions between the LCPD and federal law enforcement agencies.  He adds that it is dangerous for local and state police to cooperate in local matters with federal law enforcement officials.  Story’s actions not only undermine the city’s elected leaders, but also accord with Trump’s claims of uncontrolled crime in Democratic-governed cities which requires federal intervention.

 

Before I ask what is it with Story, I want to know what the City Manager is doing about this insubordinate official.  What steps is he taking to bring Story to heel?  Or is Council giving him a wink and a nod to let Story proceed to solve a nettlesome problem?

 

So what is it with Story?  His use of videos gives him personal prominence in addressing a police issue which troubles the city.  It enhances his reputation, it increases his power, and it builds his resume.  He is young enough to aspire to higher office, not accept a long-term commitment as police chief in a medium-size city in New Mexico.  It also makes him more dangerous.  To the degree that he operates without the self-restraint and professionalism of an officer in his position, to that degree he is unaccountable.  His unexplained request to City Council for no fewer than five SWAT vehicles is ominous; more ominous is his refusal to respond to requests by me, a Councilor, and two Representatives for a rationale for these military-style vehicles.  His police have pointed rifles at peaceful demonstrators.  Story’s propensities for self-promotion and for arbitrary and aggressive policing bode ill for the city and its citizens.  If, unlike Haussamen but like Goodman, we accommodate his actions, we endanger ourselves.  The price of good policing must be eternal vigilance, with focused attention on Police Chief Jeremy Story. 

A BRIEF CRITIQUE OF THE LAS CRUCES PUBLIC SCHOOL DISTRICT’S EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

      I have read The Bulletin’s 21 November coverage of re-elected School Board members and their current thinking about educational problems to be addressed and the educational solutions to be adopted.  I am appalled.  Their greatest concerns are matters of accommodating students on the basis of their feelings of belonging and comfort.  So they decry the discomforts of students facing tests or having homework.  Not surprisingly, not one of them shows the least concern about the lack of educational attainment by K-12 students.  Not one mentions the persistent decline in proficiency scores in basic subjects, namely, reading and mathematics. 

An etymological note: “education” derives from a blend of two Latin words, “educare” (to bring up, rear, train) and “educere” (to lead out).  Semantically, the blend means a development from an exclusive responsiveness to one’s inner world (infantile narcissism) to a comprehensive responsiveness to and mediation of one’s inner world and the outer world (adult maturity).  The Las Cruces Public School District has no awareness of this meaning of “education.”  In fact, its philosophy amounts to a rationalization of infantilism.

 

The School Board and the Superintendent yield to the many parents who complain about the number of tests and the homework assigned to their children.  There is too much homework, it is too time-consuming, it is too hard—one re-elected Board member said that not all students can get the multiplication table and urged that the schools should settle for whatever learning happens—, it upsets their children, and it causes too many problems at home.  They also yield to the many teachers, especially elementary school teachers, who cannot teach what the state curriculum requires.  Past Superintendents Stan Rounds and Karen Trujillo admitted to me that none of them knows grammar; neither meant to remedy this professional deficiency.

 

As a result of accommodating these complaints, the standards of educational attainment are simply whatever the student does, without regard to subject-matter mastery.  Board members with many years experience as teachers have no more sense about education in public schools than people with none at all, and perhaps less.  Worse, these Board members act on the soft bigotry of low or, in their case, no expectations of a school population predominantly Hispanic.  They conceal their bigotry with a show of sympathy for the students facing tests and homework, not a commitment to them as future adults who will have lives to live as citizens with personal needs, social obligations, and economic responsibilities.

 

To show the slackness of the educational philosophy of the Las Cruces Public School District, I analyze and evaluate its overarching statements of vision, mission, and values.

 

First, its “Vision Statement: Where all learners thrive.”  This vision is blurred by its vagueness.  Thriving suggests to me potted plants in an environmentally controlled greenhouse.

 

     Second, its “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.”  This statement fails to state a mission usually expressed as a purpose, that is, to do something.  Providing a “learning environment” suggests ensuring only suitable classroom conditions, sufficient furniture, and functioning equipment.  Such environments per se do not cultivate engagement, promote excellence, and honor diversity; there is no need to encourage them.  Engagement and diversity are tangential to and distractions from education; they give teachers and students excuses to do something besides teaching and learning something.  The idea of promoting excellence in an education regime which has no standards other than accepting as good enough whatever the student does is risible.  For student-centered learning dilutes, filters out, or limits learning subject matter.  The main purpose of public education is the transmission of knowledge and skills from teacher to students; once students acquire them, they have enhanced capabilities to pursue their interests, without guidance, direction, or indoctrination by the schools.

 

Third, its “Core Values: Our expectation is that our schools are diverse, equitable and provide [sic] opportunities for the development of critical thinking and democratic ideals and that our schools will uphold these 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.”

 

I note that this statement is devoid of any reference to the schools’ obligation to foster educational achievement in terms of knowledge and skills except for a reference to “critical thinking.”  I doubt that, at the moment of reading this blog, any member of the School Board or the Superintendent can give a cogent definition of critical thinking.  Moreover, they apparently assume that critical thinking can occur in the absence of knowledge or skills.  For nothing in these core values suggests that they believe in the importance of the acquisition of knowledge and skills in academic subjects, whether in the various trades, the various arts, history, literature, mathematics, or science.  Finally, their idea of “excellence” allows an anything-goes standard and accepts annual average proficiency scores in reading and math much below fifty percent.

 

The bankruptcy of the Vision Statement, the Mission Statement, and the statement of Core Values goes a long way to explaining the abysmal education provided by the Las Cruces Public School District.  So long as its leaders maintain their bovine indifference to an education focused on knowledge and skills, they will continue to support and defend teachers who are incompetent and unmotivated—in a word, not committed to teaching their subjects for the good of their students.  But it will celebrate the many LCPS graduates who will continue to lack the education to achieve personal enrichment, constructive civic participation, and professional satisfaction, and tout the teachers who make their educational deficiencies possible.