While writing this blog, I recalled James Wright’s famous and much-anthologized poem, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.”
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
The last line is arresting. How does one get to it from the preceding twelve lines? I invite my readers to offer their explanations (maximum word count: 250 words); no prize, only praise, for the most interesting but sensible ones. Have at it. (AI interpretations do not qualify.)
• • • • •
Much of what is now New Mexico had been, until about 600 years ago, an area populated by separate pueblos and isolated villages eking out a generally subsistence existence. Their poverty protected them from surrounding tribes. It was readily conquered and harshly ruled by Spaniards until 1680. In that year, the pueblos united in the Pueblo Revolt to expel them. But pueblo unity failed within a dozen years; in 1692 the Spanish returned and in 1693 reconquered the area. The general population has never since united to alleviate its conditions of economic depression and political oppression. New Mexico maintains this historical legacy of poverty and its culture of submission. So here we are, and here, it seems to me, we shall remain.
I have lived in Las Cruces for nearly two decades and, for most of that time, have written fortnightly columns for the Sun-News or blogs emailed to my distribution list or posted on my website. I have covered topics on education, politics, religion, and foreign policy, among others. I have given much attention to public education and public safety as well as democracy, abortion, race, and sex/gender. I have never expected my views to become a blueprint for action; instead, I hoped that they might prompt discussion and proposals for improving conditions in Las Cruces and New Mexico. But I have learned slowly and reluctantly that New Mexicans do not want improved conditions; they want to endure what is endurable in order to avoid the discomfort of efforts to reform adverse conditions. Their elected officials know how to avoid reforms, allow adverse but endurable conditions to persist, yet preserve their positions of power and prestige.
New Mexico, if it were a foreign country, would be one of Trump’s “shithole countries.” Its third-world-type economy rests almost entirely on extractive industries: gas and oil, and pecans and pistachios. Its two national laboratories, Los Alamos and Sandia, have not attracted high-tech start-ups; its three national universities—University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, and New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology—, have also failed to attract them. The only high-tech firm in New Mexico of any size is Intel. The largest employers in the state are federal and state government agencies and installations, healthcare organizations, and public schools. The purpose of the latter is employment more than education—which explains why New Mexico has more institutions of higher education per capita than Massachusetts—yet, by employing many mediocrities, has ranked last or near last in national rankings for decades. Its schools graduate large numbers of poorly educated students who constitute a workforce unattractive to mid- to high-tech firms. The state imagines that its economy can thrive by relying on tourism—selling scenery or artifacts of indigenous people—or by being an outdoor studio for the film industry. A culture of poverty permeates the state: no- or low-skill jobs with low wages, relatively high unemployment, inadequate nutrition, poor healthcare, insufficient housing, and poor schooling, along with widespread crime and widespread violence, domestic and otherwise.
Meanwhile, elected officials at the local, county, and state level address these deficiencies with expensive or piecemeal remedies, or reckless gambles in their political show of concern. For instance, state legislators approved across-the-board teacher salary increases which have done nothing to improve teacher quality or student academic performance. For another, Dona Ana county commissioners approved a data center as a “silver bullet” to boost employment, with little public input and less due diligence; they knew little about the firms to build and operate the facility, and less about its various economic, environmental, and societal effects. Any number of local governments operate in disregard of the Open Meetings Act. Given a politically inert, if not submissive, electorate, their officials know that they can make decisions affecting the public in secret, without, to them, the inconvenience of democratic processes.
The Democratic Party, which exploits this electorate and prevails in the state, is successful only in winning elections. Otherwise, it accomplishes virtually nothing of effective and enduring results to ameliorate adverse conditions throughout the state. I suspect that the Progressive Voters Alliance in Las Cruces is typical of other Progressive, Democratic, or liberal groups in the state in its dedication mostly to congeniality, mutual congratulation, and two-minute soundbites. It has never enlisted its members to engage in a concerted effort to address any issue of concern. The closest it came was approval of a Common Cause plan to rig elections for Democrats by using taxpayer dollars to fund the campaigns of candidates—everyone knew that they would be Democrats—who would commit to refusing outside funding. Despite advocates’ vigorous and dissembling efforts, the plan was so defective that it failed to persuade a Democrat-dominated City Council to adopt it. One opponent was targeted for slurs and shunning. This aborted PVA effort shows that local leftists are not more tolerant of debate and dissent than other political partisans. It also shows that Republican politicians are not the only ones who try to use public money for partisan purposes and to subvert democratic processes to win elections.
I end almost as I began. I have addressed many important issues, especially those of public education and public safety, by talking with or writing to many officials, elected and appointed. My efforts have achieved less than nothing. The perversity of a City Council nominating a crooked City Clerk who cost Las Cruces about $150,000 for a statewide honor says it all: officials relish their corruption, and—because?—the media and public do not care. But I care, though I know that I should not; I believe that I should not care more about the city, county, and state than my fellow citizens do. Notwithstanding, I shall continue to address at least some of the issues which deserve attention for one reason: I was raised to serve others and the public good and to use my abilities to that end. Would that those with whom I have communicated had been raised similarly.
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