It’s three days after the inauguration. For a majority of American voters who did not vote for the new president, it feels as if the country has stepped through the looking glass into a political bedlam that is the mirror opposite of what most of us have been taught all our lives to believe are the sacred ideals of a free and tolerant people. Be they voters for Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, or Gary Johnson, this huge majority is already marginalized and is the continuing object of a dirty avalanche of hate from dead right talk radio, Punch and Judy TV punditry, vulture twitter, and politicians governed by such goosestepping hostility they’d rather be zombies of inaction and negativity than do anything, anything at all, for anyone but themselves and the gurus of their ideology.
When the new president talked about giving the government back to the people, we know we are not the people he’s referring to.
How is it possible that the conservative worldview of American politics and its major party has managed to associate itself with the very worst of the human spirit? How is it possible that conservative ideology has embraced the misogynistic, homophobic, racist, neo-nazi, anti-Semitic, Jim Crow, anti-Hispanic, anti-Asian, white supremacist, anti-intellectual/anti science, xenophobic, bully violent and plutocratic back alleys of American culture? The conservative side of the political spectrum in America has become ultimately exclusionary. That its leaders have done nothing to denounce or disconnect themselves from this savage darkness is proof of their comfort with the deadbeat, bottomed out, violent frame of mind that has brought so much horror and misery to the world.
What will it take for the despised class of excluded Americans, that vast ocean of people who refuse to embrace hate, to pull ourselves together and become a coherent champion of inclusion? None of us ever know when we’ll be on the outside looking in, as most of us are right now.
I want to emphasize here, however, that when I talk about the mad Right undermind, I am not talking about individual conservatives, real people whose minds change, and who are struggling like all of us to make sense of the world. I am talking here about the brutal worldview that has taken over their political persuasion, if not their own consciences.
There’s no doubt that the far right of the political spectrum has divided us to the bone. People of conscience cannot normalize the current situation. The divide is too deep. The stakes are too high. Sure, there’s a little field out there somewhere in which people of good will can come together and debate deeply polarized issues. But there’s no place, other than the nether world, for hatred and cruelty to prevail. This is not politics as usual. The conservative establishment stepped over the line. A foul spirit has taken them over.
And where is New Mexico in this grotesque world of travail? Many of us have long believed that New Mexico is a place in which the ideals of inclusion, creativity, and serving the common good are still fluent and alive. Of course, mean and hateful people are on the attack here too, and racists are everywhere. Of course, ideals are only ideals, not realities. But for me it’s better to be an idealist, and pursue one’s ideals, than to be a cynical “realist” who sinks low in despair and inactivity, fueled by an anger that fear can turn into hate. And despite all the forces of intolerance and bigotry, and overweening wealth, and the blockheaded insensitivity to environmental dangers that threaten us all, New Mexico is fundamentally a state of ideals, a state of mind, with a long honorable history of struggling to make inclusion and respect for the natural world a fact of modern life.
That struggle now has the fiercest of adversaries. Drought and warming brought on by climate change (and its deniers) could literally destroy the economy of most cities and rural cultures in the Southwest. Imagine what it would mean to public health, agriculture, and our water supply if New Mexico’s summer high temperatures regularly reached 115 degrees. Imagine what it would mean to our economy and way of life if anti-tax fetishists destroy the National Endowment for the Arts and the Humanities. Imagine what it would do to the soul of our New Mexican ideal of toleration if institutional racism set American against American here and around the nation more painfully than ever. Imagine the ironies of state coffers bulging with an overflow of oil and gas revenue that comes from fracking that pollutes ground water and heats up the atmosphere to an unlivable degree?
The spirit of respect and inclusion in New Mexico is wonderfully expressed in a placard carried on a bus full of New Mexicans going to the Woman’s March on Washington last week. The words seem everywhere on the net. They read, “In this house we believe: no human is illegal, love is love, science is real, women’s rights are human rights, black lives matter, water is life, and kindness is everything.”
If New Mexico has a role to play in the future of our country it is as a sanctuary for such ideals.
*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it
These are the words we need right now. Words that tell it like it is, tell us HOW the psychopath and his coterie will change our lives, try to shape our future, have their dictatorial way and our expense. Important to distinguish between honest conservatives who are open to discussion and this breed (I think of Hitler, Mussolini, Pinochet, so many others) who simply shape their rhetoric to try to make people believe they are included rather than excluded. Bravo, V.B.–your lucid voice is much needed now and moving forward.
ThAnk you!
Thank you. I will never consider any Trump supporter as anything but a mortal danger to everything civil or intelligent.
We are in for the roughest ride of our lives and will be lucky if we survive it.
Unfortunately, the Democratic party, at least on the national level, has been as guilty of exclusion as has the Republican party. That’s why HC lost the election.
Think about it. Progressives have too often been more eager to associate with others like themselves than to include those who are different. Democrats have become the party of the better educated, urban elite, a kind of professional class for want of a better description, with a certainty that their progressive views on social and economic issues are morally and ethically correct. We got a slap in the face in November and need to wake up to our own shortcomings.
NM can be a beacon for the implementation of progressive views, but we need to stop being governed by the size of oil and gas revenues. Instead, let’s create the polices and programs that will benefit all New Mexicans and then decide how to fund them. That means attacking poverty, child welfare, education, job creation and environmental issues head on and with a new seriousness. So long as Susanna Martinez is in office, that simply won’t happen.
welcome back to the fray!
Great piece Barrett!
Thank you VB, Your eloquence sooth my distress. It is an important antidote to the poison.
What a great piece!! I’m both enlightened and terrified. I suppose that’s the point. Thanks VBP!!
Missed your thoughts and insights. Thank you for starting up your column again , Barrett!!
Thank you. Just read your column today [1/24] , sitting in a motel in Geneva, Alabama. On the drive up from Panama City Beach, there were still TRUMP/PENCE signs in people’s front yards. I guess they’ll take them down only when they’re no longer pleased with their choices. Meanwhile, we need to restore the human community. Peace and love.