Ironies of Science and New Mexico

Like most of us, I continue struggling to make sense of the stupidities and ironies of our present moment. It truly feels sometimes that we’re living in a surreal world run by mad hatters and emperors with no clothes. And last week wasn’t any help, either, when we contemplated the 75th anniversary of the detonation of the world’s first nuclear weapon at Trinity Site in the Land of Enchantment, a tragic irony if there ever was one.

Nuclear weapons are, in my mind, the greatest of all human follies and mistakes, though human-created climate change is not far behind, even as it’s being pressed at the moment by the loony and menacing incompetence of our national leadership that insists on treating the coronavirus pandemic as a political problem, rather than a public health calamity that’s already killed more than 135,000 of our citizens.

Gardening in the searing heat of this midsummer in Albuquerque’s North Valley, pondering death by Armageddon or suffocation by a virus on the rampage, the ironies have hit me with a particular intensity. That “the bomb” was actually designed and tested here, in this most beautiful and intriguing of all places, ushering in the unthinkable madness of nuclear annihilation, which people of my generation have been living in horror of all our lives, seems too dark and sick even for our bleak Age of Anxiety.

But then, watering the sunflowers and the dill, I was reminded that today New Mexico, with its culture of community, finds itself in the vanguard of a heroic sanity when it comes to keeping the coronavirus pandemic in check. Northern New Mexico, in fact, could be one of the safest places in the country, even if our state as a whole is still vulnerable because of the inexcusable behavior of politicians in neighboring states who have been taken over by a breathtaking form of boastful and militant ignorance.

Governed by ideological deniers of science who refuse to mandate wearing masks and practicing social distancing, Texas and Arizona are sinkholes of pestilence, with ongoing and catastrophic rises in the number of victims stricken by the COVID-19 virus. And when travelers from those states come into New Mexico, they leave a wake of worry, anger and fear behind them. If they won’t wear masks in public in their home states, they won’t wear them here, nor will they self-quarantine for 14 days.

Lethal stupidities abound. And some, indeed, are of an astronomically greater magnitude than even COVID-19. No other human stupidity is as nihilistic as “the bomb.” Estimates vary, of course, but some say that detonating as few as ten of them at once, or certainly less than a hundred, could plunge the earth into a nuclear winter that would destroy life as we know it.

The current world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons is at somewhere near 13,400, down from an estimated 70,000 bombs at the height of the cold war. Though most of them are in storage, nuclear warheads are in striking distance of all of us — on submarines, in missile silos, in bombers, even in “tactical” nuclear cannon shells. They’re like a virus threatening us everywhere.

To put the destructive power of this world-wide arsenal in perspective, the yield of all the bombs dropped by allied forces in World War II amounted to the equivalent of some 3.4 million tons of TNT. The largest nuclear weapon ever exploded by the United States had a yield of 15 million tons (megatons) of TNT. One bomb. It’s estimated that most nuclear weapons now have an average yield of 3 to 6 megatons a piece. Just one could flatten Manhattan. Two could make the Los Angeles Basin uninhabitable from radiation fallout for hundreds of years and probably sicken and kill people up the coast to Washington state and east to New Mexico and beyond.

But mulling these inanities in New Mexico this summer I couldn’t help but see the other side of the ironies, the side that restores my sense of balance in history, and my faith in humankind.

In Las Vegas, New Mexico, in San Miguel County, the heartland of indigenous Hispanic America, a place that white supremacists would contemptuously dismiss, citizens and businesses are more aware, more mutually protective and respectful, than any place I’ve been or heard of since March. The attitude there is wrapped up in a window sign on the Plaza that reads, “Las Vegas Strong. Hope and Caring Have Not Been Canceled.”

Everyone in the city I saw last week wore a mask. No scofflaws! No offended libertarians! Even the guys on the big Harleys were wearing masks. Cafés like Charlie’s Spic and Span have removed seats from their booths to keep social distance. There was no crowding to speak of in any store I was in. No bellyaching either. Las Vegas is a bustling, cosmopolitan place of about 14,000 people. It’s the home of Highlands University. It has more buildings on the National Registry of Historic Places than any city in the country per capita, including two magnificent historic hotels, the Plaza and the Castañeda. And it has a proud culture of neighborly care that helps create public-spirited attitudes in its people.

If you’re looking for sanity, community and the treasures of common sense, Las Vegas is the place. San Miguel County has not had a single COVID-19 death since the pandemic struck, not one.

Masks and social distancing work. Las Vegas knows it. There is no death wish there, no science-be-damned bravado. Las Vegas helps us remember that history has a way of balancing out, that the pendulum of human folly and stupidity does slow down long enough in some places for wisdom and altruism to prevail when lives depend on it. It’s a reminder gratefully received in these frustrating and often infuriating times.

*Nullius in verba: take nobody’s word for it

(Image of Las Vegas, NM by Asaavedra32)