“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln

The Revolution is being televised.

Today (Monday Feb. 1, 2021) the New York Times narrates and summarizes in an extraordinary piece of journalism, the recent Trumpian campaign's extended conspiratorial coup aimed at depriving voters of democracy in an effort to reward wealthy backers with power and the base with raw meat.

Despite the failed coup on Jan. 6, Trump republicans, senators, representatives, and state...

“At long last, have you no sense of decency, sir?” Joseph Welch, during the Army-McCarthy Hearings.

Frequently, during the Trump years, as the President ridiculed both opponents and one-time loyalists, I thought of his 50s era heritage as product of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House on Un-American activities. McCarthy accused one and all of guilt by association as cold war fellow travelers of communists. Hollywood screenwriters and directors particularly suffered the slings and arrows of this travesty. While Senator Pat McCarran of Nevada, a Catholic and virulent anti-communist exercised the prerogatives of the puppet master from above, attorney...

From a Reader:

"Why Trump? How did he make “those guys” become political?

"We’ve known those guys all our lives. We grew up with them. ( The guy chasing the Capitol policeman up the stairs is from Des Moines.) “Those guys” hated all politicians. They grumbled in their beer down at the tavern, but then went out to their duck blind or went ice fishing and on to the next day.

"Is it just the perceived loss of white privilege and the fact that Trump made overt racism acceptable? Is that why they glommed on to...

Contrary to Gil Scott-Heron, the effects of the revolution are being televised even as the propaganda passes via word of mouth from one conspiratorial whisperer to the next.
If you want to see real time video of the recent revolution on the Capitol steps and inside the chambers, watch the clips that accompany undercover reporter war correspondent Luke Mogelson’s Among the Insurrectionists (New Yorker, Jan. 25,2021). Fantastic piece of writing, reporting, and chronicle of the revolt.

Apologists for Trump voters might watch UNM Business-law professor, David Clements’ slick defense of Trumpian ideology understood as the good conscience-bad faith expression of...

“And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” —William Butler Yeats

Plato might say the presumed values of democratic citizens, regarding self-government, fail because born of the desire for money to satisfy unbridled freedom of appetite. The passion unleashed aligns itself with power, an end, like art, in itself.

Hence the citizenry degenerates into chaos and the mind detaches from the moral imagination and/ or the virtues (Courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, hope, faith, charity) and surrenders to idolatry, chimeras, and magical thinking. When the exhausted psyche re-focuses on reason, he or...

The first two installments, a brief mention, followed by a column on the Town of Taos’s failure to accommodate locals and visitors, who undergo periodic “calls of nature” has generated a great deal of interest and eyewitness testimony from regular folks, who are not “Ranee Malanga,” the town’s favorite scapegoat.

(I withhold names below due to the retaliatory tone and actions of the town manager and his evil typewriter, witness yesterday's 1800-word screed. At least Donald Trump "was" limited to 140 characters.)

To wit:

1. A prominent and successful downtown merchant referred to the “anger” expressed by both locals...

Dear Friends:

Attached I include a letter or screed of some 1800 words, more indicative of the town manager, Rick Bellis’s confusion and contradictions than a reasonable presentation of public policy. Call the Bellis “excuses” re: the calls of nature, “the big lie.”

Full disclosure: I have friends and family members involved in businesses per the Plaza and Historic District. Meanwhile, although the current Barrone administration may not be aware of it, historically, both Taos residents and tourists frequently visit say, Taos Ski Valley and Taos Plaza. While you may find the issue trivial, the Town’s failure to...

In my own lifetime, the January 6 attempted coup on America reminded me of 9//11, the multifarious complexities of the Vietnam era, President Kennedy’s assassination, and newsreels of the Holocaust shown in local movie theatres during the late 40s and early 50s. When I was a kid, I read the column mentioned above for fun and realized how humor serves as therapy, a lesson embodied by living among Taosenos, who practice the arts of resistance despite the tragic character of El Norte. The recent attack on the Congress in the Capitol in Washington D.C. by costumed White Supremacists...

Practice “Saying Goodbye”

The American government has been exposed, currently, as a socio-cultural feckless giant when it comes to health, safety, and the public welfare. The self-inflicted death toll of the pandemic accelerates. Statewide, we’re usually neck and neck when it comes to the bottom in terms of education and child health so it comes as no surprise, as a reader points out, that Nevada (29%) and New Mexico (27%) are vying for first place in the race for first place at the bottom of the barrel in the competition for the highest rates of Covid hospitalization.

Last spring I...

Death Dealers V. Lucky Lifers

To My Friends:

We have escaped the autocrat, thanks to a majority of voters who represent the multicultural demos and decency of America and voted for “Biden Knows Best.” The hard right, however, Republican Senators, Trumpists, and the collective if resentful worshippers of conspiracy and the reality TV avatar, voted for the Cult of Covid. Though he escaped the box only to take up residence in the White House, now he’s been rejected. But like Freddie in “The Nightmare on Mainstreet,” Trump threatens in the sequel to return.

The right wing “resenttiment” embodied by the...