The Arts of Politics

The art of politics is a delicate composition, an art that weaves together the dark and light threads of the tapestry, composed of the human relations that tie a community together. Just as human beings have an urge to express themselves creatively, fixing up their property, building a house, or making an art object, so human beings also have an urge to form social contracts, a town or county government with schools, an electric Coop or a hospital. In the polis or the political community, citizens vote for a government meant to curb the excesses so that individuals might flourish peacefully. One person’s rights end where another’s begin.

In Taos eccentrics express themselves, thanks to the “tyranny of tolerance” in both forceful and idiosyncratic ways. In comparison to mainstream America, there is a kind of exemplary opportunity for personal expression. We are used to personal feuds, disagreeing on the way to resolve issues or how to proceed toward common resolutions and the common good. The judicial system provides some checks and balances for individuals even if the courts are more political and bureaucratic than is commonly known.

But when disagreements over public policy become paramount, we have elections to resolve the matters. In addition to the law, a written document or constitution, we have customs, unwritten ways of living and behaving in the community. In a community ethos citizens try and preserve a balance between individual expression and the traditions, which we honor because history and culture knit a multicultural community together.

You might say the indigenous local languages, both Tiwa and Spanish, are signs of local culture just as the Blue Lake watershed, acequias and  land grants as well as the extant Taos Pueblo homeland indicate the living history of the region. Further, the recent designation of the Rio Grande del Norte Monument is symbolic of the way all residents revere the geographical beauty of place or the ancient arts of hunting and fishing as both recreational and necessary activities. How many times have we uttered or heard the words from political leaders that “we live in a beautiful community.”

Even as the notion of beauty resides in the eye of the beholder, the expression denotes symmetry and something unfathomable. The notion of beauty elevates the eyes above the seemingly disparate patchwork of people and geography and acknowledges some good greater than the individual. Whether you look out over the mesas, down into the Gorge, up at the mountains, surely the spirit of nature or the divine moves, however briefly, your very soul. Similarly, one revels in the patchwork community itself, a collage of differing people and traditions, the spirit of which can be seen as readily at Taos Pueblo on San Geronimo Day, on the Plaza during Fiesta, or on any day at a grocery store or the post office, a coffee shop or bar.

We live in a community that is uncommonly diverse and culturally rich.

Yet, as we know the connections are fragile. Physical beauty is easily disturbed, whether by drought or fire, or the community by social upheaval when political forces ignore the delicate threads that bind one group to another. We have seen an argument between town and county over the best way to proceed in terms of public safety at the Command Center and the political-economic-cultural traditions made manifest by the town’s attempt to annex local villages, acequias, and neighborhoods, threatening the economic and cultural stability of county government.

All the candidates both mayoral and council have called for collaboration.

Yet we have a mayor running for re-election whose very record embodies an attack on the community he was elected to serve. Whether it is the historic acequia culture, responsibility for public safety i.e. E911-Dispatch, or putting the interests of real estate development over the interests of local culture, you have a man, admittedly a Legend, who is also trying to get re-elected by grafting modern political attack ads onto the local political culture. The aspiring mayor has help from mainstream newspapers and radio, who will do anything for a buck or to protect their bank balances.

And two candidates for council, who also sell real estate, support the mayor in his quest. Like most people I have friends and acquaintances, who are politicians and realtors but I consider most of these folks fairly modest in their approach to community, more aware of the customs and traditions that we all abide by—unlike the extremists, who support the mayor.

The drive-by radio attack ads are a turning point in the history of the community, wherein you have self-serving politicians and the media burning up the threads that bind community together. Political operatives discovered long ago that attack ads turn off voters and institutionalize the power of the status quo. Similarly gamblers and drug dealers discovered long ago how powerful their potions and how weak their victims were to resist the temptation.

Taosenos, however, are a stiff-necked people. I believe they will turn against the media-driven politicos, who try to buy their offices with outside endorsements and vile personal attacks on outspoken citizens and decent candidates for office. For the incumbent mayor and council have attacked the community itself: see annexation, command center, and parking meters. When everything is permitted the democratic process becomes trivial but in Taos everything is upside down and unpredictable. And I think that, in the name of common decency, Taosenos will turn the mayor inside out on Tuesday, March 4.