New Mexico, the Nation, and the World

The Bad Guys Are Winning

The World

 The world order, built largely by the US after WWII and high on steroids after the collapse of the Soviets, is in serious crisis, disturbed by changes in its structure and in the even-handedness of the prevailing rules of the game.  Simply put, under US leadership the steroids--the shrill mantra to deregulate markets and denigrate government to the point where markets are less free and less serving of the public good than before; the manic rise in identity politics at the expense of governance; increasing military-industrial coziness and addiction to war; global abandonment of the search for the common good; hysterical denial of climate change, global tolerance for elite corruption, media amplification of extremist voices, etc.-- have weakened the entire neoliberal order, and it is now in danger of imminent collapse.  The pandemic has been a good test of the reliability of global institutions designed to manage them.  Except for the quick and effective vaccines, the global order has handled the pandemic no better than it did a century ago, and even in the case of vaccines, their distribution throughout the world has been terrible.  The failure lies not within scientific institutions, or bureaucracies, or even in the will to do something, but in politics, and the kinds of leadership politics has produced.  Our leaders and political processes have not been up to the task of governing at home, much less to provide needed leadership to manage problems of global scope.  A plague on both parties for this sorry state of affairs.

If the global order failed to deliver what it is supposed to during a pandemic, what about climate change, free capital markets, mass migrations of people, mischief and inhumanity in rogue states, social media madness, and other long-neglected issues?  Most ominously, what about the future of democracy as a national and global value?  Dictator wannabe's are rubbing their hands in anticipation as they watch crooks take over Mexico, Brazil and Turkey.  The recipe's for turning global failure into local authoritarianism can be read in dozens of recently published books, in the example set recently by the United States, and in studying the rise of Putin, Erdowan, Viktor Orban, Donald Trump, Hugo Chavez or Nicolas Maduro.  Rising authoritarianism, whether now or in Europe during the 1920's and 30's, is fueled by system failure, often during moments when power blances are shifting, and it usually results in even greater system failure, as any student of Mussolini, Venezuela, the Philippines, or Texas today, or Nicaragua can attest to.

Hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, aware of these failures, are now reassessing the viability of the current global order and this means reassessing their relationships with the US.  In doing so, they have options.  These are possible because of the first major change in the balance of global power since the collapse of bipolarity in 1989.  Within the next quarter century or so China will surpass the US as the leading economic power in the world.  It already has, if you measure by purchasing power rather than foreign exchange.  China's military expenditures, while not fully competitive with ours, are nevertheless growing. China's use of soft power in Latin America and Africa dwarfs our own.  American diplomats have spent thirty years lecturing smaller countries about democracy, deregulation of their economies and making the world safe for mega-mergers.  The Chinese simply offer trade deals, cultural exchanges, and sensitivity to local norms.  Should we blame Latin Americans for casting a skeptical eye at our lectures on holding clean elections or for questioning the benevolence of Facebook and Amazon, or for cutting another trade deal with China?  The same can be said of Europe after we left a bombed-out shell in much of the Middle East and Central Asia, abandoned all seriousness with NATO, and, here at home, sent in the clowns to govern.

New Mexico 

50th one more time:  This week New Mexico was at the bottom of the barrel again, this time for having the most serious shortages of hospital workers among the 50 states, in spite of having a relatively mild case of Covid 19.  This suggests a budding crisis in the state's health care system, already faltering in many rural areas and everywhere in mental health.  The problems are so institutionalized that a few excellent managers, including a highly competent Secretary of Health, and a healthy stock of good doctors, cannot make up for the dysfunctional system held together by the bailing wire of powerful lobbyists.  Don't expect much to be done about this anytime soon, regardless of who might end up in the governor's seat this year.  Both parties are under the tight control of lobbyists.  Meanwhile, life expectancy in New Mexico continues to decline except for the top 5% or so.  Why should we the voters keep allowing this to happen?

Redistricting:  

Democratic leadership in both houses and the governor's office carved up the Oil Patch into 3 congressional districts, an insult that will be remembered, if I know the East Side.  The Oil Patch has been a coherent region since oil was exploited in the 1920s, and it provided the state with $5.4 billion in revenues in 2021.  It deserves coherent leadership at the federal level.  In their giddy haste to stick it to Little Texas, however, the progressive coalition now governing the state may have helped stimulate a trend already visible in what we know about voting patterns:  Hispanic males, especially in el Norte, are beginning to shift slightly toward the Republican Party, having been forgotten and taken for granted during the past few governorships.  One of the side effects of this ever-so-cute move by progressives is that it left CD3 more competitive between the parties.  Only a minor shift in voting preferences could land the Republicans in control of this hitherto bastion of Democratic support.  All of the maps are tainted, and should be thrown out by federal courts, if Republicans choose to challenge.  If they do not, it may be a sign they have confidence they can compete on a relatively even playing field.

This brings me to a question about the Republican Party.  For the past decade the GOP has been floundering due to incredibly poor leadership in the Martinez administration and through internal bickerings within the party apparatus since then.  As I repeated to my students year after year, New Mexico works best when the two parties are competitive.  They have not been for a long time.  As the Romans used to say, fortune favors the bold.  Ambitious, thoughtful Republicans who care about New Mexico have an opening here.  The Trump years are over, and are highly unlikely to come back.  It is time for New Mexican Republicans to come home and worry about governing the state with excellence, not through crackpot ideologies invented in other places for other reasons.

La Sherifa:  I promised to address issues affecting the ability of our Sheriff to do her job.  However, I got kind of wordy here, and will reserve these comments for tomorrow.