The Moving Finger Writes

What Happened to the  Post-Cold War American Empire?

 The ongoing shipwreck of the American Empire is gradually coming into focus.  Like all previous empires the term "hubris" hovers in the air as we remember the "Mission Accomplished" sign on the aircraft carrier, and the "I alone can fix it" remark by Donald Trump on July 21, 2016 during a moment Paul Manafort and other Americans were enabling Russian hackers to infect the sacred grounds of legitimacy in the arena of American presidential elections.  In truth those sacred grounds had been tainted by the Supreme Court in 2000 when the justices announced a verdict so partisan they appended a note to the decision declaring it ineligible for the imprematur of stare decisis, a legitimizing piece of the American creed since Marbury v. Madison in 1803.  That began a trend within the court of ignoring stare decisis when it didn't fit the prevailing partisan views of the majority of justices.  Clearly, one of the compartments damaged as the iceberg sliced through the Titanic of the Empire was the one labeled "respect for the rule of law," which protects leaders against hubris.  Lest this be seen as a partisan statement on my part, both parties abandoned established law long ago to maximize partisan advantage during redistricting every ten years.  One outcome of this is the increasing division among legislators along purely partisan lines.  That courts enabled this is only more evidence of generalized disrespect for the rule of law. Students of decline in Ancient Greece and Rome will find this familiar:  it all begins internally.

For me the most surprising casualty was the abandoned compartment known as "the authority of truth," shattered decisively when the incumbent president denied he had lost re-election and promoted the use of clorox to protect against Covid.  But here, too, there were preludes:  climate change had been denied for decades before the forest fires and hurricanes hit us.  Torture was redefined two decades ago to exclude a textbook example of torture known as water-boarding.  And a lack of respect for truth is evident in the systematic dismissal of scientific expertise and the increasing tendency for politicians in both parties to rely on election strategists instead of experts to determine policy decisions.

New Mexico for the most part has been spared from hubris and disrespect for the truth.  The political class is highly dependent on the knowledge industry, health care, the labs, Intel, and the military bases.  These institutions may play games with the truth as they lobby in Santa Fe, but they deeply resent political interference in the content of their work, which rests on trust to reach an agreement about facts.  The authority of demonstrable truth, even, at times, in the legislature, has held firm.  This places New Mexico in a competitive position vis a vis many other states as we view the future of states in the Post-American-Empire era.  If you locate here politicians won't meddle with your thoughts.

As for hubris, aside from moments in the Richardson administration--and remember, Big Bill was from Boston and learned his spanish through his mother in Mexico City--there has been little evidence of hubris out of control.  A major reason for this is the unhappy situation of New Mexico's ranking among states along many different measures.  A governor may be able to point to a few relatively trivial accomplishments, but s/he cannot escape the underlying, usually unspoken, and overarching issue:  New Mexico is last in education, last in child poverty, with a declining age of death, an health care system in need of a serious upgrade, and an economy that promises few choice jobs or careers for the kinds of college graduates New Mexico produces.  Whatever pride a leader might have in legislative success, the state of the state in relation to other states prevents this pride from becoming hubris.  This, too, could become a positive, competitive talking point--we try harder--but only if the political class makes clear it intends to tackle these issues with seriousness, something that has not been the case for well over two decades.  On the contrary, this year teachers will get a sizeable raise without the slightest hint of accountability for the bottom place New Mexico holds among states in student achievement.  Rewarding poor performance is not something you want to see in a state you might think about moving to.