ACCOUNTS, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND COPS IN LAS CRUCES (ONLY PART 1?)

    From the Mayor and City Councilors to the City Manager and LCPD and LCFD Chiefs, we hear much about accountability.  Yet I know of no instance of accountability.  I do not know what it takes to hold anyone accountable, who holds anyone accountable, how anyone is held accountable, and whether anything happens if and when anyone is held accountable, and, if so, what.  So I do not know what accountability means, probably because the word has been rendered operationally meaningless.  I suspect that the city’s powers-that-be like it that way because vagueness about accountability makes it unlikely.

    I learned that accountability is an empty political slogan after trying with a formal complaint, blogs, letters, and meetings to hold the LCPD accountable for five false allegations of animal code violations.  In such a trifling matter, accountability should have been no big deal.  In theory, the LCPD should have required the ACO to account for them.  Either the ACO’s commander or an IA investigator should have asked the 10-year veteran to justify each allegation with evidence or proof.  Did you see the owner release pets or let them run loose?  Did you see excessive pet waste?  Did you establish that the owner lacked valid permits, licenses, or shot records?  And, if the justifications failed—if they did not reflect the truth—, the IA interviewer should have recommended retracting the warning notice from my police file and dealing with the ACO.

 

    In practice, neither interviewer asked these questions or showed a concern for the truth or falsity of the allegations.  Both ignored LCPD policy (103.17 Truthfulness).  With truth ruled out, anything else could be ruled in.  In a 11 September 2019 memorandum to the Police Chief, the Chief Codes Administrator defended the ACO by stating that the warning notice “consisted of the possibility,” not the actuality, of the alleged violations.  In a 5 February 2020 memorandum to the Police Chief, IA Sergeant (now-Deputy Police Chief) Sean Mullen reported irrelevant material and perverse excuses in the ACO’s account of events to avoid or obscure false allegations and clear the ACO of misconduct.  He also discredited me by misrepresenting my views and deploring my blogs refuting the ACO’s story and false allegations.  Both memorandums reveal LCPD policies and practices which the LCPD accepts as suitable in investigations, despite departures from LCPD policy or accepted legal principles.  LCPD Chiefs Patrick Gallagher, Miguel Dominguez, and Jeremy Story, knowing Mullen’s performance, have done nothing to address it, amend LCPD policies or practices, or clear my file.  Accountability, anyone?

 

    Three major LCPD failures in handling my complaint should discredit any LCPD claim to investigative integrity.  One, although Mullen concluded that there was no evidence or proof of the alleged violations, he did not recommend that the LCPD revoke the warning notice retained in my file.  Two: IA closed out my complaint by misrepresenting it as a complaint about the ACO and omitting any mention of the allegations.  Three: under guidance from the City Attorney, the City Manager, after first admitting error, reversed himself and refused to admit error (she even asserted that the alleged violations had occurred and were well documented.)  These failures mock the basics of law and law enforcement, and make accountability impossible and abuse of citizens inevitable.

 

    Mullen’s past does not augur well for the present or the future.  As an IA investigator, Sergeant Mullen did not hold the ACO accountable and was not held accountable.  He tacitly tolerated some perverse police practices and deviant legal principles.  As Deputy Police Chief responsible for IA investigations, he is unlikely to hold others accountable or to be held accountable.  The details of his conduct of this investigation show the police tendency in response to criticism to put protection of the LCPD above a citizen’s rights or public service.  In this connection, reports like Mullen’s play a significant role in skewing the police auditor’s reviews of cases and complaints.

 

    Mullen’s 9-page memorandum is repetitious and padded with details about the ACO’s site visit and phone call with me.  Few details are relevant to the truth or falsity of the alleged violations.  Mullen gave the ACO opportunities to explain the allegations away and exonerate himself, and gave himself opportunities to disparage my motives and means in protesting them.  In his one-sided investigation, Mullen accepted the ACO’s account at face value, made no attempt to confirm or refute it, and made no attempt to compare his account of events with mine.  Indeed, he never contacted me during his investigation.  Mullen defends an officer and attacks a citizen—contrary to best professional practice in police investigations but maybe compliant with LCPD policies.

 

    Mullen’s memorandum has four major sections: “COMPLAINT SUMMARY,” “FACTS,” “ANCILLARY ISSUES,” and “FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS.”  In “FACTS,” Mullen stresses the ACO’s story and excuses, all unchallenged, and excludes my facts.  In “ANCILLARY ISSUES,” Mullen buries his conclusion about the alleged violations, which are central to my complaint: “Mr. Hays’ warning notice had several violations marked to which there was no physical evidence or proof an actual violation had occurred.”  By burying this conclusion, he makes it unlikely that anyone would notice or act on it.  Copied on this memorandum, his IA Chief ignored the violations in her close-out letter.  Handling an adverse complaint by hiding it in this manner is probably LCPD practice, if not policy.

 

    Mullen accepts the AOC’s mistakes in making allegations.  He says that the violations were “checked based off an anonymous caller’s complaint and ACO standard practice.”  Both officers assume that the complaint is true, ignore that an anonymous complaint is no basis for alleging a violation, and disregard that the purpose of an investigation is to ascertain the truth or falsity of the complaint.  (Note: IA does not investigate anonymous complaints about police.)  Both fail to consider that, when owners are not present to show proof of permits, licenses, and shots “upon request,” allegations of code violations are not justified.  Both show no concern that LCPD policy or “standard practice” urges or allows officers to allege violations even if they have no evidence or proof or are too busy or unable to check the pertinent records—in other words, to lie.

 

    Mullen also accepts some oddities in the ACO’s account and excuses, and his muddled logic.  He reports the ACO saying that “it wasn’t that he saw violations, but he must still educate the owner about the city ordinances.”  But, if he saw no violations, he knew that none occurred and so had no need to educate the owner, who must be presumed to know and comply with the ordinances.  Mullen also reports that the ACO explained one alleged violation by saying that “he was unsure if there was any animal waste in the parts [of the yard] he couldn’t view/access.”  An officer’s state of mind—uncertainty—is no basis for alleging a violation; alleging a violation on this basis assumes that the owner is guilty until he/she proves his/her innocence (so, too, in the case of absent owners).  This bizarre statement raises questions about the ACO’s, Mullen’s, and the LCPD’s understanding of and fidelity to fundamental principles of American law.

 

    Mullen shows the same lack of appreciation of such principles in the “FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS” section of his memorandum, a section initially redacted when it was released to me.  He expresses his irritation that “Mr. Hays…protested the facts in emails, blogs, phone calls and meetings.”  But, since I was right about the facts, as Mullen himself recognizes, I had every right to be outraged by five false allegations of code violations and to protest the injustice of them.  Plainly, Mullen does not like people exercising their First Amendment rights, at least when they expose LCPD mistakes and especially when he knows that the LCPD has doubled and tripled down on them instead of admitting the truth and correcting them.  In his emotional statement disregarding Constitutional rights, Mullen reveals his intemperate temperament.  It shows him to have been unfit for his past, to be unfit for his present position, and likely to be unfit for the position to which he likely aspires.  But, if Mullen is not held accountable, his prospects for advancement remain undiminished.

TWO NOTES FROM THE OVERGROUND

Note One: Absenteeism and the Flight from Education

 

    According to a recent article in the New York Times, absenteeism in public schools has dramatically increased among all demographic groups since 2020.  The article explains that covid-induced disruptions broke the routines of attendance, academics, clubs, and athletics.  It also describes the many and varied failed efforts to significantly reduce absenteeism in the aftermath.  But covid is not the answer to this and every other problem in the country’s public-education system.

 

    When I arrived in Las Cruces in 2007, perhaps the biggest concern in Las Cruces as well as the state was the high drop-out rate, the ultimate in absenteeism.  Everyone had a solution; no one knows which one or ones worked, but the rate went down.  So, too, did academic standards, with New Mexico recently confirming its lowest-in-the-nation public-school ranking of all states and the District of Columbia.

 

    The articles which I have read for the past two decades suggest an array of solutions: merit pay (often confused with pay for performance), student-test-score-based teacher evaluation, Common Core State Standards, small schools, fewer students per classroom, charter schools,  early childhood education, and, of course, higher teacher salaries—to many for me to recall them all.  Missing from the list: reforms of schools of education, higher standards for teachers, independent testing of their subject-matter competence, higher academic standards for students (and alternative programs for those who fail to meet them), and open shop for teachers from other fields (e.g., journalists, engineers, environmentalists, veterans, etc.).

 

    I believe that much absenteeism and many discipline problems reflect boredom with teachers who do not care about them, do not know their subjects, or teach perfunctorily.  Long after the advent of women’s liberation, one unintended consequence has been the disappearance of the best and the brightest from teaching, especially in the elementary grades.  The worst and the dullest are left to introduce the major subjects—English, social studies/history, mathematics, and science—with the notable result that more than half of all students fail to achieve proficiency by fourth or by eighth grade—one reason for dropouts before ninth grade.  If students cannot learn to read before fifth grade, they are much less likely to read to learn in and after fifth grade.  Early childhood education, even if it succeeds, is not likely to have lasting effect as the mediocrity of elementary school teachers erodes much, if not all, of what it might have achieved.

 

    There is, of course, more to the flight from education than the majority of mediocre teachers and mediocre curriculums.  American parents do not want their children to study too hard.  More generally, American society has forever been an anti-intellectual society.  Although it recognizes those distinguished by their accomplishments in their disciplines, it also scorns experts as out-of-touch elitists.  Populist scorn of information and intelligence appears in the virtue imputed to “regular” Joes and Janes with up-from-poverty biographies of hardships overcome, as if such backgrounds are, in themselves, qualifications for dealing with increasingly complex, often highly technical issues.  Americans believe that “gut feelings” are a good guide, or at least a better one, to national well-being.  We may soon have a chance to see, if Donald Trump, notably uninformed, inconsistent, and impulsive, has a second chance to show what boorishness and barbarism can do for or to us.

 

Note Two: Ersatz Patriotism and Its Perilous

 

    Over twelve million people recently watched the rematch of last year’s women’s college finalists for the national basketball championship.  Louisiana State University, led by All-American Angel Sweet, and University of Iowa, led by All-American Caitlin Clark, both played their games.  Iowa and Clark had a far better night and a better outcome than LSU and Sweet.  I greatly admire both women, as players and as people.  Last year’s kerfuffle about Sweet’s trashing Clark at the end of the game was much ado about nothing except for race-based attacks on the LSU star.  Clark responded that Sweet did nothing more to her then she has done to Sweet because trash talk on the court is part of the game between highly competitive athletes.  She added, and Sweet later allowed, that off the court, they get along just fine.  Best friends, no; but friendly and respectful, yes.

 

    Such a good show in the game and such good sportsmanship before, during, and after, was sullied by the Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, who stated that players who were not present for the singing of the National Anthem should lose their scholarships.  Landry is a lawyer, so he probably has heard and possibly has read the Constitution of the United States, which just happens to protect free speech.  Supreme Courts, at least up to the Roberts’s Court, have applied the First Amendment to such acts as burning the flag, wearing it on the seat of one’s pants, or using other means to show disrespect for it.  Presumably, it would protect absence from the ritualistic singing of the National Anthem.

 

    Going farther, I wonder why it is sung at sporting events.  I know that the words written by Francis Scott Key in 1814 became the National Anthem in 1931.  Which means the American people lacked, but survived the lack of, a national anthem for over a century.  How did they do it?  We had sporting events before 1931.  Babe Ruth hit his then-record 60 home runs in the 1927 season without the benefit or such vocalizing.  I know that the National Anthem is played before sporting events and is taken so seriously that professional football players who kneel instead of stand for it can lose their jobs.  In that dishonorable tradition, Landry made his suggestion to punish those who were not present when it was sung.  He did not know or care that the LSU women’s basketball team in this year and previous years has spent the minutes before the game in their locker room for last-minute instruction and a prayer, not for a political statement at all.

 

    Landry’s suggestion assumes that punishing these student-athletes will promote red-blooded patriotism in all good Americans.  It reflects the common recourse of Republican officials to punish behavior which, despite Constitutional protection, they find offensive or deem unpatriotic.  We can expect more such suggestions—personhood at conception, for one—on a national scale if Republicans succeed in electing top-of-the-ticket and down-the-ticket candidates.  Count on them to use coercion—Trump wants U.S. troops to suppress U.S. citizens if they protest his re-election or policies—to advance their interests or enforce their positions—the truth, the law, and the Constitution be damned. 

REFLECTIONS ON OIR’S FIFTH SEMI-ANNUAL AUDIT REPORT ON THE LAS CRUCES PD

A year ago, when OIR presented its oral report to City Council, its spokesperson emphasized that citizen-police interactions were excellent.  It turned out that OIR had not talked with any citizen who had interacted with the police.  OIR presented as fact what was exclusively the LCPD’s self-assessment of its citizen-police interactions.  By fronting for the LCPD, OIR diminished its credibility at the bargain-basement price of $75,000, for which Las Cruces got its whitewash of the LCPD.

 

This year, I skimmed, I did not scrutinize, OIR’s entire report, Fifth Semi-Annual Audit Report (March 2024), but I trust my sampling is reliable.  In it, OIR admits its past whitewashing: “Our scope of work…incorporates elements of transparency” (p. 5).  This addition to its scope of work means that OIR’s previous scope of work lacked “elements of transparency.”  But many observers knew as much without being told so now.

 

A lack of specificity amounts to whitewashing.  “The Internal Affairs investigator made effective use of the Force Cadre’s findings as a foundation for further inquiry and, ultimately, accountability for the involved officer” (p. 29).  What “accountability” means is vague, and this vagueness leaves the public ignorant of what it means in a use-of-force situation.  Was it a slap-on-the-wrist letter of reprimand or something more serious?  It is hard to think that OIR is serious about any of those “elements of transparency” when it does not illuminate LCPD’s performance with specific and important details.

 

Hints of pro-police bias recur.  For one example, in its discussion of 12 external complaints, OIR urges that “it is useful to set this in perspective: in this period, LCPD responded to 85,908 calls for service” (p. 15).  OIR’s perspective is clear; diminish the importance of the problem by emphasizing the small number of complaints without regard for their significance—a common ploy in institutional defensiveness.  OIR does not consider how many complaints may not have been made in a society with a culture more noted for acquiescence than assertion or action.  The very low number of only 12 complaints out of nearly 86,000 service could suggest a far greater number.

 

For another example, OIR asserts that “it is true that body-worn camera recordings have had a profound evidentiary effect on the discipline process, and can sometimes definitively establish that a given allegation of misconduct did not occur” (p. 30).  OIR presumably means that the misconduct, not the allegation, did not occur.  It does not say that body cams can establish that the alleged misconduct did, in fact, occur.  Any honest auditor would have stated that body cams can establish whether alleged misconduct did or did not occur.  But OIR is so biased that it cannot make such a professionally balanced statement.

 

Count me as a skeptic of OIR’s work.  I suspect that whitewashing police departments is its business model.  After all, telling unwelcome truths might cost it a renewable contract, even for only $75,000.  Obvious questions are, has ORI ever severely criticized a police department, and, if so, was it kept on the job as part of an effort to reform it?

 

And count me a skeptic of the City Council’s commitment to accountability and transparency when it persists in fobbing off such biased work as reflecting a serious concern about police performance.  Incremental tinkering with OIR’s scope of work is not going to earn it the trust of citizens who do not trust the LCPD or whose daily encounters with the police are unsatisfactory.  It simply allows Council members to feel safe a little while longer from having to deal with unprofessional policing and to feel good about themselves for presenting themselves as if they care about public safety.

ABORTION: CONCEPTION OR EXCEPTION(S)

My blogs on abortion go back to 2009.  In 15 years, I have written 14 blogs dealing primarily or exclusively with abortion.  I am not obsessed by the topic; I find it simply fascinating because abortion is the nexus of issues of culture, history, philosophy, politics, and religion.  For an intellectual like me, no subject gets better than that.

 

The central issue of abortion is the definition of the beginning of life.  But there is no “the” definition; any definition depends on its context, usually religious, but sometimes moral or philosophical, in a particular culture at a particular historical moment.  A case in point is Catholic doctrine.  In the High Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas established the Church’s position from the 13^th to the 19^th centuries.  He defined life as commencing at “ensoulment,” that is, when God introduced the soul into the fetus, as indicated by “quickening,” or fetal movement.  Catholic scholars in the 16^th and 17^th centuries argued that life begins at conception, and the Church adopted this position in the 19^th century and maintains it today.  The Church’s definition of the beginning of life is a verbal stipulation made according to its contemporary theological interests.  Its shifting definitions of the beginning of life mocks its rigid dogmatic stance on the issue.

 

Other faiths have different definitions.  Depending on the denomination, Protestants have definitions ranging from conception to ensoulment to birth.  Jews, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, or Reconstructionist, share the same definition: the moment of breach.  Muslims define the beginning of life as quickening.  I am told that Navajos define the beginning of personhood as the moment a child first laughs.  Of course, other religions have their own definitions, some like, some unlike, these.

 

These are the basic religious facts.  The basic political fact in America is that, under the First Amendment to the Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  However, the courts have handled the issue of abortion badly in two ways.  One, they have consistently avoided viewing abortion as a practice regarded, treated, even justified, according to different religious definitions about the beginning of life.  Two, they have made rulings which, since they are not congressional, but judicial, violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Constitution.  For stipulating any particular definition amounts to an “establishment of religion” and thereby places restrictions on the “free exercise” of religion.  The central flaw of Justice Blackmun’s opinion in Roe v. Wade and of Justice Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is that they approve what the First Amendment prohibits: a necessarily religious definition of the beginning of life.

 

The result is that the courts have effectively reinforced society’s divide between abortion as a religious issue about individual rights and abortion as a political issue about government power.  The certainty that the divide is entrenched and will remain so rests on the incommensurability of the two entrenched positions, one religious, the other political.  The strengths of these positions will fluctuate, and no permanent resolution will result so long as the parties to the controversy do not re-think their positions.

 

The clearest example of this division of rights versus power is the controversy following the decision of the Alabama Supreme Court which virtually outlawed in vitro fertilization (IVF).  This court ruled that life begins at conception and implied that any destruction done to the zygote (though commonly called embryo) thereafter amounted to homicide.  The furious reaction across the country compelled Republicans to declare their support for IVF and to initiate legislation to protect IVF as a legitimate medical procedure.  This court was clear about the religious underpinnings of its opinion; Republicans were clear about the political pressure prompting its proposed legislation.

 

However, the court-instigated controversy cannot be quieted or quelled by hurried legislative jiggling and juggling in an attempt to appease both parties.  For those who believe that life begins at conception and must be protected thereafter, the zygotes are life forms which must be protected in any condition and in all circumstances, whether in utero or in storage.  For others, especially those for whom IVF is the only means to have naturally born children, the risks that storage presents to those life forms, that the number of zygotes may be greater than the number of desired children, or that the zygotes may be subject to medical use, damage, or disposal, are risks worth taking.  The contradiction between the definition of the beginning of life and its sanctity, and the desirability of IVF regardless of the risks to zygotes will continue the instability of legislative and judicial responses to the problems which the issue of abortion presents.

 

Abortion demands a choice between antithetical positions: conception or exceptions.  Those believing that life begins at conception can make no principled exception for IVF and the possibility of “murdering” one or more zygotes.  Those believing that IVF is allowable cannot believe that life begins at conception and justify the possibility of “murdering” zygotes because of the desire for a born child.  For allowing such a desire to excuse “murdering” zygotes opens the door to allowing other justifications for ending potential life by aborting zygotes, embryos, or fetuses.  Indeed, any exception means that there is no rational basis for making exceptions in some cases and not in others; and not making them in all.  Those refusing to choose one or the other because they want both have only coercion to overpower the illogicality and instability of their indecision.

 

The only realistic resolution of this controversy is to abandon a narrow sectarian definition of the beginning of life and to admit that there are many religious definitions of the beginning of life, all of which claim to respect human life as religions variously define it.  For example, Judaism has increasingly restrictive laws detailing the conditions and circumstances under which an abortion is permissible as gestation progresses.  The alternative is a repressive theological autocracy which mutilates the Constitution.  In matters pertaining to abortion, the courts should render decisions and legislatures should enact laws which discourage people from meddling in other peoples' lives and from trying to use the government to do their meddling.  Such judicial decisions would eliminate a lot of unnecessary conflict and avoid a lot of human misery.

SELECTING AN NMSU PRESIDENT: A LETTER TO THE REGENTS AND A COMMENT

 24-03-07

NMSU Regents:

 

I have read with interest the resumes and DEI statements of the five finalists for the presidency of NMSU.  I am disappointed with the search committee and its choices.

 

Under its heading “Opportunities and Expectations,” the search committee stated that it would ask the candidates “to address the following significant priorities:

 

·       Preserve the land-grant, spacegrant mission of New Mexico State University and elevate distinctive attributes.

·       Strengthen commitments to provide a student-centered experience and grow enrollment.

·       Grow fundraising opportunities and engage with the broader community.

·       Foster a sense of belonging and inclusion.

·       Provide leadership that demonstrates understanding and commitment to the principles of shared governance and responsibility.

·       Champion academic excellence and advance research and creative activity.

 

Given the phrase “significant priorities,” I assumed that the search committee’s list of priorities itself would reflect NMSU’s or the search committee’s priorities.  So it came as a shock that, of the six priorities, academics—“Champion academic excellence and advance research and creative activity”—ranked last.  The search committee seems to discount NMSU’s status as an academic institution, with academics constituting its primary rationale.  Instead, it ranks more highly the other five priorities, all of which are ancillary, though important, considerations, in no evident order.

 

The same criticism applies to the “Professional Qualifications and Qualities.”  Seventeen items are listed in no evident order and in no grouping of related items.  This lack of ranking and grouping suggests the work of an overly large committee of 24 members.  It seems that every suggestion was accepted and added to the lists as it arose.

 

I believe that only one of the five candidates has anything resembling the kind of academic background and university experience in academic administration which would well serve NMSU.

 

The inadequacies of the “DEI Statements” of all candidates reveal their deficiencies.  Two statements name no minorities who might be addressed by DEI efforts.  A third made passing references to a “Hispanic-Serving Institution” and the “LGBTQIA communities.”  A fourth mentioned Hispanics and Blacks or African Americans.  A fifth mentioned African American, Asian-American, Hispanic/Latin X, and LGBTQIA groups.  None of them mentioned religious groups which are sometimes marginalized, among others: Muslims and Jews.  In short, none of the candidates seems to have the breadth of perspective required for diversity as a pre-condition of equity and inclusion (and for the fourth priority).  Their myopia is the more notable because of today’s political issues and campus demonstrations.

 

In sum, I believe that none of these candidates, if selected for the presidency, can elevate NMSU academically or improve the institutional quality of life.  I wish it were otherwise because mediocrity begets mediocrity.

 

Michael L. Hays

 

 

24-03-09

 

An additional comment not sent to the regents on the candidates’ DEI statements.

 

Without exception, all five of their statements detail work on committees and in programs.  This professional activity involves collaborative work with others, is mostly administrative, and only imperfectly identifies individual responsibilities and contributions.  Although the candidates might have undertaken such work because of a personal commitment as well as a professional obligation, their statements mention little personal involvement based on empathy or a concern for social justice.  With one exception, an embarrassing one—one candidate mentions making “close friends” of two Hispanic students at NMSU but lost track of them when they dropped out—, none stated a DEI commitment based on personal experiences with people of different races, religions, gender orientations, and backgrounds.  The exclusive focus on the larger minorities, blacks and Hispanics, and on women is blind to smaller minorities, unacknowledged and presumably overlooked—one reason for questioning the candidates’ understanding of and commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.  A DEI statement reporting the discharge of a professional obligation does not do much to signify such a commitment.

TRUMP: CHICKEN LITTLE OR LITTLE CHICKEN--OR BOTH?

We know the traditional children’s bedtime story about Chicken Little warning that the sky is falling, so I shall not repeat it.  The updated version, given at a 24 February session of the recent gathering of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee, in National Harbor, Md., is Donald Trump’s.  As reported in a New York Times article, much more than a falling sky will befall America if Joe Biden is re-elected in November.

 

In Trump’s apocalyptic re-telling of the old tale, Biden’s re-election to a second 4-year term would bring multiple, overwhelming disasters to America.  Here it is:

 

If Mr. Biden is re-elected for a second four-year term, Mr. Trump warned in his speech, Medicare will “collapse.”  Social Security will “collapse.”  Health care in general will “collapse.”  So, too, will public education.  Millions of manufacturing jobs will be “choked off into extinction.”  The U.S. economy will be “starved of energy” and there will be “constant blackouts.”  The Islamist militant group Hamas will “terrorize our streets.”  There will be a third world war and America will lose it.  America itself will face “obliteration.”

 

Fortunately, Trump offers an antidote of comfort—his promise of a better tomorrow if he is re-elected after an interruption of 4 years.

 

Mr. Trump promised on Saturday that if he is elected America will be “richer and safer and stronger and prouder and more beautiful than ever before.”  Crime in major cities?  A thing of the past.  “Chicago could be solved in one day,” Mr. Trump said.  “New York could be solved in a half a day there.”

 

As experts in many fields know, many children’s stories are scary as all get out.  If another person’s hallucinations can scare you, Trump’s hallucinations must terrify you.

 

It is one of the easiest things in the world to dream up apocalypses to make ignorant, insecure people fearful and desperate for relief.  So it is with Trump scaring the bejesus out of his gullible followers.  Although Trump is not a preacher but a cult leader, he and his gulls resemble generations of hellfire-and-damnation or health-and-wealth preachers and their credulous Christian followers.  They have not learned from previous fleecings and, instead of changing their ways, seek the next Chosen One.  For Trump, his story has a happy ending, win or lose the election.  Making chumps of those whom he swindles for self-enrichment or legal expenses, he will laugh all the way to the bank.  Thus ends the story of Trump as Chicken Little.

 

The other story is of Trump as Little Chicken.  It is another of the easiest things in the world for weaklings to dream up heroic tales of their holding up the falling sky, of warding off apocalypse.  In a second term, Trump says not only that he will do it, but also that he will do it easily, in little time.  He asserts and likely believes that he alone can solve crime in Chicago in one day, in New York in half a day.  How does the Little Chicken do it?  Apparently, by saying so (i.e., issuing an Executive Order), just as God did in creating the world in six days and resting on the seventh.  All God had to do was say let there be something or other, and, lo and behold, it was so.  Only after God said it, did He pronounce it good—proof that he was winging it, not knowing that it was good before he created it.  Likewise, Trump’s phone call to Zelensky, which he later called “perfect,” not just “good.”  Trump presents himself as the god who his chumps think he is.

 

Here is where the Little Chicken part comes in; Trump chickens out.  All chickens have foot spurs for fighting; Trump’s bone spurs, which prevented him from fighting in Vietnam, also prevent him from fighting the apocalypse.  First, he fails to say how, if elected, he will save America from multiple collapsing systems or end crime in a day or less in at least two major metropolises.  To be fair, if all he-as-god has to do is say something to make it so, there is not much “how” to explain.  But it should be easy enough for him to just say that he will speak up, then do so when the time comes.

 

Second, he refuses, if not elected, to prevent for the good of America the collapses of Medicare, Social Security, health care generally, public education; the demise of millions of manufacturing jobs, insufficient energy, and blackouts;—and get this—the roving bands of Hamas terrorists in our streets;—and more—a Third World War, which will “obliterate” America when it loses.  To be fair, Trump has never done anything for the public good if there is nothing in it for him; he remains consistently transactional.  But, if he-as-god claims that saving America is so easy, it must be that he is chicken-hearted because he fears revealing his inability to live up to his imagined, pretended heroism, the weakling’s dream.

 

I use a children’s bedtime story as a framework (flimsy) for humorous satire (a flop) to poke fun at Trump, his implausible proposals, and his pompous pronouncements.  I might have written directly about a very sick but very dangerous man who imagines himself as possessing a divine right as president, thinks himself the law above the law, and is a threat to all living under his rule: Hispanics first, LGBTQ+ and Muslims next, other minorities eventually, Jews last.  This nightmare is a long way from my childhood bedtime stories but not from a childhood nightmare.  When I was 10, I knew enough about fascist Germany to imagine that I might live long enough in America to die in a concentration camp—a possibility, thanks to Trump, not unimaginable today.

 

 Indeed, my nightmare has enhanced vividness because of the fascist propensities of Las Cruces officials, especially councilors who purport to be Progressives.  They—Abeyta, BenComo, Corran, Flores, Gandara, Graham—accepted the creation or operation of the secret Public Safety Select Committee.  Three Councilors on the PSSC were Gabe Vasquez, incumbent Congressman from the 2^nd District and candidate for re-election; Abeyta, who took his place, lost her race for a second term, and now does make-work for Sheriff Kim Stewart; and Gandara, who lost her race for mayor.  Others on the PSSC were mayors, a city manager, city attorneys, a city clerk, police chiefs or deputies, fire chiefs or deputies, and others on call.  Such a clandestine committee focusing on police policy and practice is the prototype of an organization which can evolve into a clandestine cell threatening, not protecting, citizens and their rights, especially in a little city like Las Cruces, which cares little about good, honest government, with transparency and accountability.  Thus, to avoid both after its unexpected exposure, the Mayor suddenly and secretly disbanded the PSSC, and he and all Councilors refused my two emailed requests to explain why.  So, given my understanding of the latent antisemitism of many city officials, particularly all three police chiefs, I have the nightmare of being among the first to go to camp.