thomas leverett weblog: November 2018

Saturday, November 10, 2018

In welding shop, with sexy hoe

Thursday, November 08, 2018

NM-2 One more update

Miracle of miracles, the last 8,000 votes were counted, and put Xochitl Small Torres on top. She beat Yvette Harrell by less than 2000 votes, but more than a razor-thin margin that would require a recount. She won and she's going to Washington.

This will make New Mexico entirely blue, in governor, two senators, and three congresspeople; it makes our congressional delegation the first to be all "people of color."

This sudden turnaround has gone somewhat unnoticed in the press. We found out from the Las Cruces Sun News, and the New York Times picked it up, but it went virtually unnoticed on politico or other sites that we follow. A turn of a seat is usually news, at least on the day it happens, but this wasn't - far overshadowed by the firing of Sessions, etc. The dust settles on the southern desert, and we have a Democratic congressperson, but the world goes on. I haven't heard either of their names mentioned at all today or yesterday.

I find New Mexico to be polite in a genteel, kind of southern way. A lot of the people say "y'all" and they don't call each other by first names for a long time, long after meeting, only with permission, etc., as is an old Hispanic custom. That's why they don't talk politics much. You have to get to know someone; you can't go around disagreeing with each other. It disrupts the harmony and the general rhythm of life.

Their margin was less than 1%, and I think on some level people won't forget. Two more years, and it'll be a whole new game. My own guess is that two more years and we'll be hurting economically; tariffs will have sunk in, and T will be mired in a corrupt and ineffective administration. The battle we are preparing for is the release of Mueller's report, but there will be more; the ever-shifting line, marking the center of American politics, will move one direction or another.

I find it very noteworthy that it landed here, in southern New Mexico, where ranchers share a sparse landscape with old Mexican-American families and an occasional set of young folks who move in for the same reason they've occupied Colorado, Arizona, and Montana. Really the ranchers dominate, but, in our case, we have a thousand mile border and this issue of $45 mil/foot wall. You'd think they'd welcome the jobs, but we don't; New Mexico's senators were the only ones, besides Kamala Harris, who voted against the wall. My own feeling about it is that walls will be outdated with the arrival of drones (which are already here) and since you'll need drone protection anyway, forget the wall and put it all into drones. A wall would be an utter waste of $45 mil/foot.

Or whatever. The price keeps going up, on account of the tariffs.

Wednesday, November 07, 2018

NM-2 update

Our race was very close. A normally very conservative district, the vast majority ranchers, almost flipped blue, but the Democratic candidate, Xochitl Small-Torres, ended up losing barely to Yvette Harrell, Republican, by about 1900 votes. The last I heard, there were a few thousand left to count, all in Dona Ana County, Xochitl's stronghold, but I would think it would be unlikely that they'd count a few thousand, and have them all go to her. I think it's over. And I think you could point to a number of reasons she was unable to flip it.

The first was a merciless television campaign. Harrell got the support of a wealthy national organization that funded television ads for R candidates in crucial districts, and they flooded the airwaves. People in my hometown thought Xochitl would take their guns (not true), that she would do whatever Pelosi says (not true), that she would vote against Social Security (where this came from, I still don't know). Nationally, they had figured out what people's hot buttons were, and pressed them. It was undeniable that she came from a liberal, community activist (water-rights oriented) background, and they pushed that too, as if that were some kind of liability. Most important, the Trump base was energized; they all came out to vote. They were aware of the "blue wave," well afraid of its consequences, and they were all there on election day.

I generalize these reasons, and say, it probably happened all over the country. Record turnout at the polls. Highly motivated voters on both sides. Increasingly contentious and polarized electorate. More money pumped into the propaganda machine than ever. And the Republicans, by and large, are better at that than the Dems.

Frankly, I thought that Hispanic turnout would be more than it was. We live on the border, with a huge population of Hispanics in every county, particularly in the towns, like Roswell, Alamogordo, Carlsbad, and Socorro, but also in the smaller places along the border and over by the bootheel. the eastern part of the state has seen an oil boom, in places like Artesia, Hobbs, and Jal, and those towns are very conservative, I assume because they believe Trump is good for the industry. It's not clear to me whether there was record turnout in the oil districts, or, if increased Hispanic turnout would be good for the Dems; a surprising number of Hispanics are very conservative, and abandoned the Dems a few years back. I'm still studying the results in this area.

Nationally, I have few things to be happy about. I'm glad Scott Walker is out of there. The Iowa Nazi won another term but Iowa itself shifted more to the blue. A congressman I detest in my home district of Illinois won one more time. This time the Green influence hardly mattered. An interesting local race saw the candidacy of Gary Johnson, Libertarian, not make much difference. He got maybe 20% of the vote, and one could argue that most of it came from the red side, but the reds lost by about thirty anyway, so I don't think they're too mad at him. Most of New Mexico has gone blue, and the big news in the far west is that Arizona, Nevada, and even Montana are going that direction as well. It's a new dawn, with only Utah and Texas still staunchly in the red column, and it's possible to question even Texas. Things can happen, and it might be interesting in 2020.

Thursday, November 01, 2018

Rise of Nazism II

I know two people who fell for the general resurgence of white nationalism as represented by the swastika, or the general blaming of Jews for problems of the white culture, or the nation, in this case the USA. I should say that there are plenty of white nationalists who are not Nazis, i.e. don't specifically blame Jews for everything, yet still attracted to the rigid order presented by a guy like Trump. There are also people who blame Jews for everything, i.e. Palestinians and Palestinian supporters, who are not so rigid in their idea of how a government should look, but who are simply anti-Zionist or firmly against the Israeli state.

But these two acquaintances give some idea of why we occasionally see the swastika these days: underground, of course, but spreading like a disease. You want to bring back Hitler? Simply kill people that aren't like you? That idea is not as unacceptable as it used to be. It's possible to say and think all kinds of stuff.

The first swastika I saw was on the site of a distant relative. He's white, uneducated, in sorry shape; in short, a kind of person who has fallen out of the system as we know it, with not much chance of making it. I don't know him well, not at all in fact, but that's all I know about him. How could he put that on his site? It was on a knife, as part of a picture of his dinner, but the message was clear: he's reaching for the times of Hitler. He's not ashamed to show that, or let us know.

The second is a guy I knew through Quakerism. He was a more complex case; he had joined the army, come back, sought out Buddhism and Quakerism both as ways to curtail the rage inside him. Who was he mad at? In the end he blamed the Jews. He just took on this whole conspiracy idea, that there are Jews among us, who want us to fall into decadence and dissension, who are behind everything from gay marriage (control of Hollywood) to the Democratic Party (George Soros, or whoever). I find this kind of thing unacceptable, but I kept him on my facebook; facebook itself would remove him occasionally, as he would forward things that were blatantly race-baiting, provocative, and untrue. He seemed to be attracted to the idea that the culture was crumbling, and something within it was at fault. That to be strong, and survive, we must seek our own tribe of like others.

White nationalism takes a different form in Europe, where each country has a distinct white identity, separate from the others, and takes measures to limit the degree that that identity can be compromised racially. In the US it's always been more of an open question; this place wasn't white originally, and was established on the idea that others could come here, as we, the white Europeans did. So there's a much more realistic chance that the white majority will cease to be a majority, and whites are seeing their majority slip away at every turn. Thus the popularity of a guy like Trump, who, in spite of his corruption and every other problem, turns around and curses the caravan, or even pays the caravan to keep walking, so he can win re-election. He stokes the white nationalist flames, and can't even say anything bad about a guy who walks into a temple and shoots people. He won't rally the country against white nationalism, or its rise, as he represents it, in a very direct way. He doesn't wear the swastika. But it doesn't matter; everyone knows what he represents.