{"id":673451,"date":"2019-02-01T12:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-02-01T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=673451"},"modified":"2019-02-02T07:12:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T14:12:40","slug":"finding-clarity-about-america-in-the-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2019\/02\/finding-clarity-about-america-in-the-desert\/","title":{"rendered":"Finding clarity about America in the desert"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Barrel

Heath Haussamen \/ NMPolitics.net<\/p>

Barrel cactus in the desert east of Las Cruces.<\/p><\/div>\n

COMMENTARY:\u00a0<\/strong>I\u2019ve spent lots of time in the desert east of Las Cruces lately, hunting, hiking and exploring. I\u2019ve discovered pristine landscapes surprisingly close to our state\u2019s second-largest city that are rarely touched by people. I found a massive covey of quail. I\u2019ve seen gigantic barrel cactus that are decades old.<\/p>\n

But in other spots, I\u2019ve come across trash pits. Some people shoot up old televisions, furniture, bottles or other things and leave them. Others dump their household garbage.<\/p>\n

I recently found a pair of high heels decaying in the sun.<\/p>\n

\"Heath

Heath Haussamen<\/p><\/div>\n

That was on my mind as I read about people trashing our national parks<\/span><\/a> while the federal government was partially shut down. In California, people tore down protected Joshua trees<\/span><\/a>. Some folks took off-road vehicles into restricted areas, damaging fragile ecosystems.<\/p>\n

That attitude \u2014 do whatever you want while no one\u2019s watching \u2014 is apparently very American.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to think we weren\u2019t always this way \u2014 that, for example, the so-called Greatest Generation\u2019s sense of duty and honor, which we are taught in school led them to save the world from the Nazis, points to a sense of community, morality and responsibility that once characterized America. The longer I live, and the more I learn about our history \u2014 our genocide of people from many Native American cultures<\/span><\/a>, for example \u2014 the less I\u2019m able to believe this.<\/p>\n

Regardless, who we are as a society today is clear. We provide the bombs Saudis use to kill Yemenis<\/span><\/a> because we don\u2019t give a damn if Arab children die as long as our corporations are profiting<\/span><\/a>. Only when the world sees an image of a starving child near death<\/span><\/a>, and journalists connect our bombs to the horror<\/span><\/a>, do we act \u2014 and then we\u2019re just seeking to protect our fictitious reputation as a shining city on a hill.<\/p>\n

We help the Kurds in Syria fight the Islamic State until we\u2019re bored. Then we abandon them<\/span><\/a> to slaughter at the hands of ISIS, and maybe Turkish forces too.<\/p>\n

We look the other way<\/span><\/a> and enable the less-than-legal crossing of millions of people into the United States because their labor makes our food and other things cheaper. When our economy takes a dive, we blame them for working the jobs we wanted them to work. We treat them with cruelty to discourage others from coming<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

We throw away our \u201cfriends\u201d when we\u2019re done profiting.<\/p>\n

We do the same to our planet. We think we\u2019re invincible or can somehow science our way out of the consequences of destroying the ecosystem<\/span><\/a>. We\u2019ve trashed<\/span><\/a> the ball of rock and water that gives us life.<\/p>\n

Is it any wonder, then, that people trash the desert near my house, a majestic area that\u2019s home to mule deer, great horned owls, Gambel\u2019s quail, barrel cactus and ocotillo? Is it surprising that, when the authorities aren\u2019t watching, people think it\u2019s cool to tear down Joshua trees that have stood for hundreds of years to clear a path? Or even worse, just to conquer and destroy something ancient and sacred, because who cares anyway?<\/p>\n

This toxic behavior is a symptom of the disease that plagues our society.<\/p>\n

Many of us may individually try to act responsibly, but collectively we destroy and dispose without care or caution, though we pretend otherwise. The time I\u2019ve recently spent in the stillness of the desert has illustrated for me what we\u2019ve become. It\u2019s given words to a deep grief I\u2019ve long felt.<\/p>\n

Folks, this is America. This is us.<\/p>\n

Heath Haussamen<\/a>\u00a0is NMPolitics.net\u2019s editor and publisher.\u00a0Agree with his opinion? Disagree? NMPolitics.net welcomes your views. Learn about submitting your own commentary\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The time I\u2019ve recently spent in the stillness of the desert has given words to a deep grief I\u2019ve long felt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":673459,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1192,10],"tags":[284,147,116],"class_list":["post-673451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-haussamen-columns","tag-climate-change","tag-environment","tag-washington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673451"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":674069,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673451\/revisions\/674069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}