New Mexico Culture Crisis

New Mexico Culture Crisis

After hearing yet another newscast featuring crime, animal cruelty, and DWI, I have crossed over the threshold between reserved commentary and controlled outrage and can withhold my words no longer. This state is in the midst of a cultural crisis whose most notable symptom is complacency about being last in every conceivable national metric one could imagine. Cultural deprivation is not an inevitable consequence of poverty. We seem to have low expectations of ourselves and correspondingly low demands of our government. These are the rankings by the U.S. News & World Report of New Mexico from best to worst. 

 Crime & Corrections #49 

 Economy #43 

 Education #50 

 Fiscal Stability #26 

 Health Care #38 

 Infrastructure #42 

 Natural Environment #30 

 Opportunity #37 

Being almost last in everything good and first in everything bad would suggest that the problem is with us; maybe malaise or mañana? One might ask if there is any correlation between our national rankings and the fact that we are a rather “blue” state. Sorry to pose those politically incorrect questions. 

Of those that received the most attention in the news lately is the so-called education crisis precipitated by abysmal performance on the national achievement tests. The popular debate has focused on money. Although overcrowded classrooms and lack of qualified teachers are cited as reasons, I would submit that by and large the most significant issue, conveniently avoided in the newsroom, is the obsession to be politically correct. The simple fact is that a significant number of New Mexican parents don’t value education. That attitude is of course passed on. One need only make reference to the enormous high school dropout rate to underscores this attitude and note that this couldn’t possibly occur without parental complicity or neglect. This is the same mindset that regards multiple DWIs, spousal abuse, insufferable animal cruelty, corruption in government, an inept “catch and release judiciary,” and pregnant 14-year-olds as no big deal. 

Another is a health care crisis, especially in rural areas. It seems that the cap on malpractice insurance and their sky-high premiums are significantly higher here than in other states. Every good GP that I have had over the years has left. According to our local rep, any effort in the legislature to amend this situation has been overturned thanks to lobbying by a certain group of attorneys and, of course, our legislature who is more than willing to enter into these sorry arrangements. How loud does that speak for the ethics of this crowd?

What should be widespread outrage about these things is instead abject complacency or worse. Some parts of this state resemble a third-world country. After all, cockfighting has been recently outlawed. Sorry folks, there is something really wrong here and the worst thing that I can imagine is that it is an inability to realize what is happening.