PrintJuly 17, 2010
The Cobalt Blue Left
One morning, twenty-seven years ago, I saw daybreak. It seemed as though a crazy painter had stretched a crazy canvas across my window, for an impossibly intense backdrop framed the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Then the sun floated higher, Santa Fe's sky ignited, and I was hooked on northern New Mexico.
Fifteen years ago a career move deposited my family in Arizona. Now the Land of Enchantment calls my wife and me to return. We are planning a house on a ridge above Santa Fe, where we will take permanent refuge from the oppressive Phoenix heat. For the time being, we visit Santa Fe, where last week, on a cool and breezy restaurant patio, an animated discussion at a neighboring table treated us to an education.
We learned that in order to "exercise the mind," one must read "intellectually stimulating" material like The New York Times and The Washington Post. Had I leaned over and recommended The Washington Times and National Review, I might have been shot. But then again, no one at the table would have had a gun. Enlightened Santa Fe restaurant owners prohibit guns in order to "protect customers" -- presumably from licensed gun carriers who'd stop unlicensed scumbags from shooting customers in restaurants that prohibit guns.
One diner observed that cable TV can stimulate the mind, specifically MSNBC. Raised eyebrows and nods of knowingness drifted wave-like around the table. The spectacle was almost as stimulating as the stimulating stimulation provided by MSNBC's Chris-of-Tingly-Leg.
Like wine and opinions, virtue also flowed. Our lecturers bashed capitalism while feasting and breathlessly gushing over "sensitive" and "intuitive" artists who produce art for patrons to stock cavernous showplace homes. Escaping the wise ones was the reality that profits make restaurants possible, facilitate people's ability to dine at restaurants, and build art workshops and galleries. But the spirituality oozing from the discussion made up for the diners' economic bewilderment. Native flute song could be heard leaking from a huge third eye chakra suspended over the wise ones' table.
A wise prune-faced woman decked out in a comic morphing of Annie Oakley and Georgia O'Keefe critiqued Elena Kagan's Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Sipping wine and jabbing finger into air, the costumed one asked, "Why should she honor any criticism when she knows she's right?" Refined cerebral cortexes reject debate, for painful reality is what drives scowling brainiacs into the protective custody of angry feel-good ideology in the first place.
Patio sermons aside, my wife and I generally have pleasant experiences with Santa Feans. For instance, we regularly encounter people in the home building business, people who speak and act the liberal part. But on probing below the surface, we detect clear thinking. Still, make no mistake, for Santa Fe serves as home to misguided individuals with time and money to spend. Strange art and radical politics focus otherwise purposeless lives. Snubbing the notion of a free society, elitists concentrate on shackling society in chains fashioned from impossibly perfect models of economics and human nature. Many artsy-fartsy Santa Feans' real motivation comes across as no different from liberals' motivation in general: getting high on the feel-good that flows from contrived virtue.
And indeed the "feel" of Santa Fe is decidedly left. Focused on multiculturalism, home to corrupt government, bastion of institutionalized victimology that multiplies government-dependent voters -- the city is all of these things. Santa Fe even has a history museum that demonizes the Southwest's white influence and glorifies native influence while ignoring native intertribal atrocities. The city constitutes a microcosm of American progressivism. Yet I see another side to my fellow Santa Feans-to-be.
The city's business side, based on state government and some of the classiest art in America, keeps the sixty-five-thousand-resident state capital pulsing. The current recession hit Santa Fe hard, but even with tourism down, the skies glow hypnotically blue.
Santa Fe is unique. While foolishly-motivated multiculturalism has weakened America, on the flip side, building codes true to New Mexico's indigenous Spanish-Moorish and Anasazi Indian architecture have safeguarded a millennia-old area heritage and made "old town" Santa Fe a matchless experience. Applying the codes to all new construction preserves a charm that no other American locale can claim, a charm unthreatened by tasteless monstrosities. Drawn to the traditional western-pueblo style home, I am happy that Santa Fe will always be Santa Fe.
Emphasis on tradition in mostly liberal Santa Fe accounts in part for the draw that the place has on me. Still, living at peace in a lefty stronghold will require diligent mutual respect.
Diligence is a small price for the pleasure of preposterously blue skies, four seasons, snow, thirty rainy days a year, mild summers, wonderful restaurants, indescribably delicious New Mexican food, and yes, friendly people. Sure, northern New Mexico attracts odd characters and liberals. But the region's serene personality and unlimited crystal clear views also lure libertarian-minded souls. My wife and I want to live at 8,000 feet in creative tension with minds that think similarly to and differently from ours, for we will still be living in concert with hearts that beat the same.
How will I live with Santa Fe liberals? Engage and enjoy. I'll challenge the contrived liberal morality and patiently seize opportunities to point out that too much "help" for "oppressed" "victims" is precisely what oppresses and victimizes.
I will try to listen. Of all the subspecies, the Santa Fe liberal is relatively amiable, willing to engage. And engaging could make the difference between the American idea flourishing and dying. Somewhere between pie-in-the-sky, government-mandated, socioeconomic perfection and cold, hands-off, über-libertarianism lies a recipe for applying our country's founding principles that would be acceptable to most Americans -- rich or not, white or not, artist or gun enthusiast. Living amidst "the other side" will present endless opportunities to work on the recipe or will pave a path to misery. I have my preference.
A writer, physicist, and former high tech executive, Chuck Rogér invites you to visit his website, www.chuckroger.com. Email Chuck at swampcactus@chuckroger.com.
