WIT & WISDOM by Caren Cowan, Publisher New Mexico Stockman
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olitical correctness never seems to let up. Apparently now we have “short chaps” instead of what the cowboys call them. Sorry, the wokes may get after me if I use the real word chin… The wokeness hasn’t hit all the internet sale sites, so you can still order them now under the old name.
What is woke? I continue to grapple with the word “woke.” The worst wokes I ever had was when Grandmother turned her toy poodle Teddy in to my room every morning. The Oxford English Dictionary, that arbiter of the linguistic zeitgeist, added “woke” to its repertoire in 2017 as “Originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice” according to PH.D. ASSISTANT Professor of Linguistics, at the University Of Pennsylvania. David Brooks, an opinion columnist for the New York Times, said in 2018 that “To be woke is to be radically aware and justifiably paranoid. It is to be cognizant of the rot pervading the power structures. [Woke] is the opposite of cool in certain respects.” Charles Pulliam-Moore, a NYC-based culture critic, said in 2016 that the Woke Renaissance coincided with the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement that followed the 2012 fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman.
Violent Crime A little over a year ago the hue and cry was to get rid of police across the country. Now you cannot turn on the news in any major city or nationally without hearing about the horrific shootings that are happening on a daily basis across the country. Seattle is notable because their Mayor last year thought she was living in a “summer of love.” Today she is begging for help. The city’s police force has had 270 officers retire or quit. Washington, D.C. is always interesting to me because it is not legal to own a gun in the District. There is of course a way to own
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and forget to lock a vehicle.
Short Chaps guns for the legions of body guards politicians require today. Federal law requires that handguns must be purchased and registered in the state you live in. Washington, DC is not a state. There are no gun stores. So where did all those guns come from that have contributed to some of the 118 homicides in that city year to date? That number is up five percent from last year. It is also curious that as the battle over gun control wages, Congress, the Administration and the President live in a gun controlled area — that isn’t stopping gun violence. It isn’t legal gun ownership that is causing the problem, it is the illegal guns and not even our nation’s Capital can control them. Seems to be that this would be one good reason for D.C. not to become a state. If it does become a state there could be gun stores. Imagine what would happen with all the guns stolen from gun stores. In breaking news at press time the Mayor of Washington, D.C. is raising a white flag and calling for the hiring of 170 more police officers in the District. Then there is Albuquerque, a relatively small city compared to D.C., Chicago, New York City and numerous other cities across the nation. Crime in this city has long been a problem with many country folks choosing not even to come to town. One city leader noted at a recent “job interview” gathering that property crime is down in Albuquerque. He choose not to answer the question about murders. According to Albuquerque police records, there have been 70 homicides for the year through July 19, 2021. That’s about 10 a month, so the year total will be astronomic. There were “only” 84 homicides in 2019 in the city. That was an increase of 15 compared to 2018. One might ask why I continue to live in the city. We live in a quiet neighborhood where the crime is that of opportunity. In the 24 years we have lived in this area the only crime we have seen was when we forget we don’t live in the country anymore
But Cities Have Nothing on the Mexican Border. Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels recently told Fox & Friends Weekend that the Mexican border is the largest crime scene in America in terms of public safety and national security. And, he wasn’t even talking about COVID. Cochise County only has 83 miles of the 1,954 mile border with Mexico. There is honestly no way of determining how many people are entering the United States via that 83 miles. Dannels says that right now there are over 200,000 getaways that the federal government has seen on cameras coming in the U.S. No attempt was even made to capture them. “We have no idea who they are. They’re camouflaged. They’re smuggled by the cartels and released in communities,” said Dannels. There still is no conversation in New Mexico about the border epidemic. However, national news is that the state of Maine is sending 125 National Guard troops to the state. Nor is there any conversation local or national about the spread of COVID that is undoubtedly streaming across the border. By the end of June over 1,000,000 people have illegally been allowed to enter our county — and that doesn’t count the getaways. Groups of 400 to 500 hundred people are being let in at several border crossings in Texas several times a day. Federal policies demand that those people be let into the country. On July 28, 2021 Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order restricting ground transpor tation of undocumented migrants who pose a risk of transmitting COVID in the Texas interior. The directive authorizes the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) to stop any vehicle suspected of carrying migrants that may be infected with the virus and to return them back to a point of origin or a port of entry, according to a statement from the governor’s office. The DPS also reserves the right to seize and take custody of any vehicle that does not comply with the rule. If we want things to change, we must be part of the solution. No doubt, you are like thousands of New Mexicans who believe our state is going in the wrong direction. What would you say if I told you that, for
