Still Enchanted by New Mexico

About six and a half hours ago, I crossed the state line from New Mexico into Texas. At the end of a road trip, I am always glad to be home. But I'm always sad to see that yellow rectangle with the red zia symbol in the rear-view mirror.

This weekend marked a wonderful reunion with friends from New Mexico State University.

We all worked together at the Round Up, which we and the "flag" atop the front page always called the "Student voice of Southern New Mexico since 1907." For 2 years, we lived together in those offices in Corbett Center. For somewhere in the neighborhood of $300 to $400 a month, we gave our all.

I was lucky enough to be the editor. That means that I got a lot of credit for the hard work of others. It was a talented group of people who worked hard. But, man did we have a lot of fun.

With a few other exceptions, Emily and I were the outsiders of the bunch. Both born in Missouri, we were not native New Mexicans like the rest of our friends. Many of them longed for something bigger than New Mexico.

You see, New Mexico is the fifth largest state in square miles. But it's 39th in population. And not a wealthy 39 either. So most of our friends dreamed of something much bigger. Indeed, the reunion brought people in from Chicago and the Bay Area.

You never know what you've got until it's gone, they tell me. Most days those words sound about right. I bought into much of that. They joked about the "Land of Entrapment," a play on the state's motto. I thought I understood the joke. I certainly bought into it.

Many of us graduated in May 1997. We received our degrees at the Pan American Center. You can see a small piece of the roof just below the foam red pistol and the pom-pom in the picture above. A decade ago, we couldn't wait for something bigger.

About a week after walking across that stage, I was off to intern with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund in California. It felt "big time." Circumstances brought me back to the Las Cruces Sun-News about three months later. Emily and I had a kid. I was promoted to sports editor. A few months later, the Albuquerque Journal called. The flagship newspaper of the state. As big time as it got in the Land of Enchantment.

With that, I said good bye to Southern New Mexico. Less than a year after that, I said goodbye to New Mexico altogether for the adventure known as graduate school. I've written about this journey before, so I'll skip some of the details here.

Suffice it to say that my friends have heard me talk about my love for the land of green chile many times. It's one of those things that if you don't get it, you may never understand it. But I have a pretty deep relationship with those rocks and sand that people call a desert. It's more than a place.

Other than my wife, I've never loved a woman as much as I love New Mexico. It became a part of me. And it's a part that does not let go.

Fifty-eight years ago, another man named Sam Bradley moved to the desert Southwest from Kansas City. He had just finished school as a radio engineer (really television but that's a story for another day) and accepted a job at KCHS-AM in Hot Springs, N.M., now known as Truth or Consequences.

T or C, as its called, is about as different as one can get from Kansas City. But my dad had already been to the South Pacific thanks to the army, so he had seen a bit of variety. When dad arrived in Hot Springs, someone encouraged him not to judge the city until he had "worn out a pair of shoes on the desert."

It was good advice for him in 1949, and it was good advice when I moved there in 1994 (the transposition of numbers surely just a coincidence).

As I wore out that pair of shoes, however, the dry air worked a sort of magic on me. The mountains. The dark blue sky. The ability to see forever. The dry air. The planet does not get much more big time than that.

So, New Mexico became a part of me. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would call a New Mexico real estate agent on Tuesday. It's just that great. And then I'd go about figuring out just which foods really cannot be served with green chile. In New Mexico, that's a pretty small list.

Working at Texas Tech is a blessing for my New Mexico habit. I've made 5 trips west this calendar year, and one more is planned. But it's not the same as being there every day.

Wherever you live, I hope you love it as much as I love New Mexico. I hope it brings as big a smile to your face. And I hope you have a bunch of friends who live there who are still great people, great smart asses, and who you cannot see for 8 years and never miss a beat.

NCAA Tourney Provides Highs, Lows

Media dependency is in full force here, as I spent the evening glued to the television watching the NCAA and NIT selection shows.

Last night I was celebrating that my New Mexico State Aggies (B.A., 1997) won the Western Athletic Conference tournament and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

Tonight I am mourning that my Kansas State Wildcats (M.S., 2001) are snubbed and headed to the NIT. The Cats are the first team in the history of the 64-team field from a power conference that won 20 games, won 10 conference games, and finished in the top 4 of the conference and not make it to the Big Dance.

The Indiana Hoosiers (Ph.D., 2005) have a difficult draw, playing Gonzaga in Sacramento.

The Texas Tech Red Raiders (current employer) are also in, and Bob Knight will have his hands full with Boston College.

Let's hope coach Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks (childhood favorite) will finally win in the first round. Since the name of their opponent does not begin with the letter "B," odds are good.

Finally, the Ohio State Buckeyes (former employer) receive the almost automatic bid to the round of 32, as no No. 1 seed has ever lost to a No. 16 seed.

Let the games begin.

Political Strategies of Terrorists

A story in today's New York Times suggests that the Pentagon and CIA are looking into Americans' bank records in terrorism-related investigations (read about it here to avoid NYT logon). Privacy-related concerns will have many balking. The begs the question of how to crack down on would-be terrorists without turning citizens against their own government.

As much as I hate waiting for the future, I enjoy looking back at the past. I like the twists and turns my life has taken.

In the early 1990s, I was a political science major. At New Mexico State, they called it government ... like Harvard. I ended up changing my major, but I completed the coursework for a minor in government (however, due to an oversight apparently on my part that was discovered years after graduation, I took a required class pass/fail and did not officially "get" the minor).

One of the first courses I took at NMSU was introduction to political science (GOVT 110G) with Neil Harvey, Ph.D.

Harvey's research focus, in part, involves Chiapas, Mexico, and we talked a lot about Latin America in that class.

Although it was fall 1994, I think a lot about that class these days. One of the things that we talked about in that class was the goals of terrorism. It seemed largely tangential at the time, but I learned something that I remember these many years later.

Most Americans, it seems, feel that the true goal of terrorism is evil. Among other things, this is illogical. Many evil people fill the history books, but few of them achieved evil for evil's sake.

Consider the Sept. 11th attacks on World Trade Center, Pentagon, and flight 93. Although the means could not be more deplorable, the goals are legitimate political goals. The means are evil. But the end is not evil. Instead terrorism is a political weapon of the weak.

I am a pack rat, and I save things. I still have all my notes from my undergraduate career. Thinking through 12+ years of haze, I looked up my notes on terrorism from Prof. Harvey.

On Nov. 14, 1994, I wrote in my notes, "What are the tactics? Small groups with few resources: bombing train terminals, kidnapping, blowing up airlines. Puts fear into people and makes the government more repressive. Single, young, better educated males. Misfits. Can't see the different between the good and the bad within the system. Fanaticism based on hatred. The cause may not be so relevant. Democracies are particularly susceptible to terrorism."

The part that stuck with me is in the middle. Terrorism makes the government more repressive. In a free and open society such as the United States, it is easy to move around. This freedom makes us susceptible to terrorism. When a major terrorist attack occurs, fear spreads. More importantly, however, the government almost inevitably begins to constrict.

Patriot Act.

Wiretapping.

Sound familiar?

Terrorism puts an administration in an extremely unenviable position. With no restrictions, it is difficult to curtail vulnerability to terrorism. Suffer a repeat attack, and public opinion is sure to turn against the administration.

Hence the fact that most governments will begin to become more repressive. As the fear from an eminent terrorist attack subsides, citizens begin to chafe at the new restrictions. Their ire drifts away from the terrorism and toward their own government.

In a small Latin American country, this discontent might be sufficient to lead to an overthrow of the state. This is virtually impossible within the United States; however, recent mid-term elections suggest that a vote-based coup may be under way.

Consider that a recent news release from the Gallup organization reported, "But in the latest poll, his approval rating on terrorism (44%) is roughly the same as his 45% rating on the economy. The 44% terrorism approval rating is one of the worst of his presidency ..."

As a communications and cognitive science scholar, I will leave it to others to debate the policies. My over-arching question is that if even I can remember this terrorism-repression-discontent link, why was that not a major talking point from Washington?

Instead of pushing the Patriot Act (for example) as a necessary evil, it seems to me that a more effective communication strategy would have been to come out saying, "One of the goals of terrorists is to drive a wedge between a government and its people over security policies. We are going to make our country safer, but we are going to balance safety with the civil liberties of our citizens."

I understand that hindsight is 20/20, but it seems with all of the hundreds of advisors in Washington, someone could have done a better job.

A rare defense of journalists

Should we use the term "journalist" for every person who takes 5 minutes to create a blog? The profession of journalism is slightly more respected than politicians, used car salespeople, and prostitutes. However, it is a professional field, and it means something to be a journalist, even if it is not much. Although my training is in journalism -- and I am an assistant professor of communication -- I don't spend too much time defending the craft. Yet after listening to one more person try to slide the synonym "web journalist" in replace of "blogger," I felt a rant coming on.

Journalism is a technical field and could just as easily be taught in vo-tech schools and community colleges. However, there is something to be said for the training that you undergo as a journalist, like I survived at New Mexico State. Being an idiot with a laptop and a broadband connection does not make you a journalist. It just makes you an idiot with a laptop and broadband.