When I taught, I usually had a book by Wallace Stegner in the curriculum – maybe a novel, a history text, or a collection of essays. Stegner, who died in 1993, is one of the giants of western literature. His magnificent book, Angle of Repose, received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972, even though the New York Times called it “regional” and refused to review it (that bias hasn’t disappeared). Stegner is also celebrated for starting a distinguished writing program at Stanford, attended by Ken Kesey, Ed Abbey, Sandra Day O’Connor, Ernest Gaines, Wendell Berry, Larry McMurtry, and others.
Stegner was also political, at both grassroots and legislative levels, a key player in the Sierra Club and other environmental groups. A friend of and advisor to Stewart Udall when he was Interior Secretary for JFK and LBJ, Stegner often used his pen to advance political agendas. One of his best-known phrases, which has been used as a slogan for many causes, came from his comparison of western politics and western landscapes. In The Sound of Mountain Water, he writes:
“Angry as one might be at what heedless men have done and still do to a noble habitat, one cannot be pessimistic about the West. This is the native land of hope. When it fully learns that cooperation, not rugged individualism, is the quality that most characterizes and preserves it, then it will have achieved itself and outlived its origins. Then it has a chance to create a society to match its scenery.”
“A society to match its scenery.” It’s a great thought, the idea that the West could create political and social structures equal to our majestic mesas, canyons, forests, and deserts. In some ways I think that’s what indigenous people strove for in the Southwest, mostly succeeding for more than 10,000 years. Imagine living in the Grand Canyon, and then designing society to fit that glorious space, rather than the other way around.
For a while I used Stegner’s comment as my DKos sig line, and I still see it pop up in literature and political thought. There’s a book titled A Society To Match the Scenery, a wonderful collection of essays from some of the West’s finest historians and writers, each of them searching for a way to realize the dream expressed in Stegner’s words.
Well, we have failed you here in Arizona, Wally, and it may get worse. A lot. Your other inspiring line in that quotation about this being “the native land of hope” is getting harder to read without adding a question mark.
Craziness To Date
For years we’ve read diaries here about Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Senator Russell Pearce, and the other lunatics erecting a police state in the Southwest. Think that’s alarmist? When Senator Carolyn Allen decided not to run for office this year, she said: “I do not want to live in the police state that Joe Apaio, Russell Pearce, and Andrew Thomas are spearheading.” Allen is a Republican Senator who served in the legislature for 16 years.
And while SB 1070, the “papers please” legislation, has rightly received a lot of attention, it is the tip of a divisive iceberg that is about to slam into this state, tearing it apart socially, environmentally, and economically. Senator Russell Pearce and Governor Jan Brewer can talk all they want about “the rule of law,” “a nation of laws,” and the crime immigrants cause. It's bullcrap. Crime is down along the border, in the cities, in rural communities. There are more agents along the border than there ever were under Bush. Obama has made available more NG troops than the states have requested, yet wingers still gripe about the federal government “failing us.” Arizona is not being “invaded” and there are no instances of decapitations in the desert, not one – it’s all part of the fear mongering that dominates Brewer’s political ads. The rhetoric of “crime” and “laws” and “taking our jobs” and “failed federal response” is a smokescreen for some pretty unsavory and transparent scapegoating.
Jan Brewer, for one, has worked to undermine Latino influence for years. When she was Secretary of State in 2004, Brewer unregistered about 100,000 voters, most of them Hispanic. In perhaps a generation Hispanics could be the majority here, and not surprisingly they are fleeing the Republican Party in droves; so the best way to offset their growing numbers is to keep them from the voting booth. Arizona has a long history of that: back in the early '60s a Republican tool named William Rehnquist, then a young Phoenix lawyer, used to challenge black and brown voters at the polls with literacy tests.
For his part, Russell Pearce has achieved notoriety for palling around with neo-Nazis like J.T. Ready and other heavily armed goons who “Sieg Heil” a lot. Beyond that, Pearce is a flaming fundamentalist Mormon, a disciple of W. Cleon Skousen, a fervent anti-Communist and John Bircher who taught that the US Constitution was written by God. Pearce, who attended Skousen’s lectures and read his books, believes democracy’s divine elements are under attack from secularists. And in his universe the only people capable of saving the Constitution are white Mormon men. That is where SB 1070 begins for him, the desire to keep brown people out of Arizona, because they’ll just get in the way of his white Rapture. And if you can’t keep Hispanics out, at least render them powerless, which is what most of his bills are intended to do. Such as:
In addition to SB 1070, Pearce was a loud voice behind Proposition 200, a policy that requires state employees and businesses to check the papers of anyone they serve or hire, essentially making everyone an immigration enforcer. He launched Proposition 103, the English Only bill, and he supported Proposition 300, which denies all public benefits, including scholarships, to the paperless – because, you know, aid to needy children is what’s sent Arizona into an economic tailspin.
Pearce’s earliest versions of SB 1070 passed the legislature (gulp!), but Governor Janet Napolitano vetoed them. With Janet in DC and Brewer occupying her chair, there’s no one to restrain the crazies, so we’ve seen the legislature spend their time debating really important statutes like the Arizona Birther Bill (it passed). Since Napolitano left Pearce has also sponsored SB 1097, which requires all school districts to identify undocumented students in their classrooms. Stigmatize much? Now all teachers will join Pearce’s immigration militia. The schools will then report this information to the Department of Education, which will calculate the costs and issue a legislative report. Silly us, thinking we might create a better society and educate kids out of poverty.
Pearce helped pass SB 1108, the ethnic studies ban, which prohibits public schools from offering courses that are “designed for pupils of a particular ethnic group” or that “advocate ethnic solidarity.” That definition is so broad they could use it to stamp out any course that contains a multicultural element. Also tucked into SB 1108 is a provision that bans students at Arizona colleges from forming groups based on race, such as ASU’s African Students Association. See a pattern here?
Craziness To Come
That’s just for starters, and if Jan Brewer beats Terry Goddard in the gubernatorial race (she’s leading in the polls), there will be no one to veto the legislation Pearce has waiting in the wings. Already the powerful chair of the Appropriations Committee, so every agency reports to him, Pearce will likely be the next President of the Senate too, so you know his bills are going to show up on Brewer’s desk. Her pandering to the Tea Party crowd during this campaign doesn’t offer much hope that she’ll veto even the most vile piece of racist, homophobic legislation. What’s on tap?
Like Rand Paul, Pearce advocates repealing the first section of the 14th Amendment, the part that says if you are born here, regardless of the parents’ status, you are an American citizen. Related to this “anchor baby” crapola, Pearce will probably reintroduce HB 2631, which says Arizona marriage licenses will be issued only when both the man and woman are American citizens. (Of course, it’s always man/woman, since Arizona also passed the “Marriage Protection Act.” I feel safe.)
Sounding like Glenn Beck, who’s using the backdrop of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech to spew his own wingnuttery, Pearce has an amendment to the Arizona Constitution that he’s waiting to introduce called the “Civil Rights Amendment of 2010.” What does this “civil rights” provision do? It bans Affirmative Action in city and state government.
I don’t see us moving toward Wallace Stegner’s vision anytime soon. If Brewer holds on to the governor’s seat, and Pearce becomes President of the Senate, and some a-hole like Tom Horne or Andrew Thomas is elected Attorney General (with Arpaio spreading his own manure all over the place), we may well wish for the good old days of Evan Mecham. Somehow, they seem so quaint now. He was just a stupid bigot, these people are vicious.
The Public Supports SB 1070
I am sick to death of hearing that the public supports SB 1070 and other xenophobic measures. That was the headline in today’s Arizona Republic, “Arizonans Back Law,” and it’s often used as justification to push through even meaner policies. Screw that! First of all, that 55% support drops to 36% with voters under 34. Like DADT and other social policies there’s a generational gap, with a lot of old white voters afraid their “way of life” is under siege. And let’s remember, the public supported laws that kept Native Americans from voting here until 1948; they overwhelmingly supported the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry, most of them American citizens, on two internment camps in Arizona; they supported segregation in Arizona schools; they supported spiteful legislation that prohibited Asians from owning Arizona property or marrying outside their race. History is replete with this racist shit, much of it “supported by the public.”
This election, regardless of the office, is about one thing: immigration. Not “reform,” of course, like the kind McCain once supported; talk of that today gets framed as amnesty, a mortal blow to any Republican candidate. No, it’s not about fixing anything, it’s about restrictions, punishment, revenge. P.S. Be afraid. While Arizona wallows in a deep economic cesspool of its own making, politicians, aided by an insipid media, mostly yammer about “illegals” taking jobs, causing crime, and ruining the economy. Not that there aren’t problems, but that’s mostly horseshit. The numbskulls at the legislature are far more responsible for the state’s recession than poor kids scampering across the desert so they can mow lawns in Tucson. Listen to McCain, Hayworth, Brewer, and the other lice on the right, and nobody has a plan to improve Arizona, other than to build a fence and pass more vindictive laws. Yeah, SB 1070 has really helped the economy, so let’s do more of that. Asswipes.
Sorry, Wally. You were a good man who cared about the West – its peoples, cultures, landscapes. It appears greed, hate, and stupidity have trumped your passion. Let’s turn this thing around: Terry Goddard.