Commentary: What sense does any of this make?
Why should state legislators who oppose abortion because they contend that a fetus is already a full-human person, and will feel pain if a woman aborts a pregnancy, object to that woman being educated about and able to obtain contraceptives that would obviate the need for either an abortion or an unwanted pregnancy? Why do folks complaining that we spend too much to feed and clothe poor women's proliferating offspring oppose making sure those poor women understand and can afford contraceptives?
For that matter, should anyone be allowed to oppose abortion who hasn't adopted at least three unwanted children? Shouldn't folks who advocate increasing the burden of unwanted children be required to pitch in to deal with the problem?
Why are conservatives, particularly Christian conservatives, flocking to support an egomaniac with a slew of divorces and bankruptcies in his background?
Why are folks who supposedly care about families so unconcerned that the scientific community, as measured by peer-reviewed papers, is nearly unanimous that there's an urgent need (if it ain't already too late!) to act to mitigate the environmental damage we're doing to our kids' and grandkids' futures?
For that matter, when the Koch brothers and oil-and-gas organizations trot out the same obfuscation tactics against climate-change that the tobacco industry turned to in desperation, often using the same P.R. minions as front-men and front-women, why are people so slow to see through them?
Why don't their constituents see through legislators who are well-paid by private prison profiteers and duly push for draconian sentencing laws that even criminologists and cops now see are wrong?
Why do folks who supposedly want to balance governmental budgets push for more costly wars and longer costly prison sentences while decreasing governmental income by pushing tax breaks for corporations and the super-rich?
For that matter, why do many of those folks oppose having their states legalize and tax marijuana?
Why are people who purport to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ the loudest advocates of un-Christian conduct toward poor immigrants?
Why do folks who purport to value life and children say we should leave kids in orphanages rather than allow them the love and care of gay couples who want them?
Why do some folks think that taking wildlife refuges away from the public to have them destroyed by private profit-makers somehow helps the public?
Why do some folks, who claim to honor freedom and the U.S. Constitution, favor restrictions on people's freedoms regarding speech, privacy, and their own bodies, but argue that the least regulation regarding guns is unconstitutional?
On the other hand, how do others, who've read about Prohibition and lived through the fruitless and wasteful “War on Drugs” outlawing marijuana, suppose that although those prohibitions didn't work (while eroding respect for law and increasing respect for law-breakers), outlawing all guns would somehow work just fine?
I don't have answers. I do suspect that folks get too trapped in their ideologies to consider and analyze facts in a careful way. Quite probably, a great numbers of citizens, distracted by television and making a living and raising children, just don't care. Or don't care enough to study any issues.
I do have a final question. We are not in Congress. Or the state legislature. We citizens aren't being paid off by corporations. Why don't we talk to each other? Why don't we communicate honestly instead of behaving like armed camps in a war zone, sniping snidely at each other but never risking human connections with folks we don't agree with?
Peter Goodman is a local writer, photographer, and sometime lawyer. He initially moved to Las Cruces in 1969, holds two degrees from NMSU, and moved back here in 2011 with his wonderful wife. This is his most recent Sunday column in the Las Cruces Sun-News. His blog Views from Soledad Canyon contains further information on this subject, as well as other comments and photographs, and past newspaper columns.