No. I’m not talking about the rampant financial or law enforcement corruption in the Trump Administration. Today’s post is on another matter in the western U.S that can cause disputes that instantly raise temperatures and tempers.
TL:dr: The feds are building bigger and longer walls on the New Mexico/Mexico border. In order to do so they need water to make concrete. Lots of water. The result?
In its dash to build President Trump’s signature border wall, the federal government is drilling unpermitted wells into already-depleted aquifers in New Mexico, according to state officials.
The need for water in this case highlightsa few things I’ve been noticing for a while. Things that in my view - totally anecdotally with no data to back me up - occur more often when “conservatives” are in charge at any level of government and impacted by specific events: 1) the assertion that laws/rules promulgated by a lower level of government do not apply to a higher level of government when it wants to do something, and 2) the view that an issue is okay until it impacts someone personally.
___________________________________
The assertion that laws/rules promulgated by a lower level of government do not apply to a higher level of government when it wants to do something.
From the article:
In April, Customs and Border Protection sent a letter to the state engineer’s office that said the federal government is “immune” from state law that requires a permit to pump groundwater.
CBP - which did apply for and receive permits in the previous Trump Admin, has simply decided that state law doesn’t matter. They’ll claim “national security” or “emergency” or really whatever they want but the upshot is the same no matter the reason - the feds are not bound by laws made by “lower” government entities.
Something similar happened in the last year or so in the area where I live. The state in which I live owns some undeveloped, vacant land in a scenic, rural area. The “conservative” government of the state decided it wanted to create revenue from that land. It approved a small tourist “glamping” development (basically, glorified camping in structures that contain amenities which make it… not really camping). The county asserted that the developers had to follow it’s septic and water treatment regulations. The state simply asserted that is was not bound by such local regulations. Guess who won.
Conservative historically believed in the rule of law, Today’s reactionary extremeists who call themselves conservatives still will tout the rule of law unless it inhibits their ability to do waht they want.
It’s that simple.
___________________________________
The view that an issue is okay until it impacts someone personally.
From the article (bold emphasis mine):
One of the wells is on Russell Johnson’s cattle ranch, which shares an 8.5-mile border with Mexico.
…
Johnson relies on a natural spring to supply water for his cattle and his home.
“These wells that they’re drilling for border wall construction, they’re talking about trying to attain 300-plus gallons a minute, and it’s going to pump us dry,” he said. “When you have livestock, you’ve got to water, they can’t wait. You can’t haul enough water to keep them in good supply, so it becomes an immediate disaster.”
…
Meanwhile, New Mexico rancher Russell Johnson supports tighter security. He’s a former Border Patrol agent, and he doesn’t want people crossing illegally through his ranch, which he says used to happen all the time.
But he’s not sure about the government’s decision to build a second wall in places where one has already been built, especially if it puts his water supply at risk.
“To me, it almost seems a little bit overkill,” he said. “There’s going to be fiber-optic sensor systems that are put in, cameras, different lighting and everything; it seems like if everything is working properly, and you’ve got the Border Patrol agents back on the border where they’re supposed to be, a secondary wall seems a little redundant.”
Ahhhh. So this rancher -a former CBP agent - wants tighter border security, but all of a sudden, he’s concerned because it’s impacting him and his livelihood personally.
The situation was the same for Dick Cheney when one of his daughters came out as gay. His position on the issue suddenly became more nuanced and more supportive than it had when it was just theoretical to him and only impacted others (sadly, his daughter Liz didn’t seem so charitable towards her sister).
The reason this seems to be more of an occurrence with reactionary extreme “conservatives” than progressives and liberals? IMHO, it’s a lack of empathy and a world view that “I want freedom to do/believe what I want without consequences and without the recognition that I live in a society where we need to figure out how to live together.”
As the psychologist Gustave Mark Gilbert - who was the prison psychologist during the Nuremberg trials - once wrote,
“I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I’ve come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
Empathy by Alanis Morrisette
