In Stanley Kramer’s 1959 movie, “On the Beach,” World War III has annihilated the Northern, and much of the Southern, hemisphere. Clouds of lethal radiation cover most of the earth, killing everyone; they are headed to Australia, where the last humans on earth will perish in a few weeks or months.
Most Australians, fully aware of what is happening and seemingly in collective denial, react with resolute normality, continuing to work, play, and engage in community events, blindly ignoring what is about to happen. Some believe a miracle will save them. Some accept their fate stoically. Some organize car races, risking their-about-to-be cut-short lives for a thrill. Others turn to alcohol. The government, thinking ahead, provides suicide pills. A love affair unfolds within this context.
I kept thinking about the movie as I wandered in and out of the legislative session this year, in-person and through webcasts. In Washington, Elon Musk was gleefully firing thousands of federal employees throughout the country, including New Mexico. The seven-decade alliance with Europe — which has provided the West with enough stability and security to enable Europe, Japan and the Western Hemisphere to prosper beyond all expectations — seemed to be in unnecessary jeopardy, a global shift of tectonic proportions, full of dangerous possibilities including world war. Privatization of the Postal Service seemed deliberately insulting to the Constitution. Tariffs on Mexico and Canada, New Mexico’s first and third largest trading partners, would inevitably harm domestic exporters and consumers. Judicial orders were pointedly ignored.
In the face of these stupefying developments, the New Mexico Legislature went about its business as though the political world outside the Roundhouse were perfectly normal. Walking into the building was like passing through the threshold of a bubble with no connection to the outside world. Legislators allowed themselves to talk only about the merits of bills subject to the rules of the chamber. No press conferences, memorials, or bills addressing developments in the outside world. The Roundhouse seemed, incongruously, to wish the world to stop while the ritual motions of adjusting budgets during a 60-day session were completed. The feeling was eerie, like the mood produced in On the Beach as viewers felt tension generated in the juxtaposition of a stubborn normality against the approaching, unstoppable, finale to human life.
What was different from the movie was that what seemed imperiled was not the survival of humans but the survival of our two-and-a-half century love affair with checks against arbitrary rule, checks at the heart of the Tea Party and the American Revolution. The character of our situation is political, not the physics of lethal radiation currents.
In politics there is always a tomorrow. Politics represents an effort to control the flow of power, constantly in flux. Action, not language, is the hard currency of power. Words are a kind of cryptocurrency; they have no inherent power. Action to change a current flow of national power is what many citizens are asking for today in town halls and gatherings everywhere. New Mexico is no exception.
This is why the stubborn normality of the Roundhouse seemed so inappropriate. In the movie, normality was a way for Australians to cope with a stark physical reality. In the Roundhouse, normality was a way to avoid the underlying political reality of our times, here and now, grittiness and all.
The legislative session is over. Constituents will be asking legislators what they will to do to protect our interests in the face of a new national administration. You should, as a citizen, insist on telling your legislators what you expect – and on getting straight answers and action instead of backflips, yoga postures and five quickly uttered talking points, as has been the habit among political leaders of all stripes in recent years. If you aren’t satisfied, throw the bastards out.