Tales Of Our Times
By JOHN BARTLIT
New Mexico Citizens
for Clean Air & Water
Jointly Reported Facts Are Mightier Than ‘Bipartisan’
We live in times of zealous palaver about being “bipartisan” and “working together.” Exactly what these words include is unclear. In times past, New Mexico Citizens for Clean Air & Water pursued ideas of our own that might qualify. Our goal was simpler and mightier than “bipartisan” or “working together.” We found mutual ways of telling missing parts of the whole story.
Over time, we learned that industry is no different from the cross section in every activity. Industry has the usual mix of black hats, rogues, and heroes. With the better sorts in industry, we negotiated joint press releases and wrote joint articles and columns. A joint report agrees on facts, using the same spin. Instead, today’s edgy clamor aims to exaggerate spins.
Our nation has fallen into hard times. Both rival parties avoid facing up to serious problems by overuse of the word “lies.” Hope for change dwindles when we see how few people agree, or even care about, what might equate to a “lie.”
A “lie”, as opposed to “the truth”, has different meanings at different times. The ultimate legal meaning of “truth” is “to swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” – that is, the “full and unvarnished truth.” Within this strict framework, everything heard on the street or in the media is a “lie” of sorts. We all know this fact but forget as much. Major dictionaries are lively with everyday meanings. One early definition of a “lie” is an “untruth”. Fuzzier uses are as vague as a “half-truth”, an “ambiguity”, and an “exaggeration”. Thus, the rivals can claim some modicum of honesty (10 percent or 60 percent), while they shuffle (“spin”) meanings for different crowds.
Today’s worst best example is the immigrant drama. The right decries real murders done by bad immigrants. The left decries the many harms we do to good immigrants. Each camp features its half of the story and makes the other out as a liar. No one can say how many murders by bad immigrants are OK to ignore or how much harm to good immigrants is acceptable. So the cancerous problem goes undiscussed.
“Moderates” in either party talk about “working in a ‘bipartisan’ way.” As far as I can see, this work is all about voting across party lines on bills. We still have the cancer of rivals hoping to win by keeping substantial factors in a dark corner.
Finding pathways:
Our citizens group began taking shape in 1969 in our living room in White Rock. Early volunteers supplied a wide mix of skills, schooling, and personal roles. In the 1960s, the environment was a “new” problem, in the sense the Great Depression had appeared as a new problem. Like President Roosevelt decades before, we had no manual mapping the best uses of assets. We, too, had to feel our way down the dark hallway of progress.
We would try an approach: If it worked, we did more of it. If it failed to help, we brainstormed and tried a better idea. One approach that worked really well was the joint press release. A legal battle in the late 1970s added SO2 controls on the Four Corners Power Plant beyond the controls for particulates. An agreed press release from the plant owners, our group, and the State of New Mexico told the story together. We agreed on the costs of the plant’s air pollution controls ($540 million all told); then told the cost to consumers (one dollar on a typical residential customer’s monthly bills).
Then, we told the new jobs at the plant created by the controls (as many as 600 jobs during construction and 100 permanent jobs operating the controls). Consumers in New Mexico supported these costs, as did our group.
Later, we wrote joint articles about other issues. It was not hard. And was faster than hashing out sound ideas from half-truths. Talk with half-truths is how discourse dies.