Hardly resolute

When I was a lad, I read Mad Magazine for a bit of absurdist comic relief from the day’s travails. Now, I have The New Mexican. The greatest belly laugh in recent memory was your Sunday frontpage banner headline (“Resolute In Crisis,” Dec. 20) genuflecting before our governor. Throughout our current pandemic, the governor has demonstrated two traits. The dominant one is a hunger for command and control, as exemplified by her scolding some time back, “Your people need to do better!” The second is a propensity toward panic, as when she exclaimed in mid-October, “The health risks are extreme for every single New Mexican.”

The epidemiology data reported by the state, however imperfect, put the lie to that every day. Her assertion is emphatically not the case for much of our population, especially those under 35 years old. What is remarkably absent from our governor’s behavior is any sense of humility that perhaps her programs are a big part of the problem. The side effects are devastating to both the health and well-being of our people. The information reported by the state every day seems more motivated to frighten them than to inform. Lockdowns are not leadership.

Closing classrooms, despite virtually nil risk of illness to children, is unconscionable. Waiting lines more than an hour long outside grocery stores in December weather during “senior hours” because of incompetent government occupancy rules are insufferable. (I know, because I’ve waited in them.) It is a pity our governor did not accept an opportunity to join her kindred spirits in the swamp in the new administration. I know there is an old saying, “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.” But I’d be willing to take a chance.

Ronald Lipp Lamy