Agaves, Goldwater and change

Constants

On my walk up I saw a small fallen green agave. It had sent up its long tall stalk and flowered earlier in the season and, surrendering to gravity, it had toppled over, scattering a multitude of tiny agaves that had fallen off of the stalk. That’s how the plant reproduces.

I scooped them up and walked home with 28 tiny agaves to plant like seedlings. In time I’d have 28 giants. Patience.

When I was a kid, I would ride my stingray bicycle past the John Birch bookstore on the edge of town. The Master Sergeant described the patrons and the owner as “crazy as loons. They think Fluoride is a red plot.” “Birchers”. “They’re nuts,” he’d say. “They see commies under every bed.”

The Master Sergeant could not have imagined their patience or perseverance.

When Richard Nixon was angling to become the nominee of the Republican party in the early sixties, he surrendered to the foreign and economic policy radicals in his party and nominated their avatar, Barry “I’m a proud extremist” Goldwater, at the Republican convention to take on LBJ.

At the time Goldwater had his own worries about their party’s direction, wringing his hands over the rise of religious fanatics within the ranks of the Republican party.

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”

-Barry Goldwater

As much as Goldwater fretted over the rise of religious fanatics within the ranks of his party, Richard Nixon fretted over the rise of the far right radicals within their party. He was sure their extremism would alienate the masses. Nixon was right. Goldwater was creamed.

In 1972 when the left nominated McGovern they learned how conservative America was, losing by a landslide to Nixon.

In the meantime the struggle for the heart of the Republican party went on in Arizona.

In the eighties Arizona elected Evan Mecham, a radical theocratic Republican, our Governor, and then impeached him and removed him from office. He became a national embarrassment and was bad for our state economy and so he had to go.

Believing Evan Mecham was an anomaly, I enjoyed his brief tenure, his stupid remarks and his idiotic policies. Being a satirist, he made me happier than a mosquito at a nudists colony.

Whether he was accusing the Attorney General of spying on him by pointing lasers at his office or asking the good people of Arizona what exactly was wrong with a textbook calling black children pickaninnies?

Convinced Martin Luther King was a commie, Governor Mecham rescinded Arizona's Martin Luther King holiday and then proceeded to root out all the “homosexuals and sodomites” in state government.

When he was impeached and removed from office, I was happy for my state and my fellow citizens. He was a bigot, a fool and conspiracy nut and he was gone, vanquished by reason. I recall saying to colleagues,“That’s the last we’ll see of that kind of nutty idiocy.“

I could not have been more wrong in my sunny estimation of the wisdom of Arizona voters. Roughly 4-decades later Arizona's legislature is rife with a multitude of mini-Mechams, neo-Nazis, election deniers and QAnon conspiracy nuts. And exactly the kind of religious fanatics that Barry Goldwater had feared. They cleansed the party of moderates, centrists, and the dissenters whom they would deride as rinos, republicans in name only.

They purified the party.

As goes Arizona so goes the nation.

As I bent over the fallen agave stalk to harvest the miniature agaves scattered around it I thought of a roadtrip down to Lake Patagonia where a friend and I enjoyed an afternoon rowing about the lake. He pointed out to me how a sailboat makes progress across a lake; sailing in a Z pattern from side to side yet always moving forward. I thought of how that metaphor works well until the sailboat sails too far in one direction and runs aground rather than forward. What then?

Best get these tiny agaves in soil so the might take root.