Phill Casaus: Sticks and stones can do more than break bones

Apr. 22—Bad knees and all, I think Michelle Lujan Grisham, age 63, could take John Block in one round. Two at the most.

There, I've gone and done it: went straight to the gutter by synthesizing a political disagreement into an imagined physical altercation.

I apologize to you, the reader; to the governor; to Mr. Block.

To be clear: The governor is not going to boot Block's butt from Alamogordo to Tularosa. But from the looks of it, she isn't going to stop him from spewing incendiary excrement from his Twitter account, either. So the freshman state representative's "murderer/murderess" rap last week will be just one more juicy paragraph to be added when a reporter writes The John Block Story: How to Get Elected and Come Off Like a Twerp Without Even Trying.

It's not that I have a philosophical problem with Rep. Block exercising his First Amendment rights. He's against abortion. A lot of people are. While I personally disagree with them, I understand they can defend their position, their voice — and their vote. The last item has gotta drive Block, a freshman in the House, stark-raving nuts: Election results from the past 50 years would suggest New Mexico is going to remain a state that supports abortion rights.

No matter what words are used to describe the governor.

But here's the problem: When elected officials like Block start lobbing warheads like "murderer" at the governor, a fellow elected official, they send some people down a dangerous glide path. If there's one thing we've learned in America during the past two or three decades (or is it 200 or 300 years?), it doesn't take much to provoke those who lack the right kind of dowels for their door hinges.

And then where are we? Not long ago, a group of men were convicted for their roles in a plot to kidnap Michigan's governor, Gretchen Whitmer. They were caught before they could hurt her, but the potential was there to make Michigan the Rust Belt equivalent of some steamy, junta-dominated backwater, where political intimidation and actual assassination rule the land.

Too dramatic, you say?

A few years ago, I would've agreed with you.

I used to work with a reporter who left journalism to take a job as a spokesman for a New Mexico governor. Every time I'd see my former colleague after he'd departed for the Roundhouse, I'd kid him about his fixation about his boss's physical security. I thought his caution was absurd; more about show than actual danger.

I'd try to tell him this was New Mexico, not Guatemala.

Unsmiling, he'd reply: "You don't know the kinds of threats we get."

That was nearly two decades ago. Today, I stand corrected. Or rather, chastened.

In an America where everyone's angry and everyone has a gun, and everyone thinks they have a reason when all they really have is an urge, the trigger, literally, can rest on mere words.

Which is dumb, but true.

What's sad about all this is, I suspect Block's bile is really an amalgam of what he sees every day — online, on TV, and yes, in the newspaper.

He's come to understand the line has been moved so far by carney barkers like Donald Trump, Colorado's Lauren Boebert, Georgia's Marjorie Taylor Greene, and yes, the gift that keeps on giving, Alamogordo's own Couy Griffin, that there really is no line.

These attention-hogs know the louder they get, the less choice media knuckleheads like me have: Reporters and their editors have to cover them and what they say. Even if we sometimes plug our olfactory senses while doing so.

And Block, who has his own website, knows that, too. I doubt the Alamogordo Republican is inviting me to Christmas dinner this year, but I'd be the first to acknowledge he's plenty savvy. With a little civility, he could become a productive legislator. Oh, and Santa Fe libs, before you look down your nose at his Southern New Mexico address, remember: Block grew up here, in Progressiveville, USA.

Like many of her opponents, Lujan Grisham is sharp, too. Uber sharp. When the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down Roe v. Wade last summer, she skillfully manipulated the issue to her political advantage, tapping into instinct, her own belief system and undeniable math: New Mexicans who support abortion rights outnumber those who would deny them. And not by a little.

As long as MLG is governor, and as long as any wildcat anti-abortion lawsuit can be corralled in New Mexico without heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, she's holding aces over kings.

The rest? I hope the rest is just sticks and stones.

I hope.

Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.