MISINFORMED?

Very.

Precolonial map of Mexico and the US.

instruments of war and peace 

desperation is as desperate
does poems buried in
sand plagiarism of the
earth nothing really 
stolen just found 
ore and petroleum
iron sage rosemary mint
one mystery says 
take my hand the
other corazón 
ethereal voices 
lime flower night 
stars and valley our 
sensibilities own a
lifetime of first drafts
the once upon a time 
de vez en cuando we
walked the Seine the
Tiber Mississippi we
threw stones kept
faith a drink of water of
booze that went down 
as fire the world fucked 
up Napoleon and 
Sun Tzu their wars
never funny but why
pick on those who wrote
in holy scripts sand 
pasture ice and glass 
white on black red 
and black I'll tell 
you something
here en vez de mi
a familiar cry my 
family's open arms they
say death won’t
be so bad which is
how I know it's a lie
waking dream the dead
don't speak they run
through fields trailing
May Day streamers that
say May Day May Day 
emerging emergencies 
containing failures 
though their lives 
so well-lived so long

—Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver (Lavender Ink, 2025)

It’s no longer a surprise to say that the leading lights of the Trump administration and the assorted MAGA (never Mensa) members associated with it have a very very tenuous relationship with reality. That was true even in the first administration when Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway openly admitted that they operated in a different dimension.

If you are one of those who find disturbing the ongoing direction of the world’s leading economic and military superpower, the past week probably didn’t do anything to reassure you that maybe somewhere sanity and order were possible in orange (must smash) Hulk (TM Marvel) universe.

Because there was the dear leader on social media and at press conferences and at the Hague and all kinds of places telling the world that Iran’s nuclear program had been obliterated. Not crippled. Not deterred. Not wounded. Obliterated. Forever. And not only without proof, but in the face of an initial report from intelligence that this had not happened. There had been no obliteration. The bombing had, perhaps, set back the Iranian nuclear program a few months, a few years.

At that point, did the self-nominated Nobel Peace Prize candidate (the rationale being that he had dropped a lot of bombs on a country with which the US is not at war) step back and say, Yes, perhaps it would be best if we waited to see what further investigations tell us?

Of course not! He doubled-down. He claimed the Israelis had been there and told him it had happened (They hadn’t). He accused the media of being traitorous for reporting what his own intelligence agencies were reporting! He called out reporters from CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and The New York Times and called them scum. He repeated it over and over. Scum, scum scum. We poets like repetition a lot, but the effect here seemed very far from Keats’ repetition of happy, happy, happy in Ode on a Grecian Urn.

Not to be outdone, and in order to show their cult-like devotion to their Manson-like master, various self-lacerating acolytes went even further. Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense. Seriously. He’s the one-time Fox commentator who ran a small veterans organization into the ground but who the 34 time convicted felon insists on calling the Secretary of War. What this suggests about the five-time draft dodger, who reminds us he went through his own personal Vietnam in the discos of New York City, is really anyone’s guess but I’ll start with the idea that what he knows about the art of war has a lot less to do with Sun Tzu and a lot more to do with GI Joe and Rambo. Throw in some Gomer Pyle and McHale’s Navy because, you know, everyone needs a good laugh in times of war and that Jim Nabor’s could sing (and please don’t tell the POTUS Jim was gay, it isn’t good for the image of the Marines).

So Hegseth goes out and gives a press conference at 8 AM EST—you know, when the whole world is watching—with the essential goal of screaming at the media about what traitors they all are. Seriously. How they hadn’t reported on how hard it was to fly a big airplane for a lot of hours. How they hadn’t reported how his amazing boss had planned the most complicated, sophisticated, perfectly executed military operation in the history of the world! He screamed. He ranted. He glared. It was extraordinary. It was theater. It was riveting and, what? Yes. It was really sad. More, it was pathetic.

It’s been reported that Hegseth has a drinking problem. It’s been reported that his drinking problems have led him to irresponsible, boorish, adulterous, violent, maybe criminal behavior. It’s been reported that he swore that if he became Secretary of Defense he would not take a single drink as long as he held the position.

As someone in recovery, I have a few things to say about that. The first is that untreated alcoholism is untreated alcoholism. It is a physical disease. It is an emotional disease. It is a psychological disease. It is debilitating and, if untreated, it usually is fatal. In order to heal, in order to get well, you have to do something to treat it. You may not be drinking, but all that thinking, all that feeling, all that crazy that runs around your brain is still there. It’s why the booze matters and what the booze helps soothe (until it begins to make life more dreadful, but that’s another story). What does not happen with alcoholism? It does not simply go away.

In fact, untreated alcoholism, when one isn’t drinking, can make all that anger, that sadness, that isolation and crazy, even harder to face. It’s called being on a dry drunk. It can go on for years. And it increases the pain because in your head you’re thinking, Hey, I’m not drinking, why don’t I feel better? And that suffering makes you want to drink even more. But since you know you shouldn’t, you get even worse.

Truth? Normally I would say that this isn’t really my business. I don’t like taking the inventory of other people. That doesn’t get them anywhere. Nor me. I want most of the time to focus on my own struggles. The difference here? We’re talking about the Secretary of War.

I could stop there, but this is Poet in Mexico, and how can I not at least make mention of the one-dimensional legal mind of the current Attorney General, Pamela Bondi, the one-time registered lobbyist for the country of Qatar, pronounced like the bug spray, which distinguished itself by donating to the current White House wonder an airplane worth 400 million dollars? Now I’m not suggesting that there’s any connection between the one-time lobbyist, the country for which she lobbied, and influence peddling in the Oval Office. I’m just wondering for what, if there isn’t a connection, did Qatar actually think it was paying her?

Well, last week, it’s early morning, and I’m doing my usual reading and writing, correspondence, feeding the dogs, a second cup of tea, and in the background I have the mañanera, the daily press conference held by Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo. They usually last an hour and a half, two hours, and in it the press corps asks its usual topical, wide ranging questions. Knowing what the issues of the day might be, often Sheinbaum will have several government ministers and officials there to provide details she might not have.

Questions can be very challenging, follow-ups the same. The give-and-take is respectful, though. Sheinbaum is intelligent, well-informed, with a kind of modest confidence, and she clearly enjoys the thoughtful exchanges. Even if she believes she has answered the question, she’ll give further explanations if the reporter seems to think it necessary. I don’t think I’ve ever once heard her insult or berate a single reporter.

So there I am, with the mañanera in the background and I hear this question: Would the presidenta like to respond to what the Attorney General of the United States said about how the United States would not be intimidated by any of its foreign adversaries, not Russia, not Iran, not China, not Mexico?

I almost spit out my tea. Mexico? Mexico?

A foreign adversary? Mexico? In the company of China, Russia, and Iran?

Obviously I had missed something in the news cycle? Oh yes. Apparently, testifying before the Senate Appropriations Committee on the 2026 budget, AG Bondi lumped Mexico in with that visionary company. Claiming, without proof, that half of Mexico is run by drug cartels, claiming, without proof, that three of the nation’s largest international banks are little more than money-laundering operations for the cartels, Bondi gave us further insight into the twisted kind of mind that is required to hold key positions in the current administration.

from La Jornada, 26 June 2025: The US says: You are my enemy. You won’t intimidate me. You poison me with fentanyl…Mexico replies: I do everything I can to stop you taking that crap that makes violent and crazy.

In a word salad that required the repetition of the word fentanyl, she constructed a world in which the reason that fentanyl is a problem in the US isn’t because Americans demand it. The reason there is a fentanyl problem is because Mexico wants it that way. That we in Mexico are forcing Americans into their addictions. That it is our plot here to do that. To intimidate America.

Incredulous, Senator Jack Reed, Democrat from Rhode Island, the senior member of the most powerful committee in the Senate, wondered if she had anything to say about the ways in which US gun manufacturers knowingly (and illegally) provide the arms for the cartels. Did she, perhaps, find this a problem? Bondi went back to word salad. Oh, and of course Bondi made sure to blame it all on the Biden administration. And when Reed tried again you could see in his eyes that he’s thinking, This is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States?

How had I missed this? Bondi likening the southern neighbor— the single largest trading partner of the United States, the country where so many Americans like to come and play, and from which, legal and illegal, the US derives some of the most important workers in its economy—to China, Russia, and Iran?

Presidenta, what did you think of what the Attorney General said?

She is misinformed.

That was it. Classic Claudia. A small smile. No drama. No insults. Nothing disparaging or disrespectful.

She is misinformed.

Of course Claudia had more to say. She had receipts. She talked about an upcoming military agreement between Mexico and the US, referring to the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA), which will be the single largest accord of its kind between the two countries. Claudia talked about the trade agreements the two countries are working out. She talked about the ways in which the Mexican government, with the assistance of US intelligence, was making deep inroads against the cartels, which are themselves experiencing internal tensions.

She is misinformed.

That’s whose running things in the US. A doddering into dementia authoritarian wannabe, a dry drunk who needed to start 12 Step meetings a decade ago, and a know-nothing foreign agent who has the foreign agent’s dream job: top cop.

Which Founding Father had this on his bingo card?

Upcoming:

As we move into the 4th of July holiday, I’m thinking a lot about the months ahead and my excitement at the poets whose work Poet in Mexico will soon feature, among others: Cornelius Eady, Jessica Greenbaum, Aliki Barnstone, Ralph Adamo, Rodger Kamenetz, Jeffrey Harrison, Jordan Davis, to name a few of those scheduled this summer. I’m grateful to the poets who have already helped make these posts more than I had hoped and different than I imagined.

I’m going to close with another one of my own—and wish you all a lovely week.

Abrazotes.

impatient appetite

a sky as high
and far as heaven
has nowhere to 
go when the 
going gone 
leaves fall off 
trees kisses
off our lips the 
song is song the
world world we
stop at the fruit
stand on the side
of the road 
there's nothing to
buy it's all not
ripe or too
ripe all beauty and
no solutions
some of us say
mountains watch
rainforest pine
sunflowers moon-
flowers we 
edge up to 
the front of 
the line abyss 
dagger a 
watering hole 
nickel beers 
nickel shots 
afternoon shadows
and glare we 
notice nightfall 
hunger and dance 
water lilies drying 
it’s been too  
long with no rain 
a couple there hugs
deep in love 
we sit like that 
all alone in 
this place in the 
world 

—Mark Statman, from Volverse/Volver (Lavender Ink, 2025)

Good Links: Woody, Bruce, You, Me

Bruce Springsteen, This Land is Your Land

Woody Guthrie wrote this song in response to God Bless America. I think of it as one of the most patriotic songs, if not the most, ever written for America. And who better to sing it than the Boss?

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