Letters to the Editor (Sept. 18, 2025)

Thank you for your service

Editor:

This season is a time to remember New Mexico’s special place in history.

WWII came to an end with the end of the war in the Pacific around this time of year — with Imperial Japan ceasing hostilities on Aug. 15 local time, Aug. 14 Washington, D.C., time, and officially surrendering on Sept. 2. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the war’s conclusion.

New Mexico has a special claim on the history of the war in the Pacific.

We are remembered for our role in the Manhattan Project — developing an atomic bomb at Los Alamos and detonating a nuclear device at the Trinity Site east and south of Socorro.

But let’s remember there were Navajo Code Talkers, who called New Mexico home. Many Code Talkers served in the Pacific. The communications code they built based on their native language was never broken.

Perhaps easiest to forget are the thousands of New Mexicans who served in the Pacific. Different sources give different numbers, but tens of thousands of New Mexicans served in the armed forces, many in Pacific — and many in the Bataan Death March, where many servicemen died after being taken prisoner, a reason you see “Bataan” on place names in New Mexico today.

Many New Mexicans who served returned home. Now, 80 years after the end of WWII, our Greatest Generation veterans are aging and fading. To those who served, especially in the Pacific, thank you — words can only begin to repay the debt we owe you.

Jonathan Gardner

Los Lunas

The kids are not OK

Editor:

I had an interaction with a stranger online yesterday about treating kids like adults in the criminal justice system.

Online, it’s sometimes unclear whether respondents are real humans or just bots, but I took a chance and proceeded like he was human.

“The juvenile code needs to be rewritten and juvenile jails built,” he said. “We’ve treated juveniles like misbehaving children for decades. They have become worse and get fewer consequences. It’s time to start locking them up. Play adult games, do adult time,” finishing with a declaration that I should stop making excuses for thugs.

My response to him was that we shouldn’t give up on young people; in 2025, almost nobody has the support of the village, parents, grandparents or even peers anymore. Young people spend a lot of time alone, online and kids are looking for entertainment on TicTok and other social media platforms.

Pedophiles and cat-fishers enjoy easy access to our kids online. We should be concentrating on getting rid of pedophiles and their enablers, don’t you think?

Pedophiles live and walk amongst us, you can find that online, too, or just watch the news.

AI chatbots help kids kill themselves now. Real parents are having to bury their kids who innocently trusted a bot over a real person.

The pipeline to prison statistics are alarming. Oh, that 8th Amendment! Since the times of enslavement, the U.S. has zealously locked people up and forced them to labor for pennies. Just for grins, look up all the prison industries that exist to recognize that inmates are being paid “slave wages” of the 1800s.

Recently, the secretary of agriculture confidently stated that Medicaid recipients will easily replace the migrant labor force. So, giving poor kids and disabled people a choice if they want to see a doctor. Let that sink in. Kids are no longer protected; they might as well just go to jail and learn a trade, am I right?

Young people are being groomed to be street-wise and opportunistic — both the symptom and result of a cruel world run by cruel rulers. We are now blowing random people to bits on boats in international waters, our troops are being misused to patrol blue state cities, and we are seeing masked men grabbing people in schools, restaurants and fields and disappearing them.

This is America right now. We are ignoring the pleas of sexual abuse victims and allowing more high crimes to happen right in front of our faces. We aren’t doing so well by our kids or our own selves.

It’s been said that how a society treats its most vulnerable is the measure of it’s humanity. I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure there are many humans left in the U.S. and no, the kids are not OK.

Michelle Tafoya

Los Lunas