By BRANDON ZERBE
Los Alamos

I found reading Christine Bernstein’s letter “Let’s Practice Safe and Civil Community” (link) very bizarre and somewhat concerning. At face value, the title is something I believe every reasonable American can get behind; however, what I found alarming was the inconsistency between this title and specifically the latter half of text this letter.

I mostly liked where Mz. Bernstein started. She first discusses uncivil responses to her previous letter, in particular focusing on setting a good example for our children. While I am not privy to the details, modern parents know that we must warn our children about such responses on public forums especially social media platforms. On the other hand, I do not want to confuse reasonable criticism with name calling and fact-less character attacks, which is a mistake I sometimes see in our public discourse. In this case, Mz. Bernstein does not provide any details of, the source of, or factual rebuttal to the responses, so I assume that the responses she is discussing were of the fact-less variety and I agree with Mz. Bernstein that any public servant should be mindful of the responsibilities they have for maintaining civil discourse as they are examples to our children.

Next, Mz. Bernstein asks her constituents to contact her about facts. I see we share values of civic engagement and representational democracy, and I applaud her willingness to take her public representation with such democratic aplomb.

Finally, Mz. Bernstein thanks her previous political opponent in what takes up about half of the content of her letter. In isolation, Mz. Bernstein’s praise of Morris Pongratz is again great; however, election day is roughly a month away, so this portion of the letter cannot be read in isolation.

It is the timing of this praise that I found so bizarre and concerning. As Mz. Bernstein is in the middle of her campaign, I read Mz. Bernstein’s statement “I realized only recently how civil that campaign was.” as a way to transform her praise of Dr. Pongratz into an assassination of her opponent’s character without the need to resort to facts or even arguments that could otherwise be critically reviewed, discussed, and reasonably considered. I’d argue that such passive aggressive argumentation is precisely the uncivil discourse that she apparently is implying her opponent is using, and I find reading this argumentation in a letter claiming to be about maintaining civility to be highly ironic.

Unfortunately, I am not in district 3, so the only way I can assert my concern on this matter is to utilize the same public forum Mz. Bernstein used to air her grievances. I would suggest people who do live in district 3 to read “Let’s Practice Safe and Civil Community” (link) and ask themselves if they agree with my interpretation of Mz. Bernstein’s letter and whether they are comfortable with their children emulating such communication strategies.