RE: [Futurework] Is Texas the problem?

[Karen Watters Cole]

Cousin, I personally wouldn’t live in Texas again as long as state law allows wearing guns in churches, an unnecessary and symbolic overreaction to a problem, and symptom of legislative obsessive-compulsion disorder.  Although I haven’t lived there since 1992, I have good memories of Texans themselves, and those haven’t changed even if the sociopolitical culture has.  Believe it or not, there are Democrats in Texas and liberals in Texas and there are people protesting the Iraq war in Texas.  They just don’t have very big microphones.   Texas has many endearing qualities, like the jocular friendliness of most of its residents.  There is camaraderie to surviving Texas summers and humidity, to say nothing of neighborly efforts to defeat the villainous advance of fire ants and the insidious invasion of giant cockroaches.  Santa Ana had nothing on these multi-legged guerrilla warriors.  I wouldn’t call this camaraderie a raison d’etre, but it does unite Texans across all political, social, religious and cultural groups.  If there was a party called Defeat Fire Ants and Cockroaches it would undermine the GOP stranglehold on Texas much as Ralph Nader’s Green party stymied the Democrats in 2000.  Those quirky independents.    Because Texas has such a large cultural image about it, it has become really more than the sum of its parts.  Something like Notre Dame is the ‘center of Catholic culture’ in the US, but then Boston might argue with that.  We buy into the myth because it is often charming and still expansive, a remnant of the unbounded expectations about the West and the promise of being a “new plus old” society.  It’s probably the last place where swaggering in public is accepted in self-depreciating good humor.  Swaggering in the kitchen is also encouraged, but not in the bedroom, where ‘the womenfolk’ have the last word, which is why swaggering doesn’t not occur where women may overhear and laugh.     Texas does retain the right to secede from the Union in its Constitution however, and I personally know a few Texans who have recommended it.  Like California, they have an economy and intrinsic identity that would be sustaining.  They have a deep water port, world class medical centers, a strong university system.  They are short on timber and water, but have plenty of oil, cattle and have a well-placed space facility.  They don’t make whiskey like Tennessee, but gulf shrimp more than compensate for that and there are German descendents who make beer.  BBQ and Tex Mex will last beyond a government collapse.  Looks pretty good so far.    Perhaps that is part of the overall Bush-Rove plan, to send lucrative corporate defense contracts to Texas firms and stockpile resources so that an independent Republic of Texas can be declared in 2008.  Until then, why tilt at windmills in Texas?  Bubbas and rednecks exist everywhere, even in the misty citystate of Portland, Oregon, where I have run into more than my fair share of bigots, closed-minded and chest-thumping provincials.  Before the economic bust, Oregon was part of the chain of West Coast states many semi-jokingly wished could become their own Republic of Pacifica or something, along with British Columbia, due to their economic ties and similar philosophies.  We even have our own rednecked, loudmouthed radio hate mongers, and I nominate one of them, Lars Larson, to be on the first one-way experimental launch to Pluto.    It would be nice if all morons and bigots resided in one place.  Then we might precision-bomb them.  Sadly, they do not.  – Fondly, and testing your limits to be teased, Cousin Karen.    PS If you don’t have a big grin across your face right now I failed in my mission.  That phone ringing soon will be me with Plan B.     REH wrote: Texas really is a Province.   I believe the time has come for Texas to finally admit that they are neither the largest state in the Union nor the most sophisticated in the ways of the world.      If the truth be known,  Texans would not be any more willing to sell their religion for a better economy than George Bush is, considering that he is spending it all to hell.    If some despot came to America and offered a better economy and security for their children as long as they swore fealty to him and allowed their religion to be a subset of his, would they agree?   Not blood likely.    I suspect that even Molly Ivey would come out in defense of her state and join hands with George Bush if so attacked.     George may be a Despot who stole the Presidency with the Republican high rollers but he is at least her Despot and not some foreign one.    Why would they consider that a 3,000 year old culture would not have ties deep enough to join together against a young, provincial and basically illiterate arrogant son of the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, not the most beloved institution in the Middle East?     It was not always that way.    Once, Texas still had the sophistication of the Hispanics of Mexico North to help the Anglo farmers.   They were underneath but they still shaped the discussion.   In fact it was Texas who absorbed all of the liberal immigrants from the Oklahoma ethnic and political cleansing in 1917 in the Green Corn Rebellion.    Another dirty little secret along with the recent Greenwood race riots in Tulsa that has come to the surface.    But today, after oil,  Texas is different.    Maybe from all of the Immigrant Arrogants from the other states in the Union who liked the Texas Braggadocio and have absorbed it like Seiji Ozawa absorbed Western Music.   More broad than deep.   But still effective.     Certainly not deep enough to understand the failures of the Imperialists whose steps they now follow though they deny it.