In 2004, historian Thomas Franks chronicled the plight of his home state of Kansas. Formerly a moderate Republican state, Franks lamented the fact that so many residents had, over the course of the prior two decades, embraced an extremist, evangelical-tinged GOP agenda that emphasized opposition to abortion rights, gay rights and government regulation of business while, at the same time, ignoring issues such as poverty and growing economic inequality. Franks concluded that, because many Kansans suffered from "false consciousness," they were too often persuaded to vote against their own best economic interests.
Even casual observers of current American politics understand that Kansas is not unique among the red states now dominated by the GOP. Consider the example of Texas. The Texas Medical Association reports that, among the 15,001,700 residents, 4,886,100 or 33% of the state's population lack basic medical insurance. Texas thus earns the dubious distinction of being first in the country on the misery index. In addition, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Texans living in poverty rose for a third consecutive year in 2011, adding more than 214,000 people to total 4.6 million or 18.5 per cent of the population, which was 3 percent higher than the nation as a whole.Why have these problems continued to fester? The explanation is at least three-fold. Texas has the second lowest number of adults who have earned a high school diploma, or roughly 80%. Texas is a right-to-work state in which it is virtually impossible for employees to unionize and to bargain collectively. Finally, most of the jobs created in Texas over the past decades have been low wage jobs such as call centers. On this last point, state law makers, kowtowing to specious concerns raised by the business lobby, have consistently refused to increase the state's minimum wage above the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
To counter the plethora of well-documented social and economic problems, the Texas legislature - overwhelmingly dominated by the GOP - and its intellectually-challenged governor have opted for a mean-spirited, legislative agenda that defies logic and is impossible to reconcile with the state's apotheosis of rugged individualism. That agenda, which strikes a responsive chord among those Texans who describe themselves a church-going, pro-life conservatives, decries government regulation of the economy, but simultaneously sanctions a state-sponsored invasion of the bedrooms of Texans and the wombs of its women. Oblivious to these contractions, Texas also leads all governmental units in the Western world in the number of prisoners it has executed, having put to death more than 500 people since 1976.
Perhaps, in part the schizophrenia of Texas politics is explained by its founding mythology. Davie Crockett, Stephen Austin and "remember the Alamo" still echo across the land. A few years ago, Dwight Hobbes in an opinion piece reminded us ("Debunking the myth of the Alamo," Insight News, March 02, 2008), that "Hollywood and schoolbooks put forth the propaganda that a brave band of freedom fighters stood their ground against the oppression of a ruthless tyrant; that Texas basically was rescued from Mexico."
As Hobbes correctly observed, "Mexico owned Texas, plain and simple. For those of you in the slow section, that means Texas was Mexican land. The Texans living there were colonists who'd agreed to a contract with Mexico. And then they decided they didn't have to live up to their end of the deal; that they could just decide the land was theirs. These so-called revolutionaries were at odds with Mexico over the 'right' to steal Mexican territory (and, by the way, wanted to keep slavery, which Mexico's president Generalissimo Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had abolished). The only ones who could legitimately call themselves revolutionaries were Mexicans who lived in Texas and wanted to separate from Mexico - and about whom you seldom hear a word when it comes to remembering those who lost their lives at The Alamo."
Hobbes concluded that "By the time Texas became a state nine years later, it'd been appropriated and overrun by white folk who had no business being there in the first place. Just like every other square inch of space in America."
Are Texans, because they have failed to come to grips with the lessons of their own history, as Santayana warned, forever condemned to relive it? The narrative that describes the founding of Texas, much like that of the United States, has been largely built upon a facade of pieties and untruths. Sonorous platitudes about liberty and casting off the yoke of tyranny and oppression mask a long history of slave-holding, genocide against the Native Americans, and reckless selfishness, plundering, and lawlessness.
Perhaps it was the British wit and writer, George Bernard Shaw, who, admittedly with a bit of sarcasm and overstatement, punctured that the cherished myths that Texans and so many other Americans believe reflect the values that we stand for. In 1921, Oswald Garrison Villard, the editor of The Nation magazine wrote Shaw a letter:
"My Dear Mr. Shaw:
"I understand a number of friends are wring to you and urging you to come to the United States. May I say how gratified we of The Nation would be should you come to us?"
George Bernard Shaw replied:
"Dear Mr. Villard:
"This conspiracy as been going on for years; but in vain is the net spread in sight of the birds. I have no intention of going to prison with Debs or taking my wife to Texas, where the Ku Klux Klan snatches white women out of hotel verandas and tar and feathers them. If I were dependent upon martyrdom for a reputation, which happily I am not, I could go to Ireland. It is a less dangerous place; but then the voyage is shorter and much cheaper.
" You are right in your impression that a number of persons are urging me to come to the United States. But why on earth do you call them my friends?"
