GTT

Gone To Texas? Why?

Editor

Editor@TheIndependentDaily.com

The BBC and various news outlets have been reporting on the US Census Bureau's recent release of data declaring Texas as the “To-go-to” state in the US. Collectively they’ve painted a fairly rosy picture of the Lone Star describing its people as “...a mix of liberal and conservative...” and featuring them as inclusion-oriented and politically diverse.

There must be another Texas that I don’t know about.

They correctly describe the opportunities for employment, though, owing largely to Texas’ disregard for on-the-job safety and the health of its workers. Rick Perry, Texas’ present governor and one-time presidential candidate might have described his laissez-faire approach to a class of Texas 4th grade children by saying, “Losing your daddy in uh accydent ain’t so bad...sometimes he don’t end up dead...just gets a leg lopped off and yur kin gets money for that...”

So, armed with worker-security in mind, and realizing that the US economy has been reduced to the Stone Age, Texas is now a shining light - a beacon of Free Enterprise and opportunity, but don’t expect much in the way of intelligent discourse from most Texans. Expect...what you would expect from a Texan: Remember that these are the same people who in 1998 lashed James Byrd with a chain to the back of a pickup truck dragging him to his death and decapitation.

They are the same people who execute far and away more Americans each year than the total of those who die worldwide in terrorists attacks. The sick, the lame, the mentally defective, women and children: no one’s safe from Texas’ Kafkaesque penal system.

The BBC describes the average Texan as being just right of Center. What they fail to mention is that the political scale has become somewhat skewed to the right, thus, “Right of Center” might more closely align with the Human Rights practices of Idi Amin.

Then too, this is a very large geography of people who daily hear voices when there is no one around, and who have active conversations with a blue-eyed, sandy-blond, White man named, Jesus, whose portrayed genetics obviously belie his Semitic heritage. They ask Him for good health while swilling beer and distilled spirits; The strength to continue killing those who do not share in their delusions; And the continued right to own what we call, firearms, but they call guns.

The recent defeat of the Manchin-Toomey bill, which would have made background checks for gun purchases universal, is owed largely to Texans. The bill would have required Health workers to report to the central database anyone whose mental state was deficient. The obvious difficulty this would have posed for most Texans is evident.

In its provisions, Manchin-Toomey would have prescribed further study of the bill’s limitations by members of, among other professions, Religious leaders, including Texas’ vast number of far-right crazed fundamentalist Bible-thumpers. You see, blind fundamentalism is good...as long as it’s for Jesus, who as I recall, deplored intolerance.

I would guess Robert Duvall in Lonesome Dove said it best, “...ain’t no kind of man lower than a Texan...” The good news is that apparently every American who shares in this insanity will be fairly centralized leading eventually to some form of sequestration whereafter a high wall will be built around Texas’ borders precluding its residents from escaping and possibly contaminating the rest of America. Let’s hope George Bush is at home when they build it.