“Well, I have a microphone, and you don’t, so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!” – The Wedding Singer
Thankfully, the Soviets put CCCP on the side of their ships in letters 40 feet high.
When I was a lad, I stumbled upon the book “The Ayes of Texas,” by Daniel da Cruz. In it, a wealthy Texas entrepreneur, who lives in Texas, funds work on the Battleship Texas (BB-35) to make it seaworthy again in time for Independence Day, 2000.
Alas, the sneaky USSR proposes a treaty to the United States: put your weapons up, and we’ll put ours up after you put yours up. And, led by East Coast leftists, we fell for it. Except for the Texans, who vote to secede from the Union, and fight it out alone against the USSR. Oh, and our entrepreneur, has secretly outfitted the Texas (BB-35) with nuclear reactors and particle beam weapons.
It’s a good yarn (it has the Battleship Texas surfing on a tsunami of liquid fire), and you can get a cheap copy on Amazon.
And it does, I think, highlight the lynchpin that Texas is in modern politics, and not the alternate reality where the Soviet Union is still a thing.
My consideration of this started in the hot tub. The hot tub is great – we sit and either relax quietly, or engage in conversation. And it was just this sort of conversation a few weeks ago about the Civil War (Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?) that led to The Boy saying:
“It all comes down to Texas.”
I was interested. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” he began, “From what I’ve read, Texas today looks a lot like California in 1980 or so. Look what California looked like then, it was prosperous. It was wealthy. It was a beacon for the country. Everyone wanted to move there.”
I remembered. Heck, I remembered one time when a family stopped at our house when I was young asking for a cup of flour so they could make gravy at a campsite. They were making their way from Oklahoma to California. California was a place where your economic dreams could come true.
“Now, that’s Texas. The economy is great there. They’re reliably Republican, and with that there are all of the low tax, low government interference policies that lead to prosperity. People are streaming into Texas.
“And that’s the problem. The people streaming into Texas, well, they aren’t Texan. Over 300,000 Californians (net) have made their way to Texas over the last five years, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. They’re fleeing the highest poverty state in the nation, which coincidentally has the greatest wealth inequality in the nation.”
I responded: “Yeah, California is regulations-happy. I read that it was against the law for a homeowner to change a light switch – it had to be done by a licensed electrician. And one time I was talking to a friend on the phone a few years ago. His dog started barking. He was afraid he’d get fined again. Because dogs barking in California is . . . illegal. Sadly, when the Californians leave to go to another state, they want to bring those regulations with them, not realizing that those regulations were the cause of the economic problems they have now. Heck, Californians can’t figure out that their restrictions on housing cause house prices to go crazy faster than Elon Musk with a few minutes to kill and a connection to Twitter®.”
Graph-Me. Data? Wikipedia.
The Boy responded. “California used to be solidly Republican. At some point in the near future, a Republican might not even be on the ballot. Did you know that Ronald Reagan was governor there?”
It’s amusing when 18 year olds begin to discover the world.
“Yeah, now that you remind me of that, I remember it.” I smiled
“Well, California voted solidly Republican, at least until 1992. From then on, it became a lock for the Democrats. And it happened quickly – within a decade. Once Texas flips to voting Democrat, it’s over.”
Once it flips? Will it flip? The percentages voting Republican have dropped, and with the continual influx of Californians that are heavily collectivist as well as the rising proportion of Hispanic voters, which vote Democrat on a greater than two to one margin, it seems assured that as the Hispanic population rises in Texas, the flip to permanent Democrat control in Texas will be nearly inevitable.
Honestly, if Hispanic immigrants voted 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans, Democrats would have insisted on a 200 foot high wall topped with automatic machine guns.
Looking at the map, it’s theoretically possible for a Republican to win the White House without Texas, but it’s unlikely. Once Texas becomes Democratic the presidency will become, like California, permanently Democratic.
What does that even look like?
We can see hints of it, even now.
Control of The Microphone – We Will Shut You Down
Alex Jones is many things, but the fact that the Left thinks he’s dangerous enough to silence? It’s not a great strategy. I’m frankly amazed. But it’s not just him, the Left is looking to shut down every opinion that they disagree with. The old Libertarian in me would have said, “but they’re private companies, they can do anything they want.” Well, yes and no. If they start selectively banning people, they’ve opened their companies up to liability. And it’s been proven that they’re in the business of selectively banning racist posts, most recently when Candace Owens just changed a single word from a Tweet by Sarah “Got Dumped by a White Dude and Is Just a Bit Bitter” Jeong. I won’t post the Tweet, mainly because Sarah has a potty mouth. You can read about it here (LINK).
Worse? Who is next? What is the trip wire? I’ve heard Jones say lots of things. Some of them incredibly silly.
But none of them deserving censorship. The one common ground I used to be able to find (nearly 100%) with people of the Left was freedom of speech. Now, speech has to be stopped has become their creed. Why? Here’s a hint:
Your Speech is Violence, and My Violence is Speech
Yeah, it’s like something you would read in 1984. But the violence from Antifa® has been justified because burning things and hurting people is the justified speech of a downtrodden class and or ethnicity. Check out the sentence for an Antifa™ member who hit multiple people with a bike lock at the end of a chain. A link is here (LINK).
But it’s fine that Antifa© attempts to shut down a never-Trump conservative speaker, and Berkeley has to spend $600,000 to stop violence. You can read about it here (LINK).
Your Money is Theft, My Money is Earned
The Clintons earned $240,000,000 between 2001 and 2015. All earned, right? Obama earned $20,000,000 between when he was elected to the Senate and when he left office. Al Gore went from $274,000 in 1992 to $300,000,000 today.
This is considered fair.
A dentist makes $350,000 a year is part of the 1% and is an example of the enemy.
All Animals are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others
Even more important is intersectionality, which is making it more important to be part of an even more marginalized group by being parts of LOTS of marginalized groups, say, a deaf and blind gay transsexual quadruple amputee of aboriginal Australian and Hungarian descent.
I read an article where a Native American woman described when would go to leftist meetings. Generally after her first showing up at a meeting, she would be nominated for some sort of leadership position, up to and including the presidency of the group. It amused her (but not in the good way) that they didn’t even know her name on some occasions where she was being nominated to lead the group.
And Other Things Not Good
I’m not sure how socialism ends in the United States, but it really isn’t good. There are exactly zero socialist countries that have produced the level of freedom and wealth that the United States has produced. Sure, we’ve messed stuff up, but we’ve gotten far more of it right.
Back to Texas
Texas has always considered itself of outsized importance. I once worked with one of the kindest, most humble men that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Except when it came to Texas. If you made fun of his height (he was short) or his wife or his dog, it was okay. But if you made fun of Texas? It was personal.
I think Da Cruz was right – Texas is crucially important to the future of the United States. Almost as important as Texans think it is.
