Texas lore is bigger than its truth. The realities within Texas’ many dissimilar areas and among its diverse populations and neighborhoods are diminished and mollified to such extent that the Texas image most of the world knows is a commercial and political fantasy. My parents were born and raised in Texas, as were my father’s parents. I was born in Texas and spent my entire childhood in Texas and on the New Mexico side of the Texas border. What I know of Texas is lived experience. Why I write about Texas is personal.
Texas is not cowboy hats, boots, rodeos, the Lone Star flag, and the Bible. Each of these objects is in the popular commercial/political Texas image because over the last four decades, Texas’ owners won the culture wars. And to wage a successful culture war, warriors (politicians, religious leaders, marketing specialists, corporations) rely on imagery. Culture is about beliefs, lore, ideals. Culture wars are about power and control.
People seeking power must create energy via powerful, romantic, and emotional imagery. Running a campaign based on “Houston liberals and Abilene conservatives must sit together to decide our children’s futures” will not win in a state where Abilene’s white supremacists despise Houston’s Black residents. Vying for leadership among thousands of evangelical/fundamentalist churches on “We must return to Faith and Practice in Jesus’ clear-cut teachings” will not win in a state where religion is politics and religious power is in the Republican political party.
Millions of Texans do not own guns, never wear cowboy hats and boots, do not fly the Lone Star flag, are not religiously affiliated, do not believe that God resides in Austin and chose Donald J Trump or George W Bush to lead the nation, will never attend a rodeo and watch animals be tortured as human entertainment, do not believe that brown immigrants are vermin, and do not vote for Republicans. However, their voices seem silent among the noisy culture messages that Texas’ marketers, politicians, and religious leaders blast across all media. They as people are not Silent; the opposition has silenced their voices.
No GOP political leaders in Texas pretend to represent all Texans. They know who keeps them in office despite their unpopularity, corruption, and incompetence. Even if it is true, as I’ve heard, that registered Democrats outnumber and outvote registered Republicans in Texas, voter suppression strategies are so effective that millions of votes do not change the outcome. Waging a culture war such as banning books in public and school libraries or banning all trans people from competitive sports are as vital to voter suppression and voter turnout strategies as are purging voter rolls and closing polling locations. The Republican party in Texas has since Christian Nationalism became its official partner in the late 1970s held Texas voters by the short grass.
I watch a lot of television by streaming BritBox and Acorn, channels through which I view films made throughout Europe, and in Canada or Australia. Normally, their films are much more realistic about gender roles, identities, history, culture, and current issues. For example, the Endeavor series though set in the 1960s presents the many ways that women, the lower classes, and immigrants lead change by persistently and bravely challenging traditional norms. In the U.S.A., these challenges were met with violence instead of honest debate and reconciliation. And when the violence of the 1960s and 70s became intolerable on both sides, America’s conservative leaders turned to culture wars.
They believed they had won the battle against MLK Jr’s nonviolent movement by repeatedly driving the “MLK Jr and the Negro protest movement is funded by Soviet communists” stake into voters’ empathy for Black Americans’ oppression. When Reagan ran for the presidency, every poor Black American became the welfare scammer and lazy, sex-crazy, crack-addled thug that frightened middle class white voters. Reagan did not win the election because Republicans won the policy debates; they won because Republicans decided that Eisenhower was wrong and Nixon was right about voters…conservative and far right voters would turn out in greater numbers if they were frightened, resentful, angry, or influenced by covert white Christian male supremacist messages. Hence, those who could generate and wage culture wars became the most powerful voices in election seasons.
Of course, Democratic leaders also turned to culture wars, though sporadically and defensively. They got sucked into the ‘school prayers’ and ‘family values’ quagmires too easily; they still get trapped by inconsequential issues because politicians are afraid of America’s religious bullies. One of the worst outcomes of nearly five decades of culture wars is the distraction from issues like our nation’s public education system, the monopolization of news media, corporate political power, the rise of a billionaire oligarchy, Christian Nationalism, income and racial inequality, climate change, student loan debts, the rising costs of housing and healthcare…politicians were not paying attention, much less forcing these issues into national conversations and campaign debates.
While Texas Republican leaders, white evangelical preachers, oil and gas industry bosses, and conservative radio hosts ranted about prayer in school, guns, abortion, LGBTQ books, groomers and litter boxes in public school classrooms, immigrant rapists, the climate hoax – holding Texas voters by the Short Grass – what was happening behind the curtain is the true story. Texans say they love freedom…so they let government take away a girl’s right to terminate a pregnancy her father forced on her. Texans say they love country…so they let their GOP government deregulate industry and poison their water systems. Texans say they love Jesus…so they let government build concentration camps for immigrants where children are separated from parents and women are forcibly sterilized. Texans say they are the friendliest people on the planet…so they let government put coiled barbed wire midstream in the Rio Grande River where swimming immigrants died. Texans say they love liberty…so they let government criminalize women’s medical procedures and the doctors who safely perform those procedures. They say they vote for their children’s futures but give gun owners the privilege to kill their children in schools.
Perhaps the most successful distraction of all was this one: while Texas voters decried abortion rights, public school indoctrination, liberal elites, LGBTQ people, and whether women should work outside the home or lead a nation, the Texas government grew its autocratic power. Texans can dance the two-step, throw a football, wrestle a steer, shrink their blue jeans, build a mini-mansion, vacation in Galveston, ban books about LGBTQ characters in their school libraries, support MAGA, or boycott DEI programs all day and every which way but, they cannot undo without a revolution the Republican’s corrupt authoritarian power in Austin.
The boots, jeans, rodeos, romantic wild-West stories, country music, King James Bible, and Lone Star flag tell stories. They do not tell the truth.