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𝓙𝓪𝓼𝓶𝓲𝓷𝓮 𝓦𝓸𝓵𝓯𝓮's avatar

Thank you for writing this! I'm in Texas and I can't leave. Why are so many people on the left wanting to throw us to the wolves? Texas used to be blue, ffs.

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BetBel's avatar

Thank you for this somewhat unnerving essay. My husband and I live in a blue Texas city, and until the last decade, the friction has been more understated. Still, lynchings (James Byrd, Jr. in 1998), the cult of David Koresh (1993) and ample one-sided political overreach have always felt like hot splashes of fear to us. Rural Texas has always had its horrors, especially for people of color.

The thing that caught me off guard, however, was when the local police refused to intervene in the attempt to run Kamala Harris’s bus off the road during the 2020 campaign, and was just laughed off. It was as though the table turned upside down and criminality became funny and laudable to the police.

The other part is the behavior of the execrable Attorney General and Governor, who both seem equally cruel and criminal in their willingness to hurt humans and act outside of accepted legal constraints.

They do especially well in small towns and rural areas where social control is more manageable, but the fever is rising, especially in big suburban areas.

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