The Road to Splitsville THE G.O.P./REMAINS KRAZEE/(CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP) DEEP IN THE HEART/OF TEXAS

The Newsletter for Subscribers to THE SPLIT

This past May 29^th, in this very newsletter, we informed an astounded, disbelieving public unsurprised, eye-rolling readership that the Texas Republican Party, at its annual convention, approved a number of very silly/idiotic/theocratic/ anti-Semitic measures. These proposals included, but were not limited to, calling for “spiritual warfare with demonic, Satanic forces,” requiring candidates for state-wide office to win a majority of the state’s counties (thus making possible minoritarian rule), and, of course, demanding that the Bible—yes, that Bible—be taught in public schools.

These measures went a long way toward validating and supporting our proposed Augmentation of One of the State’s Official Mottoes, transforming “Don’t Mess With Texas” into the less catchy, but more informative, “Don’t Mess With Texas, As We Are Perfectly Capable of Messing With It Ourselves.” We’ll hoist it up the flagpole and see if anybody turns it upside-down.

We noted, in that issue of The Road to Splitsville, how, in 2022, that same august body of reactionary Lone Star choads approved a platform that included calls for a referendum on Texas’s secession from the Union. Ha ha! you thought at the time. As if! Can you imagine?

Well, guess what. They’ve done it again.

As James Bickerton informs us in Newsweek:

The Republican Party of Texas is calling for a referendum on whether the state "should reassert its status as an independent nation" as a "legislative priority" in the next session of the Texas legislature.

The call was included in the party's 2024 Legislative Priorities and Platform document which was released on June 7, after its component parts were voted on by Texas Republicans at the party's convention in San Antonio, which took place between May 23 and 25.

Naturally, your (and our) immediate response to this news is to stockpile popcorn and straighten up the tv couch, in order to watch the ensuing hilarity. And maybe we should! It’s always good to have popcorn on hand, and the couch could use a good straightening. But to do it in anticipation of actually watching the state of Texas shoot itself in the foot (and they do a lot of shootin’ down there) would be premature.

“But come on!” you cry. “They’re calling it TEXIT and everything!”

We know. But the thing Bickerton cited is little more than a request to have the legislature draw up the referendum, which would then be put to the voters across the state. Bear in mind that some distinguished state representative drew up a bill as recently as last year, calling for such a referendum, and the danged thing failed to make it out of the State Affairs committee.

So, oh fooey, yes. And—at least for us pro-TEXIT types—it gets worse:

A poll of 814 eligible voters in Texas conducted for Newsweek in February found 23 percent would back the state becoming "an independent country" in a hypothetical independence referendum, whilst 67 percent would vote for Texas to remain "a state within the United States."

(Which means that fully ten percent of those polled were either unsure or have no opinion. What’s their deal?)

Living, as we do, not-in Texas, it’s hard to know how seriously or literally to take all this. Granted, we have a personal stake in wanting them to mean it. Not only would it prove prescient all, or at  least part of, The Split (and its subscriber newsletter, the very document you are reading!), but it would rid the U.S. of one of the more repellent far-right Republican parties, of the sort that hates government until a hurricane smashes Galveston, and hates immigrants until the crops have to be picked. It would also—and this would inspire the thanks of a grateful Senate, from both sides of the aisle—rid the U.S. of Ted Cruz.

But anyone can say anything to a pollster. For all we know, seceding from the Union and becoming an independent nation may be certain Texans’ version of the childhood wish, in previous generations, to run away from home and join the circus, i.e., to find escape from the oppressive bossiness of Mom and Dad and emerge into an exotic new life of fun and freedom. The Texans saying “Yes” to TEXIT mean it but—like children—they don’t really mean it. It's a fantasy, a dream, an idealized vision—but not a plan.

The thing is, though, they’re not children. And this annual exercise in fantasy always comes packaged with the usual reactionary/theocratic/death-cult accessories: pride in the state’s history, but only if “wokeness” (i.e., the parts of history they don’t like) is edited out; reverence for life, when it’s used to ban abortion and control women, but not if it might lead to gun control; non-“belief” in climate change, but fervent belief in Satan; the sacred truth that the U.S. (or the Texas Republic) is a Christian nation, albeit one in which Christians are, for some reason, persecuted.

A grown-up who can believe they’re going to the Christian heaven when they die can just as well believe that Texas would thrive as an independent country. What’s surprising about that Newsweek poll isn’t that nearly a quarter of those asked are in favor of secession, but that more of them aren’t. But who knows? If (/when) Biden wins, and Texans have to suffer through four more years of Democratic rule (a booming economy, world-wide respect, capable management of infectious diseases, a government that at least tries to work for people rather than for plutocrats and corporations, a welcoming embrace of a pluralistic, multi-racial society instead of its demonization via bigotry and lies, etc.), the next Newsweek poll might find that a majority of the state thinks TEXIT is a good idea.

Shall we tell them how BREXIT has worked out for the Brits? Oh let’s not. They wouldn’t believe us anyway. Instead, what say we continue our pleasant cruise along the Road to Splitsville?