Primary Runoffs in Texas

 

Texas is holding runoff primary elections this week with early voting ending today and election day next Tuesday. There are strange things going on, stranger than usual. The most noticeable is the cult of personality around Trump. Republican candidates, especially in races for seats in the US senate and house, but also in races for state and even some local offices, are running mainly on their unquestioned loyalty to him, and often attacking opponents for their supposed insufficient adoration of the man. If candidate A says he will lick Trump’s shoes, B replies that A is a Rino who will lick only the top of Trump’s shoes while he gladly will lick the soles. I have not seen anything like it in this state. Candidates usually argue over and lie about things they claim to believe and things they want to do for the state or district and its voters. There is some of that as well, but the big issue is who is more MAGA, and who loves and will serve Trump the best. It is at best creepy and strikes me as quite a bit worse than only creepy.  

The race for the Republican nomination for a US senate seat is also unusual in other ways. John Cornyn, an incumbent, multi-term US senator, is likely to lose, despite a general agreement that he would be a stronger candidate in the general election than his shady opponent Ken Paxton. Trump has endorsed Paxton. A person might think that a win for Paxton would create an opportunity for Democrats in the general election. It could have if Democrats had found a Lloyd Bentsen or a Henry Cisneros to be their candidate, but they did not. Instead they selected a wimpy Austin leftist with a long and revealing paper and online trail, who probably will lose to Paxton even with that plastic Jesus up there on his dashboard. A person almost could think that they wanted to show they can be more stupidly self destructive that even the Republicans.

As has been true in American politics in general for the last decade, you have to ask where are Mencken, Twain, and O’Rourke now that we need them?

Webb's Texas Rangers

Recently I finally read Walter Prescott Webb’s history of the Texas Rangers, something I had been planning to do for a good while. It is a fine and comprehensive history covering the rangers from their beginnings in the Texas Revolution to their activities in the 1930’s, depicting   both their legendary accomplishments and successes and  their failures and misdeeds.  The rangers as variously organized served in the revolution, the Mexican War, the struggles with the Comanches from the 1830’s through the 1870’s, the later fights with Apaches in West Texas, a century of trouble along the Rio Grande, and as lawmen fighting  the murderers, feudists,  horse and cattle thieves, and other criminals both on the frontier and in the state’s settle areas.

The book does an excellent job of making plain just how wild much of Texas was in much of the time it covers.  When the rangers began their work, the western edge  of civilization in Texas ran roughly from Corpus Christi to San Antonio to the Red River north of Dallas.  With the exception of a few Spanish settlements near the Rio Grande, the rest of the state was wild, mainly unpopulated, lawless, and  very dangerous.  Bands of Comanche, Apache, and other plains and desert Indians fought  each other and raided the Mexican settlements and ranches along and south of the Rio Grande and the Texans along the frontier. In the two decades after the Civil War much of the western half of the state was settled   by ranchers and others, though  some of the areas along the Mexican border upstream of Laredo and in the Trans-Pecos region in far west Texas remained wild until at least the time of  the first world war.  The book closes in the 1930’s on an almost completely settled and civilized state where a good deal of the credit for that accomplishment belonged to the rangers. 

Though the author obviously respects and admires his subjects, the book is generally fair in its treatment of the various participants in its story. (There is one main exception. The author, who published the book in 1935, shows the  low opinion of reconstruction and the coalition of blacks, Republicans, and federal troops who controlled the state during that era typical of a southern Democrat of his time. That bias comes through at times in his treatment of the period and of federal soldiers, particularly black ones.) Refreshingly for a reader these days, it is also completely devoid of political correctness with the author pulling no punches about the cruelty and duplicity of Mexican bandits and officials or the savagery of the plains Indians. He simply relates what actually happened in a manner free of the agendas,  special pleading, and   affirmative action with regard to content which afflict so much present day writing in history.  

In addition to presenting a the story of the rangers, the book does a fine job of setting and explaining the varying contexts they operated in  the hundred years from the revolution to the 1930’s. I recommend it highly. 

Texas Highways

We got a free subscription to Texas Highways when we gave one to a relative who asked for it for Christmas. We had been  subscribers  in the past, but we quit several years ago. We won’t be subscribing again unless it stays free. Texas Highways used to have a distinct voice and function. It was a homey, down home,  booster publication for travel in Texas focused on the interests and experiences of ordinary Texans, whose habits and lifestyles it treated with respect. In recent years it has changed its viewpoint and style to be closer to that of the superior, snarky urbanite who holds only the right opinions (especially the green ones) and appreciates only the approved things but finds occasional condescending amusement in the quaint behavior of the backward rustics – becoming sort of a special education version of Texas Monthly. It is sad. Texas Highways was good at what it once did and filled a real need. 

It still publishes schedules of events around the state, but those are available online at no cost. A this time I can think of no reason to be buying the magazine.