Thursday, January 19, 2023

As I Was Saying About The South

It's free; no paywall. And except for a few minor changes (not many gators in Texas, though we've got 'em. Just not everywhere. Not much Santeria, either, but we've got stuff just as weird.), what Wilson describes about Florida might as well be a description of Texas. And I love Texas the way Rick loves Florida. (Got no idea how many generations deep into Texas I am. I can guess at about five, though my wife can trace her ancestry back to the Texas Revolution, so....3rd or 4th is more reasonable, I suppose. Seeing as Texas hit its bicentennial about 25 years ago.)

I especially resonate to this (again, minor changes in detail, but this might as well be Texas, too):

From the 1920s boom to the massive early-2000s hyper-expansion, people wanted to leave their cold, expensive, and highly-taxed lives in the North and Midwest and die somewhere sunny, beautiful, and cheap. For generations, a combination of quality of life and economic motivations drew people to Florida.

Today, it’s political.

And it sucks.
Rick goes on to detail all the MAGA crazies living in Florida.  I'll just balance that with Texas as the GOP's go-to ATM.  Only the details change, not the substance.  Welcome to the South.  Waltz across Texas.  It ain't all true "Southern," but when it comes to politics, it all seems to be bug-fuck crazy.

What was once a kind of genial live-and-let-live Southern conservatism is gone. Now, the political structure here is driven by people with almost no knowledge of the world beyond what is vomited forth in their Facebook groups, confidently asserting that the COVID vaccine’s 5G chips got their pit-bull Yorkie cross pregnant with alien DNA. Do you wonder why DeSantis won by 19? Crazy people, that’s why.

Texas, all over.  I'll see your DeSantis and raise you an indicted Attorney General, re-elected for the third time.  And a governor who presided over the worst power failure in Texas' history, which made no difference to nobody.  Florida has Rubio; we have Cruz.  And Chip Roy, Troy Nehls, and just about every crazy in the GOP House.

Florida Man is one thing. Florida MAGA Man is quite another. These were two streams that should have never been crossed, and the outcomes can only lead to more weirdness, more misery, and more national mockery.

To quote a disgraced former President and (of course) Florida resident, I’m calling for a total and complete shutdown of MAGAs entering Florida until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.

We don't have Florida man; but we do have Texas yahoos.  It was still within living memory that a group camped out in far West Texas calling themselves "Just-us" (meant to be a homonym for "justice") and declared "Texas Secede!"  Now I have to say here that, like "Don't Mess With Texas," that was always a joke.  I had a coffee mug with that slogan on it.  It was popular in the '80's when the swell of "Yankees" became more than some of us wanted to bear.  It was a response, not a political platform.  "Just-us" took it seriously, the benighted fools.  

(I also have a coffee mug emblazoned "Native Texan" because we seemed like a threatened category at the time of the Great Migration (which hasn't stopped.  Y'all come on down!  "Texas Friendly" is real!).  My daughter, who is qualified to bear it, has it now.)

Then there was the Texas legislator who shot himself in the hand (to claim he'd been a victim of a home invasion) and was found by Texas Rangers hiding in a stereo speaker (you can't make this stuff up) because he was actually a criminal in his own right.

I got more.  Over to you, Florida.

(It's not a contest; just to show you the more things change, the more they remain the same.  MAGA is drawn to Florida because of Trump?  Only because they don't find the "Welcome" mat out in New York or Connecticut.  Texas is no better; neither is the rest of the American South.  It simply hasn't changed since the Unpleasantness with the North.  It's not worse than it was; it's just not any better.  The more things change, ya know....)
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