Mr. Scorpio
Mr. Scorpio's Journal38 years ago, the USAF in its infinite wisdom sent me to Texas for two years.
Austin, TX of all places.
Now, I have to stipulate that I'm not writing this to dump on Texas. But as someone who has lived in Texas as an outsider many years ago, I thought I'd add my perspective.
I want to point out that when the Air Force sent me to Texas, a place that I never asked to be assigned to, I clearly wasn't prepared for the experience. I had to make a lot of personal adjustments to cope, of course. For, example, four in the afternoon was unbearable for me, because of the extreme summer heat and the overly bright sunlight. The fire ants, the impossibly congested traffic, downtown streets without sidewalks. The KKK public access cable programming, the lack of decent radio stations. Freaking yuppies. I had to cope with all of that.
I did, enjoy the food and good music, however. Made some good friends, all who moved there from other states, BTW. I found native Texans to be... Barely sociable with people who were from any place else other than Texas. I was in "God's Country," I was repeatedly told that I should have been more appreciative of the privilege that I never asked for, Hook 'Em Horns.
But, other than tasty TexMex, an impressively constructed I-35 and BBQ, I didn't see why.
A couple of moments that clued me onto the fact that everything in Texas wasn't as nifty as what I was always told they were, was the moment that an inch of snow fell down and stuck. Now being from Michigan, no one here would bat an eye at an inch of snow. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about it. At least it initially wasn't to me the moment I saw it falling in Austin. But just imagine my surprise when they shut down operations on the base and sent us all home... Over an inch of snow.
What was even more remarkable was the fact that things were pretty much at a stand still for almost a week, because they had no capacity to treat, or drive in or even cohabitate with a few inches of snow. Snow, with turned to ice, which turned to black ice and not even the abilty to spread sand on the roads.
And that, plus all the other things that just didn't make any sense to me, the inability to function or plan. City planning there was a crap shoot. The penchant for municipalities to annex outlying areas, tax the newly annexed areas and deny those areas any city services. The street layouts without any rhyme or reason. Year old maps would be outdated after a year. Building codes seemed like suggestions, which was pretty disconcerting, because Austin was with the midst of a downtown skyscraper building boom at the time. The State Capitol, which is an impressive structure, was being obscured by massive monstrosities of glass and steel.
It appeared to me that the money was flying around, without any concern for regular folks. After all, they never thought of building sidewalks downtown on Congress Boulevard in 1984.
The other problem that I had with the place was with Texans themselves, people that I found out to be generally downright rude. I couldn't explain it. Now my immediate boss at the time just happened to be native born Texan, named Harvey. Now, I liked Harvey, he was a generally an open, friendly guy, in his smiling slap-back kind of way. And that's despite his penchant for calling Mexican-Americans "wet backs." So one day, after dealing with those rude-assed civilians in town, I asked Harvey why those people were so damned rude to strangers. In all my years, I had never ran into so many rude people in one place. My confusion was that I was down south, yet didn't come across any souther hospitality.
Well, Harvey set me straight, of course. He pointed out to me that Austin was NOT "down south," Austin was in Texas. And from that point on, every weird thing that I saw from there on out, from steer horns on Cadillacs to shot-gun racks in pick-up trucks, to every thing else, I went back to Harvey's admonition that I was in Texas.
It was the mindset that helped me deal with the situation I was in at the time.
Given the almost xenophobia against non-Texans, the casual racism and sexism that I say, the bragging about things that nobody else would ever brag about, I knew that it was my time to take my leave of God's Country an high-tail it out of there. I scored an assignment to Korea and never looked back.
I just want to point out that my two years wasn't all bad there, Texas did have some appealing qualities. But for me, the cons greatly outweighed to pros. As a non-Texan, Texas was definitely not for me.
But my questions are, how could the very vulnerabilities of Texan living that I recognized 38 years ago, have possible gotten exponentially worse? And not just that, how has the callous disregard for ordinary people gotten to the level of a modern day social Darwinism experiment in Texas? Lastly, given what both knew and what we've all seen recently, doesn't it seem doubtful that things will improve there?
When will enough be enough?
Time to face the ultimately cynical reason why the Republicans acquitted Trump...
It was not for any reason that's beneficial for the republic, which would be remarkable for "Republicans." It wasn't even as a favor to Trump himself, as the ill feelings between Trump and Congressional Republicans are definitely mutual at this point.
It all came down to an act of self-service. Had the GOP Senators convicted Trump for the crimes that they all knew he committed, his cult would return the favor is spades.
By letting him slide, they felt that they could avoid the wrath of 75 million triggered white cultists at the polls for the duration.
The January 6 insurrection is still fresh in everybody's mind. Imagine that same spirit of violence against politicians spread around the country in subsequent electoral districts. Trump, in his unyielding effort to get back at those who would have voted to convict him in overwhelmingly Republican regions of Dumbfuckistan, all to make the Republicans who "betrayed" him pay.
The threat was implicit.
So, instead of doing the right thing, by holding Trump accountable and sending a clear message to any subsequent despot that preserving and defending American democracy is paramount, they cut him loose. It was the legislative equivalent of an amicable divorce. Trump keeps his bloodthirsty children and the Republicans keep the House and the Senate.
So, despite the outcome that pretty much everyone knew was going to happen, as there was never going to be 17 Republicans who would vote against Trump, there are two good things to look forward to here:
One, the Republicans stipulated that, as an ex-president, Trump could be criminally prosecuted and probably should. It looks like things are going that way. He's going to be working hard from here on out to keep himself out of jail, without any help from the greater Republican establishment. These state prosecutors are all smelling his blood in the water.
And two, the Republicans are going to come out of this looking weak and vulnerable. Acquitting Trump was an act of cowardice and weakness. There will be an entire plethora of Republican Senate seats up for grabs in the next midterms... I really can't think of a good reason why Democrats can't help themselves to some of them. If we can take places like Arizona and Georgia, why not other places as well?
It's time for Democrats to internalize Carpe Diem. We can do that, all it takes is the will to do so.
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