As Texas goes, so goes the nation – that’s the message from journalist Lawrence Wright in his 2018 book God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State. Wright, a New Yorker writer and nearly lifelong Texan, posited that Texas, not California or New York or any other state with an outsized role in the national imagination, would be the model of the future. Whether or not you agree – the state has a reputation for pride, for better and for worse – Texas is as good as any mirror to the national condition, to American fantasies and realities. Vast, diverse and frequently contradictory, it’s a state wrangling with the urban/rural divide, increasingly polarized politics, energy dependence and the fractious practice of a national border.
Wright, a longtime resident of Austin, pronounced the future of America back in 2018, when the El Paso son Beto O’Rourke’s close run for US Senate prompted a wave of analyses on just how long it would take Texas to turn blue, and the Trump administration detention of migrant children in cages prompted national outrage. Six years on, Texas remains in the vanguard of national conversations, from Beyoncé to the border. And a new HBO docuseries picks up where the book left off, with three portraits of Texas in three distinct home towns.
