Could somebody please explain Texas pride to me? Isn’t Ted Cruz still one of their senators? That loathsome, cowardly, sniveling, whining, lying, wriggling invertebrate human excrescence? I’m embarrassed to belong to the same species as Ted Cruz. It’s like finding out you’re related to a worm.
(“And that’s a photo of your great-grandfather, who was a sipuncula, or peanutworm ...”)
Sharing the same state would be unbearable. It’s bad enough that Bruce Rauner is here, somewhere, hiding in one of his homes.
Yes, Texas is an economic powerhouse — the 9th-largest economy in the world. And what are its chief economic products? Agriculture, energy and ... tourism. Which is what makes one particular line in the draft Texas Republican Party platform — “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States.” — so curious.
The Texas GOP is taking pains to remind everybody that they find mainstream American values — diversity, public education, free elections — so odious they must officially give a big middle finger to the other 49 states. There’s a tourism slogan for you: “Texas: We hate America so much we might quit at any time ... until then, yeehaw, c’mon down for some down-home cowboy fun!”
Good luck with that one.
Of course, lack of bone-deep Republican hypocrisy forbids me from casting shade on anyone’s tourism slogan without pointing out that Chicago has perhaps the worst advertising line devised by humankind: “When you GO you know,” with the “GO” in yellow, lest the connection to micturition be overlooked. Can you imagine the gathering of talent that produced that one? And the bar was already set very high with the previous slogan, “Chicago Not Chicago” which, with a little punctuation, becomes the thought process that accompanies the suggestion of visiting our troubled city. “Chicago? Not Chicago!”
These slogans have to be intentionally lousy, right? I can only assume it’s some kind of long game by chessmaster Lori Lightfoot, trying to tamp down the inevitable stories about visitors being shot at Chicago tourist destinations this summer by encouraging them to never arrive in the first place. Our next tourism campaign will be “See beautiful Milwaukee.”
Back to Texas. Yes, secede, by all means. The state gets back $1.20 for every dollar it sends to Washington, and 17.5% of its state budget comes from the rest of the country’s taxes. Illinois meanwhile gets 94 cents back on each dollar we send, after six cents is snatched by Texas. So leave, parasite. Don’t let the door ...
The draft platform, approved in Houston, supports prayer in school without specifying whose prayer — the assumption that everybody is a Christian, or will be, is their bedrock. Let’s just say there’s nothing about allocating public funds for prayer rugs.
I haven’t even begun to mine the platform’s 40 pages. Homosexuality is “an abnormal lifestyle choice” while students should “learn about the humanity of the preborn child.” Fetuses are people but gays are not.
Other contradictions leap off the page. Students have a right to challenge their teachers over evolution, acting as ad hoc advocates for their faith-based nonsense. Meanwhile, teachers can’t teach about gender issues. Texas Republicans want to arm teachers because buying guns is such a bother, particularly for disturbed students. A gun should be available to be snatched in every classroom, but pornography is a “public health hazard”
Perhaps the most Ted Cruzian line in the platform calls for legalizing machine guns, silencers and sawed-off shotguns, and in a particularly deceptive way, even for Texans, by suggesting the country “Repeal and/or nullify the Firearms Act of 1934” — the legislation banning those weapons.
Ah well. The beauty of Texas is that it’s far away and you never have to go there. (Have you ever been to Texas? I have. It’s awful). Though this document is a cautionary tale, even for more house-trained Illinois Republicans. A taste of the storm coming your way.
Occasionally, I will hear from a moderate Illinois Republican patiently explaining that yeah, all this bad stuff goes on other places in the party, clapping like seals for Trump treachery and such, but they belong to the party for elevated reasons, for particular sane, sensible policy points. To which I reply: It doesn’t matter. If you join the Nazi Party because you really like the uniforms, while disapproving of all that master race stuff, guess what? You’re still a Nazi.
