Issue #300
(Two links for the price of one today; same subject)
Lone Star Crazy: How right-wing extremists took over Texas
In today’s Texas, which is falling into the hands of gun nuts, border-sealers, and talk-radio charlatans, George W. Bush would practically be considered a communist. After nearly six years of pumping out cynical horror stories involving our nefarious president and a Washington bureaucracy run amok, the right-wing fear machine has managed to reduce its target audience to a quivering state of waking nightmare, jumping at shadows. Rolling Stone, 7-1-14. The Republican Party of Texas has a dream. Lots of dreams: its platform, unveiled two week, ago, has sixteen thousand words’ worth. The road it maps is anything but royal; these good people, after all, are republicans, albeit with a capital “R.” But the document does lead to the GOP’s unconscious, or part of it: its fearsome, rampaging id. The platform clears its throat with a preamble. “We STILL hold these truths to be self-evident,” it begins, with defensive all-caps truculence. Then comes an eleven-point statement of principles. New Yorker, 7-1-14.