Texas Is The Reason
How is it possible for one state to make me embarrassed to be an American so often?
Hey there! Welcome to Moronitude, my friends. Funny story, on Tuesday I thought it was Monday. On Wednesday I was completely brain dead. Which brings us to today, Thursday, and we’re finally getting down to some serious moronic business. Let’s gather round Charlie’s History Corner and take aim at the home of Willie Nelson, delicious brisket and the latest law forcing teachers to become propagandists for a whitewashed version of American history! Step on up Texas!
A few months ago I went on a bit of a tirade over the 1776 Commission—the Orange One’s poorly conceived attempt to eliminate facts from the classroom in favor of a mythologized tale where America is infallible. The one major thing the 1776 Commission had going for it was that it dropped during Trump’s last week in office before immediately being spurned by his successor. It’s tenure of relevancy was even shorter than the Mooch’s, but unfortunately it was nowhere near as entertaining.
Because while the Mooch has lived on as a punchline, the 1776 Commission has inspired conservative politicians within state governments to valiantly pick up the flag and carry on. And this is how Texas ended up creating The 1836 Project.
Now, if that title sounds familiar, it should. It’s a clear shot at the 1619 Project, the Pulitzer Prize winning initiative from the New York Times and Nikole Hannah Jones that aimed to look at American history with a focus on how the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans have shaped the nation. Since the project debuted in 2019 it has been a punching bag for the conservative right and the Tucker Carlsons of the world. It is their belief that any sort of negative portrayal of our Founding Fathers or acknowledgment of America’s problems with racism should be stricken from all curriculums. Basically, if you acknowledge a single fault in the nation’s history you are a commie-pinko-radical-liberal terrorist trying to destroy our freedoms. It’s all very cool and rational, if you ask me.
But I digress, let’s talk about what exactly the 1836 Project is. Inspired by the date that Texas declared itself an independent republic and no longer part of Mexico. The aim of the project is to, in the words of Governor Abbott, offer a “patriotic education” and “To keep Texas the best state in the United States of America,” and to “never forget why Texas became so exceptional in the first place.”
Just look at these blithering idiots, particularly that grinning imbecile to the governor’s left.
There’s a lot to unpack there. First, is Texas the best state in America? No sir, that is New Jersey. Seriously, click the link. It’s science. Secondly, why does every single state have to claim that they are the best state in the nation? Who gives a shit? Now, I’m all for lumping groups of states into tiers of greatness, but with 50 of them you can’t ever declare a real winner. Except when you can, the answer is New Jersey. My point is, I’m so fucking sick of presidential candidates having to say (by law, I’m guessing) that whichever state they are in at the time is “The Great State of ________.” But if I’m being brutally honest with myself here, the only reason this pisses me off is that Texas has proven itself time and time again to be a clusterfuck of a state. Don’t believe me? I’ve got one word for you—ERCOT. If you’re going to claim your state to be exceptional I shouldn’t be able to prove you wrong with one 5 letter acronym.
Lastly, and this is the important point here, what exactly does Governor Abbott mean by a “patriotic education?” Does he mean teaching the real story of Texas’ unique origin or how in many ways it was the first real melting pot of America? No, he does not. He means teaching a version of Texas history where the founders of the state are flawless heroes fighting the good fight against the evil Mexicans who wanted to steal their freedoms.
Oh, I may be getting ahead of myself a little. Why did Texas declare their independence from Mexico in 1836? Because in 1831 Mexico abolished something that Stephen Austin and all those proud founding fathers of Texas adored—slavery.
I guess this does make Texas an exceptional state in one regard—they’re the only state to break off into a rogue country twice because they desperately believed they should be able to own other human beings.
I’m sure the proponents of the 1836 Project will take the same road that believers in the Lost Cause do and say that the issues were far more complicated and didn’t pertain to slavery at all. It was state’s rights. Or it was the desire to only follow the laws they liked. Or some other horseshit. But look, we’re not idiots. The fundamental reason Texas left Mexico was because they believed in a system of white supremacy that involved owning Black and brown people and using them for free labor. Period.
Now, the 1836 Project, much like the 1776 Commission before it, doesn’t really have a lot of teeth to it. It merely sets up an advisory board who will apparently pass out pamphlets to people when they’re getting their driver’s license, which is admittedly pretty hilarious.
But don’t laugh too hard. Because the actual endgame here is pretty serious. When I was in school I was taught a pretty sanitized version of American history, particularly after I moved from California to Illinois. Columbus discovered the country. All issues of racism were pretty much solved by the Emancipation Proclamation. The Founding Fathers were righteous people with only the most pure of intentions. Native Americans were happy to move out west and live glorious lives on reservations, with the only exception being the Trail of Tears but that was an anomaly. The Chinese immigrants who built the railroads were well compensated and welcomed into the country with open arms. You get where I’m going.
I was mostly taught a version of history that lauded heroes like Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass and Rosa Parks but never bothered to really delve into the reasons they were such exceptional humans, or the horrors that had been inflicted upon Black people for generations that made their work necessary. Basically, I was taught (some of) the facts without the humanity attached to them, thus making it seem like memorization as opposed to what history really should do—teach both a broader understanding of what this nation is, warts and all.
Without recognizing that the nation was founded upon an economy driven by chattel slavery or the genocide of Native Americans or the cruelty of the Chinese Exclusion Act (I could list hundreds of things here, but we’re going to keep it to three), we are given an incompete history of this nation. By editing out all of the parts that make us uncomfortable it’s impossible to understand where we are today. How in the world are people supposed to make any sense of the protest movements of the last year without understanding the past centuries of systemic racism against Black people?
And that’s the real point now, isn’t it? The reason conservatives are so keen to push through things like the 1836 Project or HB3937 (a bill in Texas that prohibits the teaching of Critical Race Theory in K-12 schools, further weaponizing the term Critical Race Theory) is to stifle the movements. If a young white student doesn’t build empathy towards other races by learning and understanding the plight that they have endured for generations in an unfair system, well, chances are they aren’t going to support any sort of change to the status quo.
The concept of Critical Race Theory has been so dumbed down by the right that now it pretty much means anything that would make white kids feel badly. The idea is that if kids go to school and learn that the leaders of their state fought two wars in order to retain the ability to own people, they’re going to feel badly about being white. History teachers aren’t blaming little Blake or Kyrsten for the horrors of slavery, they’re simply teaching them what happened in this country. It is goddamned moronic.
It’s OK to recognize the flaws in our nation as it’s the first step towards repairing them. When a person makes a mistake they try to atone for it, grow from it. You try to learn a lesson from the mistake you made and move on as a better person, hopefully to never make the same mistakes again. That’s what history class is supposed to be! Teaching you all of the amazing things that make you proud to be an American and all the horrific things that temper that pride. Learning about history is supposed to give you a balanced idea of how we got to where we are today and what we should do to move forward and become a better, more equitable nation.
This is happening right now in a ton of states, not just Texas, and it’s a problem. I feel like there has been so much progress in the last 20 years when it comes to teaching kids a more accurate version of American history, and now this movement wants to walk it all back. We can’t let that happen.
This has been Moronitude. See ya, next week. And remember, in Texas the stars at night are big and bright, but their governor’s the dimmest bulb in the batch.
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