It’s time to bury the myth of Texas exceptionalism
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
It’s time to bury the myth of Texas exceptionalism
Leave it to a blackout to shine a big, bright spotlight on the problems lying deep in the heart of Texas.
I grew up in a suburb south of Dallas, and even though my parents were immigrants from West Africa, I was conditioned to believe in Texan exceptionalism. In high school debate, the question of whether the Lone Star State should secede from the union was a yearly issue. I argued absolutely yes. “We are fine on our own! We have our own power grid!”
Well, I was wrong.
This week, wrapped in multiple blankets and layers, I could only laugh at my past faith in Texas’s supposedly mighty grid. A winter storm might have been the precipitating event that left millions of Texans struggling without power in record-low temperatures. But what really has brought my home state to its knees is a chilling mix of unfettered deregulation, partisan gaslighting and leadership failure .
Millions of Texans are enduring freezing temperatures amid a large-scale failure of the state’s power grid. (Lindsey Sitz, Spike Johnson/The Washington Post)
Was anyone prepared? Though utilities knew the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state-energy regulator known as ERCOT, planned possible outages, residents did not get advance warning. Many of us in Dallas scrambled to try to find shelter and warmth, only to run into hotels that were full or also without power. Snow and ice on the roads caused fatal car accidents. In Fort Worth, residents were advised to boil water, because power had been shut off to treatment facilities.
Texans caring for newborns, the elderly or sick family members — covid-19 takes no time off for bad weather — tweeted in anger and desperation. Hospitals faced an influx of hypothermia cases. A woman and young girl in Houston died after being poisoned by carbon monoxide from a car being run in an effort to generate heat. There had been at least 10 deaths in the state as of Tuesday.
Deregulation is clearly a central part of the answer . In the 2000s, Texas leaders opted to deregulate our independent power grid, leaving providers with no incentive to prepare for infrequent risks. After a 2011 cold spell produced a crisis, federal regulators warned that the state needed to invest in winterizing the energy supply infrastructure. That advice went unheeded. You can draw a direct line from there to market absurdities such as those we saw this week, when the wholesale price of electricity in Houston spiked from $22 a megawatt-hour to about $9,000, while 4 million Texas homes had no power.
Deeper is the failure of leadership, which the present crisis has placed on full display. Though Judge Clay Jenkins of Dallas County has definitely been a steady hand in the crisis, a number of other Texas politicians have been busily employing shameless gaslighting and partisan scapegoating to keep their partisan bases warm and toasty. In a now-deleted Facebook post, former Colorado City mayor Tim Boyd blasted his city’s residents for being “lazy” and instructed them to “ quit crying and looking for a handout! ”
Gov. Greg Abbott (R), a day before he gave a formal address to Texans on the disaster on his watch, popped up on Fox News to assert that the blackouts were somehow evidence that Democrats’ Green New Deal would not work. Abbott joined a chorus on the right blaming frozen wind turbines for the shambolic power situation — though wind accounts for only about 10 percent of the state’s winter power supply.
But Republican former governor Rick Perry , also a former U.S. energy secretary, was the one who boiled it all down to that Texas mythos, saying, “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” Talk about a Texas-size delusion. Our suffering is worth it, so long as we can stick it to the feds!
And this is what’s so agonizing about this moment. Our culture of rugged individualism puts the burden on vulnerable Texans to survive together, as best we can, overlaying crises caused by systemic failures of leadership. We were already struggling with covid-19. We were already having to cope with reduced incomes and job loss. Families were already having to keep up with distance learning. Given these interlocking challenges, real leadership should have meant acting with foresight, and sparing no expense, to ensure that Texans could access power and heat through the winter.
Instead, our suffering is compounded by Republican leaders who would rather serve up stale, partisan talking points than do what is best for Texans. We deserve so much better.
At the time of this writing, I still do not know when power will be restored to my apartment. In the meantime, my friends in Africa, with experience with public health crises and load shedding by utilities, are sending me tips on how to manage.
Texan exceptionalism? I love my home state, but it’s time for that myth to come to a cold, dead end.
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Texas seems to be attracted to dumb politicians on a state wide basis. Former governor Rick Perry is a well known glad handing dimwit, and the current governor Greg Abbott seems cut from the same cloth. I wonder what the late great Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would have thought of all this.
(PS let's not forget George W, another former governor of Texas)
John, you live in Illinois. Glass houses and everything.
At the end of the day, Americans are migrating to Texas and fleeing Illinois. People vote with their feet.
Texas has better weather, as long as you enjoy twenty or thirty 100 degree days in a row.
That's why we have air conditioning here.
With no consequences?
Please get around to finally seceding from the union.
Pretty sure that the rest of the USA can get along without Texas' ego.
Been through Texas many times and never saw anything exceptional.
(except for a lady named Joyce S. from Fabens that I met at Six Flags in my youth).
I have no earthly idea--none at all--what THAT comment has to do with mine.
I have no plans to ever secede from the union. I will leave that to the only people who actually have done so--Democrats.
Oh, I am quite sure the United States can survive without any one particular state.
Just as I am sure that having all 50 states remain makes us stronger.
Different people see different things.
The consequences of unsustainable energy use.
Are you even remotely suggesting that Americans should forego air conditioning?
Fat chance.
With murders and carjackings, skyrocketing this is what politicians are focused on in Illinois:
Getting rid of Abe Lincoln statues. Once that statue of William McKinley comes down, world peace is inevitable.
Oh, thank goodness!
I am positive the majority of Chicagoans can rest easy tonight knowing their city is on top of a bunch of old statues which probably over half the people know nothing about.
Whew!!
I bet the victims of recent shootings and their families will be relieved to see the city and mayor laser-focused on the statues which caused them to get shot!
The beefsteak at the Traildust in Dallas was pretty good, and the roast brisket sandwich in Fort Worth was the best I ever had in my life. As well, I would have followed Anne Richards anywhere.
Lyndon Johnson, for example?
Wendy Davis?
Julian Castro?
When was the last time you were picked up by your ears?
I guess JR was right!
Indubitably!
We have basset hounds. Talk about ears! It’s too bad LBJ didn’t have a couple of those.
How could one forget orourke?
And Bernice Johnson!
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.”
Says the guy with a backup generator in his yard.
There was a myth of Texas exceptionalism? I’ve been to/through Texas a few times and didn’t see anything even remotely exceptional, it was pretty much just like the rest of the country.
It's hard for non-Texans to understand.
...like conservative xtian stupidity...
It always amazes me how you can manage to turn virtually any topic into a rant about Christian conservatives!!
A rant has more than 4 words:
SOSDD
So am I.
I noticed ...
I've driven through just about all of the lower 48 and Hawaii ... hell, even New Jersey has some exceptional aspects. I will say Arkansas has some exceptionally hellish aspects.
I took a short cut out of NC recently, staying on 25 out of Ashville to Newport and on to 81.
It was stunning in it's desolation and poverty and was gobsmacked to see people exit what appeared to be homes that collapsed decades ago.
Having lived in an unincorporated part of the Lowlands of SC where zoning was nonexistent and your McMansion could next to a double wide with 5 decades of cars and appliances in the front yard, I thought I was jaded to absolute rural poverty. I am not.
I was stationed in TX (Ft Sam) 7 times in 7 years, the longest period being three years. I never noticed any myth of exceptionalism either.
At some point it apparently became arrogant, shameful, and fascist (and probably racist) to simply be proud of the place you live.
Blah, blah, blah
Arrogance taken to extremes does become fascist and should be shameful. The Bible even speaks of it.
Proverbs 16:18
Except a lot hotter.
I've only driven through the panhandle ... it was exceptionally flat, And Amarillo? Meh, church next door to tattoo parlor next door to steakhouse next door to gun store next door to church next door to ... hey babe, nice lamppost, does it have a door? ... ad infinitum.
Texas exceptionalism; Summed up in two ways.
1. Private for profit corporate rule. Supply Side on Dexamphetamine during weekdays and Lysergic Acid Diethylamide on weekends, especially Sundays.
2. Make sure there are more ( steeples than trees--an old DC lyric-- ) to assure rule number one never changes.
While you can always tell a Texan you can never tell a dang olde Texan much. Texans are the worst listeners...
Texas is a big state with low taxes, poor services, little regulation, a harsh climate and not much else to its credit. I lived there for a decade. Don't miss it.
Morning jbb. I use to work with a lot of Americans and one was from Texas. He use to rabbit on about how everything was bigger in Texas etc than the rest of the States or here.
Anyway I got tired of him and just pointed out one day the size of Texas would not even rate here. Said when you have a State that is roughly the size of a third of your country get back to me..never did hear anymore about Texas.
I am quite sure Texans can take being bagged out for the moment. No different to us here in Victoria. We are the flavour of the month with the other States as we stuffed up the quarantine with the virus and that resulted in 800 deaths. So our name is mud.
But it will pass as soon as the next disaster arrives in some form or other...and then the whole country once again pulls together...
The inter state rivalry is forgotten and we are suddenly all Australians and I am sure it is no different over there.
Just to add salt to the wound 35oC here today..sun surf and sand..sorry Texas...
Did you hear the joke about the Texan who went to New York?
A New Yorker was showing him around, took him to Niagara Falls, and proudly exclaimed "I bet you don't have anything like this in Texas!"
The Texan studied the Falls for a moment, then replied, "Nope, we sure don't. But we do have a plumber who can fix that leak!"
Thank you for the early morning laugh..
They're going to need every fucking plumber they have and more for the next month or so...
Well some of them did die to protect slavery.
Ah yes. Let’s crap on the Alamo, too, while we’re at it.
I have visited The Alamo, it was like a shrine and i was impressed. But history is history.
False and very old as the news about outages go. Currently less than 20,000 in Dallas County, 485,000 in Houston.
Current high temp is expected to to be 29 degrees rising to 38 tomorrow. Just the increase has brought some coal
and natural gas plants back on line automatically.
Abbott is currently on TV saying that no home in Texas will be without power tonight.
WTF?
That was 15 minutes after the Fort Worth Mayor citing 33,ooo homes without power.
That was maybe 90 minutes after our Mayor said he has 67 homes without power
and is sending municipal workers and any available electricians so he could notify ONCOR by 5PM today.
One of these 3 people is lying. Bigly.
ERCOT release
Temperature are supposed to be as low as 9 tonight with a high of 38 Friday, 58 Saturday with flash flooding warnings.
Everything is bigger in Texas /s
Including the politicians' lies, it seems. Maybe he thought nobody would hear him say that - hard to catch him on TV when your electricity is out.
Wow. One crazy weather event and there’s a sudden rush to pile on Texas.
I wonder why all the talk of secession has sudden ceased...
Has it? Was it a constant thing before? Maybe there is just other stuff for the media to cover.
Like the Jefferson bs in California, Texas Republicans bring it up almost annually like a bad joke.
Shot down by the TX Supreme Court in Dec 2020,
another state HR has recently asked that it be allowed as a non binding resolution in the next election.
Sure. It comes up. But it’s not like it’s a daily thing tacked on to the end of the weather report or something. There are occasional proposals all over the country for secession from the country or a state. A sudden change of heart due to the snow storms is not why we aren’t hearing about it this week.
Must be talking about tejas leaving the union , saw an article last night where the author was talking about how that is still taught AND debated in schools down there.
have a friend who use to live here , came up from texas and lasted about 5 years before he moved back to the FW area.
how we met was him talking about how texas had the right to leave the union if they voted to .
I of course very unpolitely pointed out a couple "facts " that he had failed to take into account.
The main fact was that Texas was not living under or could apply the state constitution they HAD written when they first joined the union , even if it did have a clause that allowed them to seperate from the US.
The second fact which put a rather large burr in his chaps was by the fact that texas joined the confederacy , AND lost , before they could rejoin the union a whole new state constitution had to be presented to the federal government for approval that DID NOT include that seperarting clause.
he didnt like that even after he check it out for himself and found out it was true.
unless i am wrong , there is only one state that still has a seperating clause in their state constitution that was accepted when they were granted statehood, and most people are really surprised as to which state it is , not that they would ever use it , and i dont know if they ever had it removed by themselves , but that state is Vermont , they kept their options open back in the 1700s to either be part of the US or part of Canada . which being a border state back them would have been easy to do if they chose.
of course the civil war actually answered once and for all the question of secession by a state.
i did ask the friend in FW how things were going and he sent me pictures , i sent him pictures of my bare yard and the thermometer reading in the low 30s , he called me an asshole .....
dont know why this posted like i C&Ped the whole thing , my apologies.
Biedermann H.B.1359
A BILL TO BE ENTITLED AN ACT relating to proposing a referendum to the people of the State of Texas on the question of whether this state should leave the United
States of America and establish an independent republic.
Kyle's an idiot. Like Mark said, many still believe Texas can be broken up into 5 states per their original admittance.
Since re admittance after the CW that's gone. They have about as good a chance at secession as Jefferson.
On the one hand we witnessed a rare split polar vortex that compromised much of the South, even Mexico.
On the other hand this is the 3rd time since 1989 and rather than fix it, Texas relaxes regulations under GOP
Governors Clements, Bush & Perry.
There really is little excuse not to have a properly protected infrastructure for producing reliable power.
It's like 'fuck it all and we can just blame it on the Democrats!'
Didn't lose power but my water pipes have been frozen solid for over a week.
my power finally came on this afternoon. still no water at the condo, maybe tomorrow, probably not. property management shut off the water to the unheated units without draining the pipes. there's already been some flooding incidents. the HOA board are all trumpsters. should be fun.
Likely dont have to say this , but here are some tips for frozen pipes , keep your taps open, it allows for a little expansion , and it allows you to see if the pipes are starting to thaw.
keep cabinet doors under the sinks open so ambient room temp can get to them and help thaw them out from the sink/ tap side.
other than that its a waiting game.depending where the freeze is , if its inside the house , might have to get a salamader heater to heat under the house , if its froze at the service connection , well not much you can do about that..
Nah..... It didn't take the weather event for all the verbal abuse...... Texas has managed to earn that action no matter what the weather.
And? Is this a pissing contest to see how low you can go to irritate a few Texans
about something that happened before any of us were born?
Do you think that Illinois has a better history regarding slavery or that Southern Illinois men did not fight for the Confederacy?
Better think again.
From a friend in Texas..................
[Deleted]
All too true!
My stepson has two generators at his home, ran extension cords to both neighbors so they could at least get some heat going until power was restored.