Can I Secede From Texas? Do I Need A Pee Slip?

There it is again: A Texas legislator who is being dubbed “a lawmaker” submitted a plan to place secession on the ballot–so Texas voters can decide whether or not to leave the US.  

We citizens of the Lone Star State get a lot of this childishness from the state legislature. Since the state is almost evenly divided between Liberals in big cities and "conservatives" in small towns and rural areas, this supposedly even division results in a "conservative" majority in the state legislature that, due to partisan redistricting, has been almost impossible to change.

However, this intractable situation involves a problem with what is being passed off by many people here in Texas as "conservatism". Most "conservative" legislators don't have the faintest idea of what conservatism is. It's not as if conservatism has no meaning here in Texas, even though it might as well have no meaning. Rather it's that conservatism has been rendered meaningless by both ignorance and sentimentality in the minds of those who claim to be proudly conservative. Many of these state legislators will claim that conservatism means "lower taxes, smaller government, and fewer regulations". Obviously, most of those men and women don't know those are goals of libertarianism, not conservatism. True conservatism would protect the government from those who would want to shrink it. Further, one conservative message interminably scrambled in the minds of the ignorant is "elitism": conservatives suggest that a hereditary or moneyed elite has the right to rule over the polity. This is very British. A foreign ideology. Is it not convenient for simple people from small towns and rural areas who have seen their lifestyles shattered by powerful men who don't seem to know or care they exist to declare themselves "the elite"? Think of Christian Dominionism. A Christian elite has the right to rule over "secular liberals" is the claim.

One problem here: Most of these so-called state representatives aren't even conscious they're bidding to become elite. It's all a sentiment. To them, an amorphous elite has shattered lives all around them; hence, to subvert that elite, these people believe that joining them, overpowering them, and then replacing them will solve all the problems they see in their small towns and rural areas. But who gets to identify that amorphous elite? Who tells state legislators or prospective "conservative" political candidates on the state level who those elites are? We do hear quite a bit from "conservative" propaganda that "the liberal elites" are ruining life for the rest of America. Are these actually members of some unmeasured ideological elitism of a liberal variety? Does Liberalism, a pragmatic political approach, even qualify as an ideology at all?

Important questions. They're not simple ones. They can't be given pat answers, and those who believe in pat answers likely aren't politically responsible enough to be allowed to represent the people of the state. "You must be this tall to ride this roller coaster".

This lack of political responsibility has everything to do with that ignorance and misapprehension of what conservatism really is. If one is not personally responsible to actually educate oneself about these concepts and constructs, one is likely not going to be publicly responsible as a representative of much of anything other than like-minded adult infants.

But where do these spurious definitions come from? I have one theory that works in some circumstances. I call it the "shoot it to make the problem go away" mentality. When we look at the typical, American eye on the world, oddly enough, it only has one, cyclopean eye: the television set. Most who have studied mass communications know that television images and conversation both imply representation and stereotype. All language--pictures, words, even music, and mathematics--are representations. And stereotypes. Reducing a four-dimensional reality into merely two dimensions means that the reductions create an illusion. Umberto Eco, an Italian philosopher, and semiologist, calls what happens in a mass media world "hyperreality". The "reality" we see on television is exaggerated, and it's only one pinpoint view of a comprehensive wholeness that literally cannot be fully communicated by human beings.

The news of the world is not the real world. It can't be. This is not to label it "fake news", although some will, albeit unfairly, in a world where questioning content can be either positive or negative depending on the overlay of a value that informs the questions and places them into a context that, traditionally, and in a political sense, means that questioning mass media content be done with a sense of duty towards the betterment of the American public. If Donald Trump, to use a glaring example of that not happening, suggests that all the "negative" facts reported by mass media about his misbehavior and criminal antics are "fake news", is he doing so with the betterment of the American public in mind? Or is he doing so in order to hoodwink them? To bolster his narcissism.

If one looks a little deeper into fictional mass media representations such as televised dramas, one sees something that should be interpreted as an insidious and negative neighborhood effect of ginning up a subject's adrenaline and cortisone in order to alert his or her hunting instinct: This is a form of conditioning that uses brain chemicals that are actually addictive, chemicals that "kindle" pathways in the brain, pathways that, once created, are hard to erase. The tactic is simple: gin up a subject into his or her hunting instinct, get him or her good and hypervigilant, and then hit him or her with a television commercial that, interestingly, pours dopamine into the brain, thus rewarding the subject in stimulus-response conditioning. Pavlov's Dog watches prime-time television almost every night.

America, you are being programmed to react. To become reactionary. And if your financial situation has been shattered or compromised by forces so beyond your control that you can't even identify the malefactor, your outlook is going to be essentially conservative in nature: hand-to-mouth; preference for immediate, short-term solutions and pleasures; suspicion of "outsiders" and "threats", etc. That's not political conservatism at all. It's plain old reactionaryism, and it's being bred into you by reactionary capitalism that considers profit to be more important than your dignity.

What happens during the TV dramas? The violence is fictional of course. As is all the gunfire. And solutions involve simply ridding the earth of "the problem", "the enemy" or "the outsider". The robber, the burglar, the terrorist, the bad guys. What's almost laughable about those formulaic dramas is that the "heroes" are so casual in their killing. A big shot like Leroy Jethro Gibbs of NCIS simply fires away, and the problem is solved. Shoot it to make the problem go away. This could translate into mass shootings. But I doubt scientific research will ever be allowed to get that far in its investigation of gun violence.

We have no trouble picturing the crass absurdity of a television cops and robbers show when the good guys are chasing the bad guys through an expensive upper-middle-class neighborhood, guns ablaze, at 70 miles an hour. What excitement. Automatic weapons are firing and criminals are spewing cloudbursts of bullets on an otherwise peaceful suburban street quite like the usual for many suburban viewers.

Of course that never happens. But what does this fictional reality do to the human mind? Who unconsciously "learns" that any problem labeled "bad" can be solved by violent means? Like mass shootings. Like dehumanization and scapegoating. Like the creation of convenient enemies and outsiders.

This all occurs beneath the rational cortex's means of analyzing information. And since TV comes and goes before the eyes like an ambush, it's clear that the reasoning mind simply cannot critique any of it quickly enough to see through it. The suspension of disbelief becomes more real than ever in the minds of people not conditioned to ask any questions.

Isn't the creation of a convenient enemy and the dehumanization thereof part and parcel of the pat answer of Texas secession?

Exactly. What's troubling is that many people who are used to a simple life with few distractions and few serious problems are pushed into reactionaryism with a conservative (hand to mouth) tinge, they can become rash, raw, irritable, divisive and dangerous. Hardly candidates born to represent us all in a political theater. Whenever reactionaries get antsy, when they can't seem to get the United States to behave itself to their liking (whatever that is supposed to mean in any given instance), and when the half-educated and hence all-knowing ignoramuses decide it's time to dominate the United States, here in Texas, they pull secession out of the bag.

Session: an ideological atom bomb. The final solution. "That'll show 'em!"

But there is more to the reactionary mentality than "shoot it to make the problem go away". Many of these rural and small-town denizens have been raised with a sort of bunker mentality. Especially in the religious fundamentalism that spawns their political, social, and cultural outlooks, many of these people tend to believe in various myths of persecution at the hands of shadowy foes. It's typical for a preacher to tell his congregation that "secular liberalism" or "moral relativism" is uprooting the family. And that the "death of the family" is the root of all the bad things happening in their environs.

Why these fundamentalists don't pinpoint the infraction as a manifestation of capitalism is almost never met with more than guesses by those who examine this problem. Instead, ideologically motivated mass media "news" content steers these people into the fictional belief that it is the government that is doing them wrong. Shifting the blame. So. You see your way of life crumbling as huge agricultural corporations buy up all the farm and grazing land, as huge oil and gas and coal companies pollute everything in sight, as giant retail box stores like Walmart and Home Depot uproot small-town downtown areas, and then "conservative" media tells you quite authoritatively that the government is doing all these things?

Only someone conditioned into infantilism would buy that schlocky propaganda. . . .

Now that an entirely loony and essentially fraudulent "conservative" mass movement has thieved its way into power here in Texas, secession is part of the "shoot it to make the problem go away" mentality due to all the factors I've elucidated here. In the reactionary mindset, one that is fueled with a strange iteration of closeted libertarianism that is too cowardly to even dare acknowledge its existence as it continues to disguise itself as 'conservatism", the need for scapegoats is great. How else to punish Liberals, Progressives, socialists, Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans, undocumented aliens, and women who have abortions than to announce to the world that the Lone Star is the only star?

Yes, a very dark star. A strange star. An unholy star.

This supposed need to exact dominion over the scapegoats is also a fictional reality. Proponents of Christian Dominionism project a common sense of powerlessness into the illusion that each member of the congregation who has been "saved" is now one of "the chosen", and thus has been mandated by God to take control of the United States and "take the country back" to the entirely fabricated myth of its founding as "a Christian nation". That's one way to offer people short-term solace and a pat answer that almost looks Biblical. Worse, the idea that Christians are "chosen by God" is simply an alternate version of "the divine right of kings". Not that any of these fundamentalist parishioners know this.

Hence, we see a cultivation of fabricated political power propounded by pseudo-intellectuals who, ironically, don't even need to think at all.

That is, Christian Dominionism isn't real at all. But we see it in an Amarillo-based federal judge who ignores the will of the people to "dominate" the abortion debate by ruling against an abortion pill. We see it in Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville holding the military up due to his need to dominate them until they agree with him on the issue of abortion. None of these "true believers" are ever going to cop to the fact they can't tell the difference between what is happening in their neighborhoods, or their towns, cities, regions, states, or the entire US--and the shrieking, fear-based, sensationalistic goop that pours through their TV screens. To them, the TV is the oracle of the world, a sort of magic mirror that tells all and knows even more than it tells. And by extension, they are also "the oracles of the world". How did they get to know everything by only knowing a pinch of it?

What is sensationally served up as propagandistic fast food in more "conservative" outlets like Fox News, and all across the AM radio spectrum, as either "right-wing talk" or "entertainment" is easily seen as not of the real world. My own sister is a good example of the pernicious influence of all the danger television prevalent on cable: She is afraid of bad guys. I've told her that, when I walk around my relatively high-crime neighborhood, things aren't that bad. I have neighbors, nice neighbors, and there is plenty of goodwill here. But if I turn to ideologically-manipulated propaganda on television, I'll be told that "cities" are havens of violence and immorality. There is an antagonism, a contradiction, a sort of fabricated inner conflict that is being created here: Which is real? TV? Or the neighborhood? And which is real? "Liberal media"? Or "conservative media"? What does this ambiguity do to a citizen's ability to make competent political decisions? Obviously opting for state secession isn't a competent political decision. I'm not so certain the state legislator from Mineola, Texas, ever actually grew up.

Actually, it's safer in some minds perhaps to remain infantile. Yes. I remember how, as a child, my parents limited my television viewing because, as I demonstrated, I was having a great deal of trouble as a nine-year-old simply determining the difference between TV and the world around me. As I grew up and developed some critical thinking capacities, I learned (this wasn't exactly hard either) that TV is far from real. Even the news is only an approximation. Apparently, some Texas legislators never get that far.

There is more. What happens to church attendees when a fundamentalist preacher broadcasts that his thoughts from the pulpit are "the absolute Word of God"? He's God's property manager, apparently, at least to the infantile in the studio audience that is supposedly a church. If his word is God's Word, no one should question it lest that someone condemn him- or herself straight to Hell. This is also a form of conditioning: The uplift, the old "Jesus made me higher than I've ever been before", should cue us into this: That uplift is addictive, and to far too many it is mistaken as "the Holy Spirit". You know: strung out on the Lord and jonesin' for more. . . . This is how to form authoritarianism. Right in front of our faces. Too bad our mass media commentators are too polite to hold the fundamentalist feet to the fire.

Of course, the powers-that-be oftentimes use a different rulebook than the rest of us, and given their power, and their money, it's easy for them to divide and conquer a much larger group of human beings than constitute their allies in the power structure. In some respects, from that frame of reference, it is advantageous to form factions of "populism" that are antagonistic towards a manipulation of the definition of an elitist. This is an age-old tactic: divide and conquer. One version of "news" says this, but another "news" version says the exact opposite, and then, there you are, sitting in an isolated space, trying to figure out with exceptionally limited means which one is closer to the truth or to verity. One faction is pitted against another, and all hell is breaking loose--while the actual elitists sit in the background and enjoy shifting the blame. The kings of "divine right" did that to their subjects.

I have to live in the middle of this mess. The state of Texas is a psychological fugue state of sorts, a fugue state in the midst of a large-scale reaction formation so entirely neurotic it's almost funny to watch the throes of the drama and impending doom. Officially, in magazines, newspapers, and on television many try giving Texas the loving treatment, as the phrase goes, interpreting Texas as a state of contrarianism. Contrary and childish are closer to the mark here. The state representative who is now pushing this bill, as mentioned, hails like bad weather straight outta Mineola, Texas, a very tiny town of homespun people who may have been raised on farms or in the country. Brian Slaton, the man with the plan, graduated from Ouachita Baptist University, got an accounting degree at North Texas University, and then to put a big cherry on top of his resume, earned a “Master of Divinity” at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.  Master. Of divinity. Think about that. Slaton is a master of the divine. Another of God's property management team of enforcers who have to exact God's Law because God is either too powerless or too lazy to do it Himself.

Should I feel confident yet?  

What in the devil, really, is a Master In Divinity? From a practical and conventional standpoint, a Master of Divinity is a classification that one has studied religion enough to pass some tests in a post-graduate arena. But in fundamentalist Narnia, a Master of Divinity is like Moses climbing to the top of Mt. Ararat to receive some tablets from some dude in the skies, a Moses from Texas, with big cowboy boots on his feet, ready to amble up to the folks waiting beside his pickup truck to hear the news about "stuff you can't do no more". It's a well-known fact that such degrees from primarily Baptist colleges are certificates, in effect, that the recipient has accepted the precepts of fundamentalism in the madrassa. And yet, ironically, these people are worried about indoctrination? Most Masters of Divinity from those schools don't know much about the context in which the Bible--which they worship, a graven image if ever there was one--nor do they care. What they care about is spreading the disease.

Then there's the myth of "moral relativism". Sometimes amorphous terms like moral relativism can be understood in the context of their opposites. In this case, it's "moral absolutism". The Word of God, God's representative on earth, his absolute authority, and the rules, the rules, the rules.

Moral relativism. That's a clue to the ignorance of dominionism: There is no such thing as "moral relativism". Morality is shared. It is a relationship between people. It's not a thing, or a thought, something that each one of us interprets differently. It is an agreed-upon, generally understood set of principles and suggestions, everyone in a community, a state, or a country, choosing--choosing--to follow. Why follow? To keep all of us on the same page. In the US, there is no absolute right or wrong. It's all a matter of opinion. And Christianity, especially fundamentalism, does not possess a lock on morality. The legal stance on morality is far more humble than the implicit arrogance, false pride, vanity, and hubris involved in exacting words in a book as "the end of the argument".

"Political inbreeding": These poor souls are lost inside one, very large, dysfunctional family where the bad information taken in by one or more is spread like a social disease to the many. And then the disease bats back and forth like a ping-pong ball until people inside the silo get really irritated.

Sure. The silo. It's now become a cliche, a popular cliche. Some commentators will blithely suggest "the siloing of America" as people living in the terminology of accounting or economics or medicine or science or academia seem to be incapable of actually communicating with one another. But so far as I've read, few save for some of the more sophisticated political scientists--people like Wendy Brown--the big-time pop philosophers wade into it until, ankle deep, they flee for their lives from the polluted atmosphere only irritated and inflamed Fox News and the other arsonists in mass media. The weirdest silo by far is Christian fundamentalism. A bunker mentality. A myth of "Christian persecution" lives on like the Lone Ranger here in Texas. Is laughing at these people a form of persecution?

No, I don’t mean to “oppress” or “persecute” Representative Bryan Slaton.  He might believe he's doing his best. When the world is seen as a scary place--as broadcast by our sponsors, why not leave it? Why not become insular, and why not become "a spiritual warrior" who will do battle with the sinners who won't obey you? Seriously? Even Jesus, from the texts I've read, wasn't absolutely certain about many things, most especially what is on the Mind of God. But not Bryan Slayton. He's A Master. A Master of Divinity. But here is what he’s saying:

“The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people. After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.”

Why am I still underconfident regarding Bryan Slaton’s grasp of “the political”?  I have a strong feeling he doesn't understand that, for one, rights require obligations, and that secondly, rights don't emerge from either the Old Testament or the ground: rights are conferred. The Texas Constitution? How exactly is Brian Slaton's liberties being "oppressed"? Would Slaton stand up and define oppression for us all?

But there's more to this Slatonic arrogance. I know how many Christian fundamentalists think. If one points out to an adherent of literality that the Bible is best understood via metaphorical interpretations, or that there are at least 5,000 different ancient Greek translations, each one different from all the others; if one points out that anyone anywhere in history could have altered passages in the Bible (something researchers have found to be true regarding the story of the stoning of the prostitute in the square), what happens? The adherent will tell you that the Holy Spirit will show the truly faithful what the little words say. That's not Christianity; that's Gnosticism. Apparently, Slaton is The Master of all this Gnosticism. Who was to know? He continues:

“On this 187th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, I’m proud to file this bill to let the people of Texas vote on the future of our State,” Slaton remarks.  “Texas was born out of a desire for liberty and self-governance, and that desire continues to burn in the hearts of all Texans.”

I not only worry that Slaton is incapable of personal self-governance, not to mention public responsibility. Surely, in Mineola, Slaton is the sentimental favorite of sentimentalism in that part of the state. Sentimentalism involves cloyed or bad thinking. Slaton’s inability to comprehend simple concepts that tend to link “public freedom and public duty” can be both malicious and dangerous. Who's being oppressed? Is secularism the reason vast agribusinesses are usurping the individual farm? Is secularism bringing in big box stores like Walmart and Home Depot to displace all the small businesses and shutter small-town business districts?  

It's interesting to note that the owner of Home Depot supported Trump. I call Home Depot "Home Despot". Gimme a rim shot.  

Let's go back to my childhood again. We all want to go back to childhood again, right? And if Jesus said we must be like children, our infantilism is Bible-based, right? Look: I don't know how many times being "coerced" or "mandated" into doing my chores as a nine-year-old was conveniently interpreted through me, the victim, oppression". Or "coercion". But. . . was my interpretation absolute? Was it the final word? Actually, I was behaving like a kid. A child. Not mature enough to be in possession of myself. Anyone can claim to be oppressed in other words. Oppression is a subjective value judgment. It can also be a fact if the value judgment is shared by, in the US, a majority of people. My decision I was oppressed was not a majority one. Nor is Brian Slaton's. He's behaving like a nine-year-old, and the sentimental think he's right on with his temper tantrum.

Infantilization. What does "the age of consent" even mean in a political sense? Perhaps 250 years ago it was generally understood that a young person after a certain age had developed enough critical thinking skills to be sovereign to an extent. Moving from childhood to adulthood may have been much simpler than it is today--what with all that subtle manipulation underway in almost every living room in the country. But what is this consent? Consent that we abdicate all responsibility to a ghostly figure in the sky that was weird enough to create a number of exceptionally bad and immutable facts of our lives, only to tell us we could not enjoy that situation under penalty of eternal death? Who'd consent to that? I know I wouldn't. I'd have to be terribly ignorant to do so. As were the Israelites before Moses.

Nope.  Still not persecuting this His Divine Master, Bryan Slaton. I'm urging him to grow up.  But there is another concept, antinomianism, the idea that one can follow God and thus disregard all of the World's laws, that can also distort the activities within a secular and civil society. I've got a friend. He's not well-educated. He believes that because God according to the Bible is "higher than science", that science is wrong on things like homosexuality and evolution, and that science is in a state of sinfulness because the Bible says so.

That's insane. What kinds of injustices are in the future should this strain of antinomianism subject science, medicine, government, commercial activity, and culture to the idea that once one is "saved" one can do anything one wants to do? Think Torquemada. That's a man Master of Divinity Brian Slaton needs to find out about before he pulls any more boners. Regardless, to His Divine Master, and all the other Divine Masters who have projected all their sins upon people like me, a Liberal, I must be subdued. I must confess my sins to the next person I see, then repent of my sins and then go jump in the creek down the street.  Sin. Ideally, this means separation from God. But who's to say who is separated and who isn't? That's long been a prickly theological question, another important one Slaton likely has never heard of before. Kierkegaard for one devoted "Fear And Trembling" to the problem of faith. What is it? Apparently, those outside of a certain frame of mind are separated from God. But also, that frame of mind can't be communicated, defined, or imparted to other human beings. And those outside the faith box (which isn't a church), according to Jesus himself, are to be treated with compassion and with charity.

Apparently, not if Slaton is "the Master". He and others of his ilk do not want anyone to be free outside of the faith box. We have to be "forced", "coerced", and even "oppressed" if we fail the faith test. Torquemada again. Freedom? Most of the time, freedom is nothing but sentimental prattle to those who announce it like a brand-new brand of white bread. There's an interesting twist to that concept our Divine Masters find propitious to their style of idiocy. One can't be free, they'll claim, unless Jesus--or one of His Divine Masters--says so. This is the kind of nonsense that got the 13 colonies upset enough to leave. To secede from The Crown. To secede from the very concept of "divine right" implicit in Christian Dominionism.

Now our Divine Masters want to secede from civil freedom too. After all, like manners, morality, and ethics, freedom is a social phenomenon. An individual alone on a desert island. One may be at one's liberty to do what one chooses, but freedom requires civil agreement among all who choose to be free. Nope, Slaton, that's not in the Bible at all.

Apparently, some outfit called The Texas Nationalist Movement believes this bid for Texas to secede is absolutely fabulous.  And Georgia US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is feeling all peachy about the liberation of the land mass we call Texas from the continued "Stalinization" of the United States by shadowy Bolsheviks who peek around the corner, spying on her, and then telling the press that she botched her makeup.  And the Jewish space lasers of Greene's creepy imagination. Let's make that an immortal example of utter foolishness. That Jewish space lasers caused Trump to lose the 2020 Presidential election? Oh yeah!

All the creepy cretins seem to be rallying around disunion, aggravation, contempt, conceit, false pride, vaingloriousness, insolence--everything I used to think was more the purview of what could be embodied in the Antichrist--should such a prophesy be a future reality.

Maybe the Mark of the Beast--possibly a "mark" in Old School terms, being a troupe or legion militating against the peace that passes all understanding--is them. The Divinity Masters. They don't like being told their god is a ridiculous bowdlerization of what Christ actually taught. And nationalism? Really? That's not patriotism. Nationalism is insular, suspicious, and dependent on glorifying one's "nation" (which isn't a state or a country) as special--but under threat from the "Outsider Liberals and Aliens".

Sorry.  I can’t help but scoff at the fact that some people still haven’t learned the difference between patriotism and nationalism.  I’m thinking some of those who don’t care enough to learn the details that help place nationalism in the context of the political aren’t going to clue themselves into what it actually is.  They don't care. Even if care is the essence of charity, one of three values Jesus addressed in his Sermon on the Mount: Hope, faith, and charity. . . . . . . have been flipped--into hopelessness, suspicion, and pulling the wool over all conveniently held in contempt. No faith in science, or politics, or the government, no faith in the Democrats, no faith in the state, no faith in society, or Hollywood, or books, or colleges, or education. . . . But they're all "people of faith". Another rim shot please. . . .

But of course! Being a fundamentalist Christian means you have been imparted by the Holy Spirit with special powers--yes, power again--and that your frame of reference is such that the "minions of secular Liberalism" cannot even come close to comprehending...means you're a Gnostic, not a Christian at all. If God has imparted to you "secret, Gnostic knowledge", no one can tell you you're in the wrong! This is the big alibi I've actually seen in action whenever human fallibility gets in the way of those porkers. The powerless thus pretend to be powerful and backstopped by God. "Divine right" again.

The right-leaning news magazine The Hill reports that “a political storm” has begun in terms of this secessionist nonsense. Kind of like the storm in Donald Trump's pants.   

Oh yeah.  A political storm. Over some wackadoodle idea that, whatever it is, Bryan Slaton has conjured up in his sorcerer's barbecue pit back in the suburbs of a small town. Texas is famous for its weather. Mood. Seasonal change. Unpredictability. The weather in Texas is a personality trait of a big abstraction that demands its identity be validated--by force, arrogance, hubris, vanity, and idiocy.  Whenever I hear the weatherman pop onto the TV set literally one instant after an excessively violent cops and robbers drama simply to tell viewers to be afraid of clouds and wind, I think of singer-songwriter Marianne Faithful who once quipped in a song about “your good and bad weather”.  

OK. Now's the time to pull a Donald Trump in my essay: Texas, if you can hear me, I want a political divorce.  Immediately.  That’s an order.  I no longer want to be under your incompetent husbandry. I don't want some gimp of a governor or a crook of a Secretary of State "fathering" me when I already know this grift is a bid to force me to behave as demanded by gimps, grifters, crooks, and theocratic whores.

There's always a twist in their thinking at this point: If I'm not exactly the way those goofballs want me to be, I'm "the oppressor". That's it. I dissent, and what happens? Rather than actually conduct an adult discourse on the matter of Liberalism and secularism, many of these "Masters Of Divinity" simply cut to the epithet: "Oh. That's a libby for you. . . " I might as well be profiled on History Channel's "Ancient Aliens". After all, if these Texas legislators are alienated by the mere idea of a rational and mature discussion on the legislature floor, then by all means alienate those who expect exactly that.

Am I the only ancient alien in the room here?  Is anyone who insists Representative Bryan Slaton is off his rocker is immediately to be alienated, then what about those Marfa lights? Strange lights in the deserts of South Texas some fans of Alex Jones suggest may be evidence of extraterrestrial life here in Texas.

Face it: The extraterrestrials have taken over the Texas legislature in God The Extraterrestrial's Name.

There is a myth in Texas that won’t die no matter how many times it’s been debunked.  Someone got the grand idea that, because Texas is so special, it has some nebulous right to secede from the union if the union’s actions are unsuitable to, well, to a number of things that simply cannot be quantified in 800 words or less.  The legend has it that Texas only signed onto the Union if the Union allowed Texas the right to secede at will or break up into five completely sovereign states in the Union. Of course, that's garbage, the kind of thing you might hear a conspiracy theorist bark. That doesn't stop the credulous from spreading that disease. . .

One of the things I’ve noticed over the years has been a slow transformation of US political discourse.  I remember how politics was less about “fightin’ words”, and more about good faith, good humor, and compromise-directed friendliness with a slant toward unity.  One side would propose, the other side would either agree or oppose (pro- or op-), or more importantly, differ on details, and then both sides would put their collective heads together to find a solution satisfactory to all points of view.  Compromise is a bedrock political tradition in civil government. Ideology forbids compromise and thus expects absolute allegiance no matter who disagrees.

I hereby secede from Texas.  But only in spirit.  I’ll be content, Slaton, to be what in the USSR was called “an internal emigrant”.  As if Liberals like me haven’t been alienated in both spirit and The Word for the last 40-odd years.  

It's best for me to hold my tongue.  With a pair of vice grips.