A Letter from Austin #9: By the Flickering Light of a Burning Book
More Football and Folderol in the Heart of the Lone Star State
OK so this may not be the worst Longhorns football team in history, but it’s starting to look a lot like that 1–9 squad that took the field in 1956, the same year Elvis checked into Heartbreak Hotel. The Horns are now in the midst of a six-game losing streak, with no palpable optimism about winning this coming Saturday against a mediocre Kansas State squad. Head Coach Steve Sarkisian was widely heralded as an offensive genius when he took the job earlier this year. His offense has occasionally shown signs of life, but the team is plagued by weak line play on both sides of the ball and a secondary that makes every opposing quarterback look like Tom Brady. It’s been a truly humbling experience for die-hard Longhorns fans, which we will be sure to forget at the earliest opportunity.
Meanwhile, our local high school squad, the Westlake Chaparrals, continue to dominate the opposition in truly intimidating fashion. The Chaps have seized two state championships in a row and look poised to claim another one, winning every game this year in convincing fashion and its most recent, against the young German-Americans of New Braunfels, 70 to 7. Westlake has produced such NFL luminaries as Drew Brees, Nick Foles, and Justin Tucker, but its gridiron glory lies not in individuals but in disciplined, machine-like team play. The team is not as pretty as the marching band, but it moves faster and has almost as many formations. We Austinites have a choice of watching some of the nation’s best high school football or some of the nation’s worst college play. It’s an easy decision. Go Chaps!
Though many Texans ignore the fact, there is life outside the stadium. Austinites were bemused and horrified to find that our city has now been named, by a British financial website, money.co.uk, as the number one city in the world to move to. Talk of erecting a huge fence around Travis County is gaining momentum. Former congressman and Democratic Senatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke announced that he will run for governor in 2022. Beto’s a tall, good-looking El Pasoan with Kennedy-esque teeth, easy to like but excitable and not as big a fan of guns, God, and greeting card sentiment as rural Texas voters would like him to be. Still, he’s popular, especially among young people, and managed to give noxious incumbent Ted “Cancun” Cruz a run for his money in the 2018 election. It will be a good race.
Texas Republicans meanwhile spent another week bloviating on culture war issues. Governor Abbott renewed his attack on naughty literature in the state’s schools while celebrating the acquittal of young Kyle Rittenhouse on charges of murdering two men and injuring another with the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle he issued to himself to protect public safety during a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As a result of those shootings, Rittenhouse has become something of an icon to Abbott and others of his ilk. The message Texas GOPers seem to be transmitting: giving teenagers access to semi-automatic weapons is okay, but letting them read about lesbian relationships will not be tolerated.
I’m a believer in the jury system, so maybe the twelve men and women who sat in judgment of the facts in the Rittenhouse case got it right. In the court of common sense, however, this young man and his parents face additional charges. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t condone the sort of urine-throwing, car-burning riots that leftist provocateurs delight in these days. Rittenhouse and the men he shot that night all showed up looking for trouble. Whatever your thoughts about this situation, though, it seems clear that one consequence of the Rittenhouse acquittal will be that we will see more weapons showing up at political protests, rallies, and — especially once the shooting starts — riots. That’s not going to be good for anyone.
But don’t expect the culture war attacks to cease soon. Abbott and his cronies have a lot to distract us from. Maybe the foremost is their administration’s failure to adequately address the “Snopocalypse” event last February, when a crippling winter storm knocked out the state’s power grid, leading to hundreds (210, by the State’s official count, but many more, according to other assessments) of weather-related deaths during a truly horrific weeklong cold snap. In the land of the gusher, the state where oil is king, the state that generates the most wind power in the nation, a number of old folks died in their beds, wrapped up in blankets in an unsuccessful attempt to ward off the cold.
Sixty percent of Texas voters disapprove of the way the Republican-dominated Texas Legislature handled addressing the issues — chiefly under-preparation by Texas natural gas companies — that led to the power outages and deaths. The Legislature has urged natural gas companies to do more to weatherize their facilities, but such measures are mostly voluntary, as might be expected from our legislators when dealing with their buddies in the fossil fuel industry. Thus, our best bet for the coming winter is simply to hope for better weather. And the principal consolation: If the power grid fails again, Abbott and his fellow Republicans will at least have a long list of books we can burn to keep our children from freezing.
And if even that fails? Well, as John Lennon once wrote, happiness is a warm gun.
Onward.
