The Horror of Living in Fascist Texas

bless your heart

During the pandemic, every institution in Los Angeles was catastrophizing at all times. Every piece of public messaging said fear fear fear fear fear, and it showed in the way people interacted. My daughter was playing in a city park when she got closer than six feet to a random mom at the edge of the playground, and the mom screamed like she was being murdered. Of course, this was well into the thing, when the DEADLY PLAYGROUNDS were allowed again.

So in the summer of 2020, like the summers of 2021 and 2022 and 2023, we got in the car and left. We went to Utah, Wyoming, South Dakota, and a bunch of other states that we caught at the edges. We spent our time in national parks — Zion, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, the Badlands, and then Bryce on the way back in — and camped our way through a bunch of state parks in between.

It was like a different planet. With a different species. At Keyhole State Park, a retired couple on the next campsite made us dinner. At Farm Island, a dad saw our California license plate and came over to bullshit. “Hey, long drive.” We shook hands and talked face to face. Without masks. I’m sorry to terrify you. Random campground dads brought me beer at our campfire, as one does. Through weeks of driving and camping, we just…talked to people. “Hey, we’re just coming over to say hi, is it okay if our dog comes into your campsite?” Yes. Yes, always.

Everywhere we went, I felt — deeply, in my body, like a thing circulating through my blood — the calming sense of freedom. In places like Wyoming and South Dakota, I felt free from the environment of manufactured panic and social suspicion, and I saw with my own eyes, clearly and often, that we were living in the manner of free people: free to travel, free to interact, free to choose our own course of action. We escaped the unfree air of a deep blue area to experience the freedom of deeply red areas, as often as possible. I know what you’re going to say next, but we have family stuff that keeps us here.

So. The red states, we learn from news media, are urgently transitioning to actual fascism to get ready for Trump’s brutal return:

“Texas shows fascism taking root in America ahead of Trump.” Go walk down the street in Dripping Springs or New Braunfels, and use your best terror-voice to ask a few strangers how we’re all going to survive the fascism that’s descending on Texas. Record their answers. I aspire to one day read a whole sentence from Will Bunch without bursting into laughter.

Texas is fascist, and Florida is fascist, and South Dakota is fascist. Imagine the Nazi hell of surviving Sioux Falls in this era of slaughter. And you’ll never guess which prominent historian has warned that Ron DeSantis is a Hitler figure. Go ahead, click the link. It’ll be a huge surprise.

Use Google to get the search results that have been ideologically laundered for you, and go look for discussions of Florida fascism:

Then search Twitter for the way random normal people talk about the same state:

Weirdly, news media messaging diverges from the perception of human beings who describe the actual experiences of their own lives. We’re going to see a more and more aggressive attempt at this, and I’m fairly confident it’s going to become more and more obviously pathetic outside of the most culturally isolated blue zones.

Meanwhile, in Canada, the bank-account-freezing Liberal Party warns that terrifying Hitler figures like Pierre Poilievre are planning a similar effort to destroy freedom. It’s going about the same way there.

We’re running a very long and indescribably tedious experiment to see if media messaging can defeat direct life experience. Place your bets.