There are crazies all over the nation, but Texas has to take the cake, as the state government is acceding to the demands of its crazies and perhaps believing some of the conspiracy theories themselves. This is related to the planned U.S. military training exercise called “Jade Helm 15 which will be taking place in parts of Texas as well as the rest of the Southwest and California.
It should also be remembered that there are secessionists in Texas who want the state to leave the Union and go back to being the Republic of Texas. Back in 2012, as described in an article in the Huffington Post, 125,000 Texans signed a secession petition which went to the Obama administration requesting that Texas be peacefully allowed “to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own New government.” At that time, the Texas Railroad Commissioner, who was campaigning to be the state’s next attorney general, declared that he had been preparing for secession on the possibility that “the rest of the country falls apart.” He declared that Texas could function well as an independent nation, a “stand-alone entity, with energy, food, water and roads as if we were a closed-loop system.” Governor Rick Perry in 2009 had threatened secession “if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people.” These are not some Texas outliers that can be ignored, but high officials in the Texas government.
The Texas Nationalist Movement continues to push for independence for Texas believing that the state can be more successful controlling its own destiny. They believe the United States is ruled by disconnected and dispassionate bureaucrats and that Texas and the United States are on divergent political, cultural and economic paths. They want Texas to have a government that begins and ends in Texas with a sound monetary policy based on real value. According to them, Texas has everything it needs not only to survive but to prosper.
The conspiracy theorists latest bugaboo has the US military taking over and occupying Texas as “hostile territory” and seizing everyone’s guns. (Where do they get these nutty ideas, which actually might be a good thing for the federal government to do?) Washington is despised and the federal government is synonymous with the devil. (Do they teach this in the Texas schools?) But Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas and the successor to that intellectual giant, Rick Perry, has requested that the State National Guard monitor the military’s training exercise. (What exactly is the Guard expected to do?)
Suspicions about “Jade Helm” were spread on right wing websites and over social media, with Texas and six other states involved in the exercise. However, only the governor of Texas requested the Guard to watch what the military was doing. He wrote- “It is important that Texans know their safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed. By monitoring the Operation on a continual basis, the State Guard will facilitate communications between my office and the commanders of the Operation to ensure that adequate measures are in place to protect Texans.”
Thank God there are people like Governor Abbott around to protect Texans and all Americans from the actions of our government and a possible military coup. Even though a lot of conspiracy theorists live in Texas, including its governor, there are some good things as well as bad things about the state. Texas ranks last in the nation in terms of health care services and delivery, and 19 percent of its women live in poverty. But it does have the strictest abortion laws and you must believe in God if you want to run for a public office. And it has strict voter ID laws to prevent voter fraud. (A concealed weapons permit allows an individual to vote, but a student ID will not.)
Come to think of it, maybe America would be better off if Texas seceded. Not only would we lose a bunch of conspiracy theorists, but also Governor Abbott, former Governor Rick Perry, George W. Bush and Senator Ted Cruz. Can someone out of state vote for Texas secession?
Resurrecting Democracy
www.robertlevinebooks.com
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Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020