Packing, Cracking, Lacking, Attacking

THE LATE GREAT STATE OF TEXAS, the nation's second most populous, having surpassed Neew York in number of residents, is a perfect microcosm, albeit a rather large "microcosm", of demographic circumstances and political reaction to them throughout the United States of Animosity. The 2020 census reveals that Texas has experienced huge population growth, has gained more than a million new people, and that ninety five percent of the newcomers are "people of color" as we strangely say, the color being dark skin pigmentation. All over America brown people from latin America are moving in and settling in, to the great consternation of the white conservative community. Donald Trump's preferrred influx of Norwegians is not happening. Instead, folks are arriving from what he famously called "shit hole" countries of Africa, latin America, and the Middle East, poor desperate folks of dark skin coloring. These folks mistakenly have the impression, so it seems, that the United States is a land of opportunity, rather than of racism and suppression based on skin color, in the land of voter suppression, crooked voting districts, segregated communities, and white supremacy. For the typical white, Christian conservative Republican the situation is desperate, traditional American whiteness inundated with an avalanche of ddarkness. In Texas, the white conservative Christian establishment is bending over backwards to prevent the newcomer colored folk from gaining anything remotely resembling a fair share of influence or political power. There are two ways of doing this; pack them all into one big colored congressional district to limit their representation in legislative bodies, or "crack" their communities open, and scatter them thinly across many different districts to dilute their power everywhere. Packing, and cracking, aka "gerrymandering"; redrawing congressional districts in the shape of salamanders, rather than logical squares and rectangles. Pack e'm in, spread 'em out thin, make it harder and harder for them to vote, whatever works, as we flippantly say. Next thing you know Texas is pure lily white, christian, conservative, heterosexual, and Repbulcican. At least, in theory. Reality, of course, is far different than theory. You can see the desperation of a dying culture fighting with its last breath to live a little longer, a culture in which social acceptabiity required white skin and adherance to the Christian faith and free market economics. Minorities will remain quietly in the corner, grateful for what they have, if they have antyhing. Desperate, dying people become angry. First, the MAGA mobs tried to storm polling places on election night as it became increasingly obvious that Biden was going to catch and pass Trump as the mail in votes were counted last. Then they went into denial, wherein they remain, firmly ensconced. Sensing a progressive future, the violent angry right wing gang now has school boards in its sights, because all across America's fruitd plain it is finally, after decades of denial, becoming popular to teach children the hard, cold reality about America's systemic racist past, present, and probable future. School board members are ducking beneath wooden desks like third graders in 1963 dodging Soviet nukes. They (the MAGA mobbbers) correctly discern that if the damned libs are allowed to teach American racist history historically accurately and factually, their sacred conservative lily white washed version of the glories of American exceptionalism, finally exposed to disinfecting light, will wither and die, which indeed it will. Conservatives try to sabotage the growing move towards honest American history teaching by calling it "critical race theory", a completely meaningless term which tries to imply that American racism is a theory, a mere matter of opinion, subject to disavowal. It aint. Its real, its here, and it always has been, sytemic racism, that is. It is, in fact, the single msot important contribution to American culture by the conservative movement.