It's T for Texas. P for proud

I think few Texans would be offended if I told them visiting Texas felt like visiting a foreign country. After all, Texas is one of the few American states to have ever been its own independent country, and many Texans will proudly and erroneously tell you that it was actually the only state to have ever been a country. But having spent five weeks there at the beginning of 2015, I can report that it really does feel different than almost any other place I have lived in the US, and yet, it is precisely in these differences that it is arguably the most American of all states.

I went to Texas to do research for my PhD, and I spent over a month hanging out with reforestation workers, the people who plant the pine trees that paper and lumber mills turn into wood products. It was my first time in east Texas, visiting locales I had previously only known from country music songs. I knew it would feel different down there. Yet, some of the differences that might seem most important are actually neither uniquely Texas nor the key to understanding Texas. For example, it is an open carry state where you can openly carry a weapon in most public places. The Yankee liberal in me, the Jew boy raised in Massachusetts, finds this freedom to carry a bit much - excessive - the same way my last day down there I heard someone next door shoot off shotguns and an automatic weapon for close to an hour. But other states have those sorts of laws, and while these hands have held a gun just twice in their life, I also ate venison in December from a deer that was killed by an 11-year-old girl. And it was delicious.

Another important trait to east Texas is also the sheer scale of economic activity that revolves around natural resources. There are oil and gas wells everywhere. I mean, everywhere, even in cities. You drive around and see wells off of small, podunk highways while trucks carrying pine trails to timber mills pass you by. Here's how you know you're in an energy producing area: At the gas station, people were complaining about the price of gas dropping. That conversation blew my mind. But it's also the type of conversation you might hear in North Dakota or Alaska, other energy producing parts of the United States. 

The main difference between Texas and the rest of the country is its intense sense of regional pride, a sense of self-importance that is hard to describe unless you experience it. I've been to truck stops all across the country. They usually sell T-shirts and hats of the state and its largest public universities. But few of them had the full selection of Texas themed paraphernalia I found at stops in Texas: photos, posters, garden ornaments, wall decorations, clothes... all of which celebrate Texas. I don't think this is wrong. In many ways, I think it's natural. At the gift shop to the Texas Country Hall of Fame, I told the salesperson that my brother-in-law was a proud-to-be-from-Texas, and she responded, “Of course he is. All Texans are proud.”

In fairness, people usually take pride in where they are from. It is simply that in Texas it is more intense. And at times hilarious. I was reminded of my other extended stay in Texas, when I taught summer school in Houston in 2003. Highlights from the summer included going to a concert where I heard 10,000 people around me sing along to "Screw You, I'm From Texas” and seeing the high school textbook "Texas and Texans". I'd like to imagine somewhere in a dusty box in Boston lies the unused and poorly named textbook, "Massachusetts and Massachusetteans”, but I’m fairly certain that doesn’t exist. The funniest moment was going to the Alamo and seeing a book in the gift shop entitled, What Texans Need to Know About the Other 50 States. Intrigued by the hubris of the title, I opened the book… and all the pages were empty. 

I understand why Texans feel this pride. Left alone, the state would have the world’s 14th largest economy, and in the last 50 years, it has had an outsized influence on American politics, supplying both Democratic and Republican presidents. In this sense, Texas pride mirrors the bluster of American exceptionalism, the belief that your land has a unique historical mission and grandeur that is all graced by God's concern. Indeed, I feel like if you want to understand the particularistic version of American nationalism, the kind that values America not for its diversity but because of its supposed singularity, just come to Texas. 

Of course, this is the precise logic which, played out on a national scale, led to people mocking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004 for speaking French. Outsized pride often leaves little room for introspection. It’s this precise bluster however which lets many prideful Texans ignore the fact that the rate of Texans without medical insurance is the highest in the country and the fact Texas releases more carbon dioxide and hazardous waste than any other state. This might be the criticism of a scornful Yankee. I’d just like to think though it’s the pride of someone from Massachusetts where homosexuals can marry and the poor can get insurance. Perhaps when Texas makes those changes, I’ll reconsider my opinion.