Maybe any great state is unpredictable

“About Texas,” newspaper + marker, 2024 My Friday newsletter began: Molly Ivins called Texas “the laboratory for bad government,” and that’s been the case my entire adult life. I was a 17-year-old in Ohio during the 2000 election, and since I couldn’t vote, I went around waving a copy of Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush at my family members, warning them that the whole country could become Texas. (Whenever other Americans joke that they wish Texas would go ahead and secede, I reply, “But then you’d lose your early warning system!”) 19 summers ago, Meg and I moved to Austin so she could go to grad school. We stayed. She gave birth to a couple of native Texans during the Obama administration (I was able to become a full-time writer thanks to the Affordable Care Act), and since then we’ve been raising them in a sunny city full of friendly people and great food, all the while knowing that just five miles down the road, some of the most corrupt men in the world…

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