Dear Texas Observer readers,
With three months into a second Trump presidency, nearly a decade into his tenure, over a decade under Governor Greg Abbott’s leadership, and 22 long years of unbroken GOP control of Texas government, political progress in our state is at a crossroads between stagnation, retreat, and the abyss.
At present, there isn’t much to hang one’s hat on for either fleeting optimism (midterm backlash) or grand, sweeping ideas (demographic change). The game may seem rigged, but a good portion of the state’s electorate has continued to place their heft behind a party that has been in office so long that its values have essentially atrophied. So long, in other words, that accusations of hypocrisy don’t adhere because there isn’t anything left to stand on.
Take school vouchers, today’s hot button (and likely to be so when you read this). Vouchers are framed as “handouts,” “entitlements,” more government excess, and potential tools for corruption and cheating. Yet few Texas Republicans are swayed by their party’s past objections. Politics to them is about control. They’ve got it, and they’ll keep coming up with ways of exercising it, come what may, including rational inconsistencies. Provided they are helping the right people (already enrolled private school families) and fighting against the right villains (unionized teachers, lower-income families, and the concept of public education as a great leveler), the details do not matter.
Even if vouchers once again fall victim to internal GOP infighting, the broader trend toward privatization—the conversion of public goods into private commodities, the transformation of government machinery into a pay-to-play game for the wealthy—will continue with force.
But, as always, people are complicated.
Look around, and you’ll find those who face overwhelming odds yet choose to resist. Or, if not resist, at least lead lives that subtly undermine the dominant political orthodoxy imposed on them. Such are the people who, in anarchist terms, “prefigure” a better, more harmonious world responsive to its diversity and fraught power relationships. In this issue of the Observer, you’ll find this theme emerging subtly: a man freed from death row, proving the state wrong about his potential; an uncle in Uvalde turning unimaginable grief into public service; Afghan refugee wrestlers thriving in a Mexican-American community; and small, everyday acts of democracy taking place at the Texas Capitol.
As you turn the pages of this spring issue, I hope that you will emerge not with hopelessness, but with a grounded, seasoned hope fashioned by seeing the quiet refusal and strength of those who refuse to give way to the powers that be.
