Why Texans Fear Invasion
Mimi Swartz, NYT
JULY 17, 2015
HOUSTON — A PSYCHIATRIST I knew many years ago suggested to me that a person’s irrational behavior in the present was probably not so irrational (to the person) in the past. As time has gone on, this insight has proved pretty useful, helping me develop empathy not just for bad boyfriends and crazy bosses, but for understanding my home state of Texas, which, let’s face it, has been known to excel at throw-up-your-hands behavior.
The recent crisis known as Jade Helm 15 serves as a pretty good example. On the surface, this just looks like another case of a few Texas knuckleheads making the rest of us look bad. To recap: A few months ago, the federal government announced that it would be holding military training exercises in seven states in the Southwest, including Texas. They would, literally, bring in heavy artillery like aircraft — along with Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and other Special Operations forces.
Maybe the military should have been a little bit more careful with the rollout of the exercise, which began on Wednesday. The plan was to divide the designated lands into primarily “permissive” and “hostile” territories, with Texas falling into the latter category. The operation’s logo — two arrows crossed over a sword, a wooden clog planted bizarrely in the center — looked like something designed for a creepy “Game of Thrones” knockoff in which Amsterdam meets the Apaches.
(More here.)
JULY 17, 2015
HOUSTON — A PSYCHIATRIST I knew many years ago suggested to me that a person’s irrational behavior in the present was probably not so irrational (to the person) in the past. As time has gone on, this insight has proved pretty useful, helping me develop empathy not just for bad boyfriends and crazy bosses, but for understanding my home state of Texas, which, let’s face it, has been known to excel at throw-up-your-hands behavior.
The recent crisis known as Jade Helm 15 serves as a pretty good example. On the surface, this just looks like another case of a few Texas knuckleheads making the rest of us look bad. To recap: A few months ago, the federal government announced that it would be holding military training exercises in seven states in the Southwest, including Texas. They would, literally, bring in heavy artillery like aircraft — along with Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets and other Special Operations forces.
Maybe the military should have been a little bit more careful with the rollout of the exercise, which began on Wednesday. The plan was to divide the designated lands into primarily “permissive” and “hostile” territories, with Texas falling into the latter category. The operation’s logo — two arrows crossed over a sword, a wooden clog planted bizarrely in the center — looked like something designed for a creepy “Game of Thrones” knockoff in which Amsterdam meets the Apaches.
(More here.)
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