WEBVTT - What’s The Matter With Texas? feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:04.880 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:05.080 --> 0:00:09.160 I'm Stephen Monticelli, a journalist in Dallas who covers political 0:00:09.200 --> 0:00:10.600 extremism in Texas. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.960 I'm Michael Phillips, an historian who wrote a history of 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.720 racism in Dallas called White Metropolis. Both of us grew 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.799 up in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, and for both 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:24.079 of us, our home state has been a matter of 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:29.000 both wonder and horrified fascination. In this episode of It 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.080 Could Happen Here, we're going to try to explain Texas 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:34.800 culture and politics and why the country and the world 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:39.960 should care. Spoiler alert, What happens in Texas doesn't stay 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:44.040 in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:48.200 on national politics. The annexation of Texas in eighteen forty 0:00:48.240 --> 0:00:51.680 five provoked the Mexican American War. From eighteen forty six 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:55.320 to eighteen forty eight. The United States grabbed two thirds 0:00:55.360 --> 0:00:59.000 of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.440 fight over the status of slavery and all that new 0:01:02.560 --> 0:01:06.039 land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out 0:01:06.040 --> 0:01:08.760 to be one of the major causes of the Civil War, 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:12.360 a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:15.839 African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three 0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:20.600 quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter 0:01:20.760 --> 0:01:25.600 of the Populist Movement, a leftist movement largely based in 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.600 Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:32.840 in the South. And if the Populist Party had succeeded, 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.360 everything else that happened in America in the twentieth century 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:40.679 in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Clan, etc. May 0:01:40.680 --> 0:01:42.200 have had a very different outcome. 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.559 Slavery didn't end in Texas until June nineteenth, eighteen sixty five, 0:01:47.319 --> 0:01:50.280 months after it had ended in the rest of the country. 0:01:51.160 --> 0:01:54.520 It's a state that today is the second most populous 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.720 state in the nation and it's the eighth largest economy 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:01.200 in the world. Two of the most consequential presidents over 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:04.080 the last sixty years hailed from the lone Star state. 0:02:04.440 --> 0:02:07.800 There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.760 only Medicare and Medicaid, but the nineteen sixty four Civil 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.560 Rights Act and the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.519 two issues that the right wing continue to fight against 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.040 to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the 0:02:23.080 --> 0:02:27.120 most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:31.079 johnson civil rights legislation, urban uprisings and places like the 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:35.359 Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:37.960 segregationists and their children in the South, who had been 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:41.000 loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party. 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:46.440 Over the next three decades, another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush. 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:50.320 He aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:52.480 Party and the most right wing Christians in the country, 0:02:52.800 --> 0:02:57.120 and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course, 0:02:57.160 --> 0:02:59.720 the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise 0:02:59.720 --> 0:03:02.959 to pa and broadly speaking, the wealth of right wing 0:03:02.960 --> 0:03:05.880 oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:09.120 further and further to the right, in no small part 0:03:09.280 --> 0:03:13.600 due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity, 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:15.880 which we'll get to later in this episode. 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:20.400 Bush's response to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade 0:03:20.400 --> 0:03:24.120 Center in the Pentagon on September eleventh led to the 0:03:24.240 --> 0:03:27.880 rise of the modern surveillance state and the two longest 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:32.680 wars in American history. Both of them disastrous failures. The 0:03:32.720 --> 0:03:37.720 combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives, 0:03:38.200 --> 0:03:42.400 the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.840 Party in that time period, and the sense of the 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:48.640 United States was a declining power unable to impose its 0:03:48.680 --> 0:03:51.880 will on Afghanistan and Iraq opened the door of the 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:56.560 Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short two Texas presidents played a 0:03:56.600 --> 0:04:00.520 major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse, 0:04:01.120 --> 0:04:05.760 more urban based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:10.320 Party more white, more right wing, more isolationists, and far 0:04:10.400 --> 0:04:12.760 more fundamentalists and skeptical science. 0:04:13.800 --> 0:04:16.960 Texas has been in the national news frequently in recent years, 0:04:17.000 --> 0:04:21.080 and often for the worst reasons. It's become famous and 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.039 infamous for its wide open gun laws and several of 0:04:24.080 --> 0:04:27.680 the worst mass shootings in American history, including at an 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:31.640 army base in Killeen, a Walmart and al Paso, and 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:36.240 an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:38.800 strangers to sue women who go out of state and 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:43.040 their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:47.680 women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if 0:04:47.680 --> 0:04:49.800 they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested 0:04:49.960 --> 0:04:52.880 for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion. 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:55.320 In the last three years in this state, a group 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:58.479 of teachers in the Southflex School District in the Dallas 0:04:58.560 --> 0:05:00.960 Fort Worth area were in struct did to tell quote 0:05:01.040 --> 0:05:03.960 both sides of the Holocaust in order to not run 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:07.000 a foul of the legislature's ban on critical race theory. 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:11.320 A beloved teacher, Nerving, was fire for displaying a rainbow 0:05:11.440 --> 0:05:14.120 sticker in our classroom as a sign of support for 0:05:14.279 --> 0:05:19.240 LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.440 at Heritage High and yet another Dallas suburb, Colleville, was 0:05:23.520 --> 0:05:25.640 forced from his job when he sent an email to 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:28.960 his high school community after the murder of George Floyd 0:05:29.279 --> 0:05:33.000 that acknowledged existence of systemic racism in the United States. 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.480 So, you know, I think you could maybe pick up 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:40.719 on a trend here in Texas that our fundamental rights 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.440 like free speech are under threat, particularly if you run 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:47.839 a foul of the orthodoxy that comes out of the 0:05:47.880 --> 0:05:53.400 Republican Party. And one target of that orthodoxy has been books. 0:05:54.440 --> 0:05:59.040 All across this nation, we've seen dust ups over books 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:03.680 in schools and libraries, and Texas has been one of 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:08.560 the main flashpoints of this fight. So the literary organization 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:11.880 pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation 0:06:11.960 --> 0:06:15.320 in book bands at public schools, with more than fifteen 0:06:15.360 --> 0:06:19.200 hundred books banned in the state of Texas. Most of 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:24.800 those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience, 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:30.240 and one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:35.839 Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on 0:06:36.040 --> 0:06:40.560 alleged felony charges of providing so called harmful materials to 0:06:40.680 --> 0:06:46.160 miners simply because they allowed miners to access acclaimed books 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:50.200 like The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison. According to an 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:54.240 investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer Scott London, 0:06:54.480 --> 0:06:59.560 was a member of the extremist Oathkeepers organization. He subpoened 0:07:00.400 --> 0:07:04.080 names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material, 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:07.240 and he even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:13.280 who drew his unwonted attention. The investigative report that came 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:18.000 out of this investigation into so called harmful materials was 0:07:18.400 --> 0:07:21.800 eight hundred and twenty four pages long, and no charges 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:25.600 were ever filed, but nonetheless a lot of people's lives 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:29.280 were made difficult and a bunch of books have been 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:30.200 taken off the shelves. 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:35.600 So as we mentioned, Texas has been on the cutting 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.880 edge of right wing politics in America on issues like abortion, 0:07:40.360 --> 0:07:45.520 the treatment of trans children, and on immigration particular. Texas 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:52.320 has modeled the Republican attitude on newcomers and migrants and 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.800 policies towards them. The state's governor, Greg Gabbott essentially tried 0:07:56.840 --> 0:08:00.840 to establish his own independent border policy, even though the 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:05.280 constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:07.920 so far has built thirty four miles of a wall 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.760 Abbot valves will eventually extend along the entirety of texas 0:08:13.160 --> 0:08:16.440 twelve hundred and fifty four mile international border with Mexico. 0:08:17.360 --> 0:08:21.000 One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:26.000 take thirty years and cost twenty billion dollars. The state 0:08:26.040 --> 0:08:30.320 of Texas has placed Buoy's entangled with razor wire in 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:34.360 the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:38.120 that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:42.120 and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:43.239 of Latin America. 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:46.839 One of Governor Abbot's border initiatives, Operation Loan Star, has 0:08:46.920 --> 0:08:50.960 flooded the border with hundreds of law enforcement agents and 0:08:51.160 --> 0:08:55.160 has touted thousands of arrests, but it also costs eleven 0:08:55.320 --> 0:09:00.120 billion dollars and it's unclear what it's really done in 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:05.280 terms of making the state safer. Texas insists, through statements 0:09:05.400 --> 0:09:09.600 from people like Greg Abbott, that immigrants are dangerous and 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.160 that they are flooding our streets with crime, never mind 0:09:13.200 --> 0:09:16.400 the fact that studies indicate that immigrants are far less 0:09:16.440 --> 0:09:20.480 likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly. 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:24.160 In August twenty twenty three, a buoy trapped a twenty 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:27.679 year old Duran and a small child, causing them both 0:09:27.679 --> 0:09:30.920 to drown. The Texas border patrols El Paso sector has 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:34.160 become one of the deadliest areas of the border here, 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:36.920 with one hundred and forty nine immigrants dying over a 0:09:36.960 --> 0:09:40.760 twelve month period between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Recently, 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:44.560 on a podcast, Abbot expressed regret that Texas has been 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.360 unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.200 by crossing the Rio Grant and has complained that the 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:54.959 Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:56.920 such lethal force was used. 0:09:57.200 --> 0:09:59.240 And the only thing that we're not doing is we're 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:03.040 not shooting people who come across the border. 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.679 Because of course the Bid administration would charges with murder. 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:11.079 One of the issues about immigration is a panic amongst 0:10:11.080 --> 0:10:14.480 the Anglos living in the state that white people will 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.520 become a shrinking and less politically powerful minority, and this 0:10:18.640 --> 0:10:22.920 connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:27.520 abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether 0:10:27.640 --> 0:10:30.800 or not white Texans were committing what they said in 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:35.160 the early twentieth century was so called Reese's suicide, a 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:38.520 real panic that black and brown people would eventually out 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:41.760 number whites and would seize political control of the state. 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.240 And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:48.479 the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas, 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.840 there's been a concern that white women are having abortions, 0:10:52.720 --> 0:10:56.360 and that really fuels some of the extremism in how 0:10:56.440 --> 0:11:00.720 Texas has approached this issue. Twenty twenty two, this state 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:03.600 legislature passed the law that would allow a third party 0:11:04.040 --> 0:11:07.960 to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:12.360 although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law, 0:11:12.400 --> 0:11:18.240 called Senate Bill eight. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton meanwhile 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:22.720 has addressed another issue dealing with trans children, and again, 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:26.040 trans children, if they're white, would be out of the 0:11:26.240 --> 0:11:30.360 reproductive demographic race that panics white racist in the state. 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:33.600 He has tried to force doctors and other states to 0:11:33.600 --> 0:11:38.280 provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:42.280 outside of Texas, and the parents are trans children in 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:46.320 Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case, 0:11:46.640 --> 0:11:51.520 these extreme laws have been discussed in some cases imitated 0:11:51.920 --> 0:11:53.160 in other red states. 0:11:53.920 --> 0:11:58.239 So, on the one hand, we've got anxieties about immigrants 0:11:58.360 --> 0:12:03.080 allegedly replacing the white race rhetoric that has been repeated 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.600 by people as high up as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, 0:12:05.679 --> 0:12:08.520 who has said that immigrants are trying to take over 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:13.640 our country without firing a shot. This is something that 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:18.640 people like the Hitler admirer Nick Fuentes, who has met 0:12:18.720 --> 0:12:23.960 with a high ranking and influential Republican consultant who works 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:26.959 for one of the largest political donors in the country. 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.160 He believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On 0:12:31.200 --> 0:12:34.520 the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:39.280 in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves 0:12:39.320 --> 0:12:42.640 as we've previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:47.640 students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen, 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:52.080 as doctor Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents, and a 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.120 lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are 0:12:55.120 --> 0:13:01.040 being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries, 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:04.839 and other settings, the idea being that, yes, they're trying 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.880 to turn your kids gay, that's what they're saying. And 0:13:07.920 --> 0:13:11.400 so of course they're going to be extremely upset about 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:16.160 any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population, or a 0:13:16.200 --> 0:13:23.240 growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender, and so 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:28.040 much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:31.880 of this it matters in a bigger perspective, and I 0:13:31.920 --> 0:13:35.040 think we can understand why some of this is so 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.840 prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:40.040 national politics. 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:45.200 Texas counts for forty of two hundred and seventy votes 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:49.360 needed to win the electoral College. Only California has more 0:13:49.600 --> 0:13:53.960 electoral College votes, and the Republican Party has been able 0:13:54.000 --> 0:13:58.040 to rely on winning every single presidential election in the 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:03.480 state since nineteen eighty. If Texas should ever flip politically, 0:14:04.040 --> 0:14:06.240 it'd be hard to see how the Republicans could ever 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.800 win the White House again. And it always seems like 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:13.560 Texas is just on the verge of flipping blue. 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:16.840 Right, there's been a lot of talk for a long 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:21.880 time about this pending demographic revolution, the idea that eventually, 0:14:22.080 --> 0:14:24.920 you know, the numbers are just baked in and that 0:14:25.200 --> 0:14:28.720 Republicans will no longer control the state. So let's look 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:31.240 at some of those numbers. So, Tejano's or people of 0:14:31.400 --> 0:14:34.960 Latino Hispanic descent, make up more than forty percent of 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:38.520 the state's population, so they're the largest single population group. 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:42.040 Non Whites account for sixty percent of all Texans, and 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.360 as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats, and they 0:14:45.400 --> 0:14:48.520 control most of the state's largest cities in terms of 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:52.160 political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people 0:14:52.240 --> 0:14:55.880 of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder, 0:14:56.200 --> 0:15:01.440 making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering the general feebleness 0:15:01.440 --> 0:15:03.880 of the Democratic Party in the state. The state has 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:07.520 remained in control of a very conservative, very white, Republican 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:14.080 minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is 0:15:14.480 --> 0:15:18.200 blue except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is 0:15:18.280 --> 0:15:21.240 in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it 0:15:21.320 --> 0:15:26.480 is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:29.200 often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:33.640 like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville, 0:15:33.640 --> 0:15:36.800 as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrn County. If you've 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:39.120 ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:45.520 in Arrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues 0:15:45.560 --> 0:15:50.040 that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.080 power in the state, which if it were to fall, 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:58.440 would pretend great changes not just for the politics in 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.120 the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation. 0:16:01.520 --> 0:16:05.200 It's been remarkable because school board meetings used to be 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.880 really dull and talking. You used to talk about boundaries 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.800 for particular campuses, you know which students are going to 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:15.160 tend which class. But now, over the last few years, 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:19.200 very often they've been scenes of screaming, matches, threats, and 0:16:19.240 --> 0:16:25.040 so on. Texas in many ways has become a laboratory 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:31.200 of autocracy, and again it's a model for other states 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.680 that have a right wing political leadership. For instance, the 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:41.400 Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes 0:16:41.440 --> 0:16:44.920 in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected, 0:16:45.520 --> 0:16:49.480 and essentially, the Republican Party called for creating a local 0:16:49.600 --> 0:16:53.800 version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:58.720 candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down ballot statewide 0:16:58.720 --> 0:17:03.240 offices could win the popular vote and still lose the 0:17:03.240 --> 0:17:08.000 election unless they carry a majority of the two hundred 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:11.760 and fifty four counties in the state, most of which 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:19.520 are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law, 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:23.679 the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state, 0:17:24.240 --> 0:17:26.760 and as I said, other Republican states are looking at 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:29.840 this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:35.240 would really end any pretense of democracy because most people 0:17:35.280 --> 0:17:37.919 in Texas live in cities like the rest of the 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:42.560 United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:46.200 on the state is by waging a never ending culture 0:17:46.280 --> 0:17:50.440 war centered on matters of faith. So If you really 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:54.280 want to understand Texas, its culture and its politics, you 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:57.800 can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.959 into one particular type of Christian Christianity we've already referred to. 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:06.960 This interpretation of the Bible motivates right wing voters and 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:10.359 the vast rural sections of the state and the outer 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:15.440 suburbs and the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:19.200 laws and attitudes where it's African Americans, immigrants, and the 0:18:19.240 --> 0:18:23.680 people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.280 also non Christians like Jews and Muslims. 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:30.280 If you trap the sort of issues that are being 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.240 discussed by the Republican Party of Texas and you look back, 0:18:33.359 --> 0:18:37.080 say to the time of George H. W. Bush, and 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.800 you look to now, it will be very clear to 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:42.600 you that the topics have changed. The sort of things 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.760 that they talk about. It's less about low taxes, it's 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.800 less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.720 do what you want in your personal life, and it 0:18:52.800 --> 0:18:58.720 is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on 0:18:58.880 --> 0:19:06.480 others through policy and the most vocal, perhaps one of 0:19:06.480 --> 0:19:11.240 the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds. Sect 0:19:11.240 --> 0:19:14.679 of Christianity that is, you know, driving this is this 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:20.240 group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists. 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:24.080 So what's a dispensationalist. It's a fancy word for someone 0:19:24.119 --> 0:19:26.840 who believes that we are living in the end times. 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:30.840 The end times being this idea that at any moment 0:19:30.920 --> 0:19:35.320 now all true Christians will be whisked up into the 0:19:35.359 --> 0:19:38.720 clouds in an event called the Rapture, that an embodiment 0:19:38.800 --> 0:19:41.480 of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.399 and try to destroy Israel. And you know, all of 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.280 this is, you know, presaging the final judgment, you know, 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:52.360 the day when the Lord Jesus comes down and he 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.359 basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:57.560 that settles it for all eternity. 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:06.640 This particular strain of fundamentalism in Texas culture and politics 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:12.240 has a profound impact on global politics. The dispensationalists are 0:20:12.240 --> 0:20:15.000 certain World War three is going to consume the planet. 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:19.240 They believe there's going to be a final battle between 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:22.399 good and evil called the Battle of Armageddon. And they 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:27.080 believe this, and this is significant. They believe that Jesus 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:32.520 Christ will come back specifically to stop World War three 0:20:32.680 --> 0:20:36.400 for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:40.600 the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet. 0:20:41.480 --> 0:20:43.520 And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going 0:20:43.600 --> 0:20:48.400 to die, those who survive are going to convert to Christianity, 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:53.199 and when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a 0:20:53.800 --> 0:20:57.560 divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace 0:20:57.600 --> 0:20:59.760 and harmony, called the Millennium. 0:21:00.200 --> 0:21:04.280 Texans have played a major role in popularizing dispensationalism and 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:08.639 its doom day theology, both in modern times but also historically. 0:21:09.359 --> 0:21:12.760 One Texas writer named Michael Ennis once called the city 0:21:12.800 --> 0:21:16.280 of Dallas the Athens of the apocalypse, and in the 0:21:16.359 --> 0:21:20.679 late twentieth century, predicting the end of the world was 0:21:21.000 --> 0:21:27.160 a lucrative business. So there was a theological center here 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:33.160 in Dallas that was one of the most influential groups 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:37.840 when it came to originating and promoting this idea of 0:21:37.880 --> 0:21:40.399 the end times. And it also has to do with 0:21:40.480 --> 0:21:44.840 one gentleman named Cyrus Scofield. But before we talk about 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.280 Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break. 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:04.719 What happened was there's this member a convert to the 0:22:04.720 --> 0:22:10.480 Congregationalist Church who came from Kansas. He had been a 0:22:10.520 --> 0:22:13.439 politician in Kansas who had to leave office because he 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:18.080 was accused of accepting bribes. He later said he was 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:21.720 struggling with alcoholism at the time. His name is Cyrus Schofield, 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:28.000 and he converts to Christianity and he's invited to head 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:33.240 this Congregationalist church that has a tiny congregation in Dallas, Texas. 0:22:34.320 --> 0:22:38.200 And when he gets here, he brings this dispensationalism he's 0:22:38.280 --> 0:22:45.160 learned from other evangelists, and he's a modernizer. He has 0:22:45.280 --> 0:22:53.920 adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.439 he produces something published in nineteen oh nine called the 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:06.240 Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible 0:23:06.760 --> 0:23:10.720 with footnotes that he and his co editors have put 0:23:10.720 --> 0:23:15.000 together where they say, these strange verses in the Book 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:17.879 of Daniel and the Book of Revelation that referred to 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:21.879 beast with seven heads and ten horns, and you know, 0:23:21.960 --> 0:23:27.640 these other strange creatures, and this highly symbolic language has 0:23:27.720 --> 0:23:32.000 a very literal obvious meaning, and that is the return 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:36.960 of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how 0:23:37.000 --> 0:23:39.040 that marks the beginning of the end. 0:23:40.119 --> 0:23:45.640 So the Schofield Reference Bible extremely popular when it comes out. 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:50.520 It was so popular it didn't save effectively the Oxford 0:23:50.680 --> 0:23:52.280 University Press from going. 0:23:52.160 --> 0:23:56.200 Yeah under during the Great Depression. That was very much 0:23:56.720 --> 0:24:01.000 a possibility that Oxford University Press would go under. And 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:04.879 Schofield was lucky in some ways that you could put 0:24:04.920 --> 0:24:07.760 it that way, because the Reference Bible comes out in 0:24:07.840 --> 0:24:13.320 nineteen oh nine, and four years later what was at 0:24:13.320 --> 0:24:16.880 that point the most catastrophic war in human history. World 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.840 War One breaks out with a level of death and 0:24:21.200 --> 0:24:29.120 technology that was unprecedented in its destructiveness. Then the Depression happens. 0:24:29.200 --> 0:24:33.040 You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:35.960 a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing. 0:24:36.600 --> 0:24:41.000 Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communists takeover, 0:24:41.160 --> 0:24:44.480 you might have fascist takeover. And then of course World 0:24:44.480 --> 0:24:49.240 War Two, and then finally the thing that really makes 0:24:50.080 --> 0:24:54.080 Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of 0:24:54.080 --> 0:24:58.240 his Biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around 0:25:00.160 --> 0:25:04.119 certain variants for centuries and centuries, but it had always 0:25:04.119 --> 0:25:07.119 been a minority view. But what really made it seem 0:25:07.160 --> 0:25:13.000 like Schofield was onto something was nineteen forty eight when 0:25:13.040 --> 0:25:18.200 the State of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel, 0:25:18.720 --> 0:25:20.880 because he had been saying this would happen, this would 0:25:20.920 --> 0:25:23.920 be the sign of the end. It becomes the point 0:25:23.960 --> 0:25:28.480 where a lot of churches ministers are measured by the 0:25:28.560 --> 0:25:34.000 degree to which they promote Scofieldism, and Protestant churches ministers 0:25:34.040 --> 0:25:36.720 get fired if they don't begin to talk about the 0:25:36.840 --> 0:25:37.560 end times. 0:25:37.880 --> 0:25:41.639 Schofield kind of won the lottery with timing, and you 0:25:41.640 --> 0:25:44.240 can imagine a world maybe where the Schofield Bible didn't 0:25:44.280 --> 0:25:47.880 take off because it hadn't come out at that time 0:25:47.920 --> 0:25:48.440 that it did. 0:25:48.800 --> 0:25:56.520 Now one of Schofield's acolytes separated by several decades. Scofield 0:25:56.520 --> 0:26:00.240 had been dead for a long time. When you have 0:26:00.320 --> 0:26:04.840 a student at the Dallas Theological Seminary, name how Lindsay, 0:26:04.920 --> 0:26:10.080 who had been a tugboat captain, is attending this particular school. 0:26:10.320 --> 0:26:14.520 Dallas Theological Seminary had actually been established in the nineteen 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:21.040 twenties by allies associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been 0:26:21.080 --> 0:26:25.480 a center of the study of biblical prophecy, and basically 0:26:26.000 --> 0:26:29.760 Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said, 0:26:29.840 --> 0:26:32.919 basically he took his class notes and turned into a book. 0:26:33.840 --> 0:26:38.600 And his real effort. He had been a leader in 0:26:38.640 --> 0:26:42.440 the campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group 0:26:42.480 --> 0:26:46.280 that was trying to fight the counterculture hippies, LSD and 0:26:46.320 --> 0:26:50.040 so on, and so he had that experience and he 0:26:50.119 --> 0:26:52.359 brought it into the writing of a best selling book 0:26:52.400 --> 0:26:55.000 called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great 0:26:55.040 --> 0:26:58.479 Planet Earth is written in the language of the time. 0:26:59.000 --> 0:27:02.280 He tries to use hippie type of lingo in to 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:06.960 catch on with the youth culture, and it's his timing, 0:27:07.119 --> 0:27:09.880