Why 'Blexas' Is A Big Damn Deal

Sometimes I'll be scrolling or passively taking in the latest miseries and injustices of our lovely little fascist moment and I'll say oh yeah, that's why I wrote that blog post or that article or, in some cases, that book.

It happened the other day when I saw some discourse on Bluesky, the only legitimate microblogging platform, about why the American right either can't or won't abandon Texas Republicans looking down the barrel of massive midterm losses. Republican senators are all but begging the White House to abandon Texas and funnel that cash into other (extremely) red states that might fall in the wipeout midterm election to come.

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Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Strategically it would make sense for our major anti-democracy party to abandon Ken Paxton – a guy so loathsome and weird looking that even the president despises him – and Greg Abbott, who's been governor of the state since just after the Civil War.

But they can't. Because if Texas goes woke – if we finally have a Blue Texas situation – the whole thing is over for these guys. A Blexas shift would functionally end the Republican Party as a national party and transform it into a regional party, which is where it was headed after a 2008 election in which the American electorate – even white women – said they were pretty much done supporting the party dedicated to making their lives miserable.

Anyway, this made me think back to writing After The Great Redo, speculative fiction about a new American Reconstruction. I have a long chapter – the book's longest, in fact – dedicated to the fall of Texas as an authoritarian stronghold.

Texas, like a lot of states in the former Confederacy, has never really been a democracy. Yes, they have elections, and yes, sometimes Democrats win U.S. House seats when Republicans are nice enough to cobble together enough people of color in a district to hand a district to the enemy so Republicans can take three others. Texas Republicans have made it so that elections don't really matter though. They go through the motions. It's like Putin's Russia with cowboy hats and pickup trucks designed to mow down children and protesters and a bunch of folks who spend most of their time and energy hating Dak Prescott.

When Texas Democrats express a even little concern about the direction of the state, elected Republican send the cops to arrest them, drag them back to the state's legislative chambers, and force them to take a vote they are sure to lose. That's Texas.

After The Great Redo: Messages From A Glorious American Future

“After The Great Redo” features seven dispatches for a future United States that has emerged from an era of authoritarian terror and established a robust democracy led by lawmakers determined to keep the republic safe from those who would destroy it. The future dispatches -- from governors, from abortion clinic workers, from doctors, and from those who suffered under authoritarian rule -- include musings on the reform government that takes over at the end of the Bad Times, and the nationwide push for a real Reconstruction of a battered constitutional republic in desperate need of fundamental reforms. ChaptersThe Frogmarch Of The OligarchsHow I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Great RedoGrandma And Grandpa Told Me About The Bad TimesThe Last Days Of The Abortion BansHow Texas Was WonFreeing Ourselves From The Algorithms Breaking The Man With The Iron Heart

Independently PublishedDenny Carter

So I wrote about what the democratization of Texas might look like in the coming years (decades) and how reactionary forces might respond to such an existential threat. I won't ruin it for you but anyone interesting in democratizing Texas is probably going to have to get their hands dirty in ways that might feel deeply wrong to libs and leftists. The American right – including Elon Musk, who is pumping hundreds of millions into state Republicans' campaigns because we don't have campaign finance laws anymore – is not going to allow Blexas without a vicious fight.

You can check out After The Great Redo on BookShop.org and Amazon if you are in the mood for speculative fiction penned by the world's most dedicated coper.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.