Baffler #84

Doth the Lone Star State protest too much? There might not be much daylight between the Texan ideal of self-sufficiency and the cliché held by outsiders that the once independent republic is provincial and inward-looking. As is often the case, however, such stereotypes are negative images of a repressed truth. Violence against migrants, cattle fetishism, extractivism of both the hydrocarbon and digital varieties—everything that happens in Texas is a reflection of the whole world, which of course means that everything happening across the globe is reflected by something within state lines.