Critical Alamo Theory

Why are Texas politicians working so hard to defend the Alamo myth?

Welcome to The Experiment, where we’re on the cover of Texas Monthly and on the summer reading lists for The New York Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Apparently this book is really happening. If you want to read the book that Kirkus called “an iconoclastic, romping, bull’s-eye volley at an enduring sacred cow—popular history at its most engaging and insightful,” pre-order your copy of Forget the Alamo now.

This week in The Experiment, we examine what the political fight over a Jan. 6 commission has to do with some strange bills down in Texas to impose political views onto civics education. Also, Jack Hughes has some PR advice for our UFO friends.

We also have recommendations on what to do (making Jamaican curry chicken, read (Thomas Edsell on the Jan. 6 commissions), watch (Loudermilk), and listen to. Once again, tons of great new songs got added to our Spotify playlist.

But first, have you noticed we’re trying to remember and forget the same things these days?

Up in Washington, people are making a Really Big Deal that almost three dozen out of more than a hundred Republicans in congress voted to create a commission to study the January 6 insurrection. This is a triumph of political logic. Everyone involved knows—and some even said at the time—that Donald Trump incited the rioters to storm the castle in an attempt to stop the certification of the election. Presumably, this commission could confirm the thing we all know to be true. The sun rises in the east, LeBron James is good at basketball, and Trump did everything he could to undermine a fair election, resulting in Jan. 6.

We don’t need a commission on the path of the sun because people rarely these days call the spherical shape of our planet into question. And I’m not sure we actually need a Jan. 6 commission, but people seem to want one because many Republicans of late now deny that Trump had anything to do with the insurrection or that it was an insurrection at all. The reason for this, of course, is that if they admit that then they have to admit that Trump lost the election, which is something that most Republican voters will not do. Trump did not just incite an insurrection but a mass insanity as well. These Republicans so identify with Trump that ceding the election means losing their sense of self.

We know all this, and somehow we think that Republicans insisting upon the Big Lie that Trump won will cause further violence. We think that sorting the good guys from the bad guys in the public record will restore peace even though there’s never been a correlation between getting your facts straight and finding peace. We knew who attacked whom at Pearl Harbor, and that didn’t prevent America from getting into World War II. The insurrection was violent, sure, but the story we tell about it will perhaps inevitably lead to more violence.

Let me explain.

---

The “good guys” who die on the road to redemption are remembered as martyrs, their deaths all but obligating further violence. 

---

Richard Slotkin has a theory. He’s a historian and a successful writer whose most famous work, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860, makes the case that the foundation of the American myth is that bloody fights on the frontier were necessary for individuals seeking a new start or for a wilderness to become a new world. As he puts it, “Violence is an essential and necessary part of the process through which American society was established and through which its democratic values are defended and enforced." In Slotkin’s telling, the violence is a feature, not a bug.  

There was a Progressive Era senator named Albert Beveridge who said that the United States would “establish order among savage and senile peoples … and finally lead in the regeneration of the world.” And likewise the “good guys” who die on the road to redemption are remembered as martyrs, their deaths all but obligating further violence. 

This is why, Slotkin argues, we Remember Pearl Harbor! to justify entering World War II and not, for the sake of argument, Nazi aggression against our allies before December 7, 1941 or their documented atrocities toward Jews. And it’s why Sam Houston’s troops yelled “Remember the Alamo!” at the Battle of San Jacinto and not some appeal to independence or self-determination. Martyrdom justified, if not demanded, further violence, and something new was created.     

This is why these myths--less the events themselves than the justification for further violence given by martyrdom--have been used by presidents since Theodore Roosevelt to explain U.S. foreign policy. President Johnson cited the Alamo to urge support for the Vietnam War, which as a literal connection made little sense. Only as a myth of regenerative violence does that have any logic.  

This theory of regenerative violence also explains why movies so often seem to comment on world events. John Wayne’s The Alamo was a reaction to what Wayne thought about flagging patriotism during the Cold War. TheWild Bunch, the violent Sam Peckinpah revisionist Western, came out after the My Lai massacre. Whether he meant to or not, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson’s dollhouse satire of creeping fascism, looked prescient amid a global rise in nationalism a few years later. 

When al Qaeda terrorists attacked the United States, remembering the Alamo became inevitably intertwined with never forgetting 9/11. They hated our freedom, then-President George W. Bush told Congress. These were martyrs, and the only question was who we had to go kill to sanctify the dead.

---

The violence is a feature, not a bug.  

---

Our problems are reversed in Texas, at least when it comes to losing. The Alamo, by which I mean the Battle of the Alamo, is the creation myth of Texas. It is the loss that, unlike Trump’s, confirms the Texan’s self-identity. And amid the national reckoning on racism (see also: the 1619 Project), Texas leaders are carving out their piece of the widespread backlash against Critical Race Theory by manning the palisades against Critical Alamo Theory, or the growing acceptance among historians and academics that the Texians did not make their last stand at the Alamo simply for liberty or more specifically to restore the Mexican constitution of 1824. They did it in large part to preserve their ability to own slaves.

That’s not the story Texas politicians want taught in Texas history class in the 4th and 7th grades. That’s not what they want on display at the grand new museum they’re planning to build at the Alamo to house Phil Collins’ Texana collection. So Texas politicians are doing what they do best, which is passing the worst legislation imaginable.

First up is a bill to create the 1836 Project, named for the year that Mexico lost and the Republic of Texas was created. Actually, the bill is a trollish attempt to “promote patriotic education” and offer a provincial pushback on the 1619 Project with a bizarre list of actions unlikely to win the hearts and minds of an increasingly multicultural Texas. Even though Texas history is taught at two grade levels, “there are concerns that civics education in this state does not sufficiently address the stories and unique history of Texas,” according to an analysis of the bill.

The bill proposes a bizarre range of ways to promote Texas history. The 1836 Project calls for board of political appointees to advise the governor “on the core principals of the founding of this state,” would give an award “to recognize student knowledge of Texas Independence,” tell state parks how to portray Texas history, and—I swear I am not making this up—print up brochures “that explain the significance of policy decisions made by this state” to give to people when they get their driver’s licenses “to promote liberty and freedom for businesses and families.” If schools can’t do the job, reasons the legislature, why not turn to the DMV? The only thing that pamphlet is likely to promote is litter.

The fact is that they’re not trying to promote civics education but political propaganda.

“Language in this bill such as ‘patriotic education’ and ‘the history of prosperity and democratic freedom’ further suggest that the committee will be tasked with producing propaganda rather than a full and honest look at Texas history,” said Maggie Stern of the Children’s Defense Fund, which opposes the bill.

It’s ironic to me that the ones doing most of the caterwauling about cancel culture and communism turn out to be doing a lot of projecting. I majored in Russian, and if the 1836 Project struck me as a little on the nose, HB 3013 punches me clean in the face. This bill seeks to enact the Texas Heroes Act, which worries itself with recent attempts to broaden the historical lens at the Alamo to tell a bigger history than just what happened over 13 days in 1836. The Texas Heroes Act would “ensure that the displays and exhibits located on the grounds of the Alamo complex, including displays and exhibits located in a museum, prominently feature certain information regarding the Battle of the Alamo and its heroes,” according to a bill analysis.

Let me translate that for you: If this bill becomes law, the Alamo would be all 1836, all the time, and only certain facts about the Texas heroes could be taught. To wit, the bill requires the Alamo to “focus on the 1836 Battle telling the history of why Texians and Tejanos fought in the Battle of the Alamo solely as described in the Texas Declaration of Independence dated March 2, 1836.”

Forget for a second that no one in the Alamo knew that the Texas Declaration had been written, much less signed, and it is in that ignorance that they died four days later. There is no profit in trying to untie that knot in the space-time continuum, because what the bill really means to do, according to The New York Times, is to “block exhibits at San Antonio’s Alamo complex from explaining that major figures in the Texas Revolution were slave owners.”

Actually, it would go a bit deeper than that, and we go into all this in great detail in Forget the Alamo, but you don’t have to take my word for it. According to the Texas State Historical Association, slavery was “an underlying cause” of the Texas Revolt and therefore the Battle of the Alamo.

Disputes over slavery did not constitute an immediate cause of the Texas Revolution, but the institution was always in the background as what the noted Texas historian Eugene C. Barker called a "dull, organic ache." In other words, it was an underlying cause of the struggle in 1835‑1836. Moreover, once the revolution came, slavery was very much on the minds of those involved. Texans worried constantly that the Mexicans were going to free their slaves or at least cause servile insurrection. And when they declared independence and wrote a constitution for their new republic, they made every effort, in the words of a later Texas Supreme Court justice, to “remove all doubt and uneasiness among the citizens of Texas in regard to the tenure by which they held dominion over their slaves." Section 9 of Constitution of the Republic of Texas read in part as follows:

All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude... Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from bringing their slaves into the republic with them, and holding them by the same tenure by which such slaves were held in the United States; nor shall congress have the power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slave holder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave without the consent of congress, unless he or she shall send his or her slave or slaves without the limits of the republic.

Thus, slavery was not the immediate cause of the revolution, but the institution was always there as an issue, and the revolution made it more secure than ever in Texas.

But if the Texas Heroes Act becomes law—it’s passed the House but is doubtful in the Senate—none of this could be taught at the Alamo. The risk is that insisting upon a state-mandated myth serves the needs of the several militia members who testified in favor of the bill and not the increasingly multicultural population of Texas. This is why you tell children not to run with scissors, because they might grow up into politicians who think they can substitute political calculations for historical accuracy.

The irony for me is that in the course of reporting Forget the Alamo I met several Alamo traditionalists who believe in the myth of self-sacrifice against tyranny. To a person, I firmly believe they voted for Trump, but none of them seem resistant, much less hostile to incorporating new historical findings into their understanding of the Alamo. They see history differently than I do, but they all have agile minds capable of engaging with the facts.

The problems arise when politicians try to end history, to put the record under glass and forbid any interpretation of the facts that contradicts their conclusions. If people have been fighting about the Alamo longer than anyone ever fought for the Alamo, this is why.

Some people are content to man the ramparts to defend their myth against pesky facts. And on the other side are those who think that telling the truth will end the fighting, even though there’s nothing that’s ever caused as much conflict as that. ‘Twas ever thus. Forget the Alamo is out June 8, and you can pre-order your copy now. But if you wait to get it later, don’t worry. Your grandchildren’s grandchildren will probably be fighting about the Alamo.

---

Take Us To Your Thought Leaders

by Jack Hughes

If you’re like me, perhaps you assumed that the blasé reaction to UFOs is a consequence of how crazy things are these days. But what if UFOs are guilty of a bad product rollout? Jack Hughes has some smart PR advice for our visitors.

Read it here.

---

How we’re getting through this

Not trusting media

Calling my own grand jury

Making Jamaican curry chicken

Pitching a 27-strikeout no-hitter

---

What I’m reading

2 smart scientists: “Vaccines didn’t stop the Yankees’ covid-19 outbreak. But the case proves how well they work.” - The explainer you wanted about the Yankees & COVID.

…the vaccines working as designed. While they don’t eliminate the possibility of becoming infected, they virtually eliminate the risk of severe disease and death by preparing your immune system to fight the virus so it can respond more quickly and strongly. Cases that would have been hospitalizations become colds, and symptomatic cases become asymptomatic. Most infections are avoided entirely. The vaccine works like a strong head wind from the outfield, turning homers into doubles and doubles into harmless fly outs. These effects may be the result of a more powerful immune response in vaccinated individuals, which is also thought to reduce viral loads and thus further spread of the virus.

Max Boot: “There are no Marjorie Taylor Greenes in the Democratic Party” - A-yep

In reality, most of the real left-wing extremists, such as antifa fighters, disdain the Democratic Party as too moderate and “corporatist.” By contrast, right-wing extremists — who think the 2020 election was stolen from former president Donald Trump, refuse to wear face masks or get covid-19 vaccine shots, and believe the crackpot QAnon conspiracy theories — are very much in the mainstream of the Republican Party.

Thomas B. Edsall: “How the Storming of the Capitol Became a ‘Normal Tourist Visit’” - Starts smart and gets smarter

The advent of Trump Republicans poses an unprecedented strategic quandary for Democrats, a quandary they have not resolved and that may not lend itself to resolution.

Kenny Mayne: I’m leaving ESPN. You know that, but here’s the story in my own words - Great stuff here.

Last Monday afternoon, I hit “send” to announce it was the end of the run, and the next 72 hours were like nothing I’ve before experienced. I received so many calls and texts and Twitter mentions, I thought my phone was going to melt down. This is not false modesty when I say that my biggest fear wasn’t the unknown of leaving my professional home for the last 27 years, but the embarrassment that no one would give a damn.

Ben Smith: “I’ll Take ‘White Supremacist Hand Gestures’ for $1,000” - Good read about a bad incident.

So the element of this story that interests me most is how the beating heart of nerdy, liberal fact-mastery can pump blood into wild social media conspiracy, and send all these smart people down the sort of rabbit hole that leads other groups of Americans to believe that children are being transported inside refrigerators. And, I wanted to know, how they could remain committed to that point of view in the absence of any solid evidence.

Reis Thebault: “For some Navy pilots, UFO sightings were an ordinary event: ‘Every day for at least a couple years’” - I am constantly having to swear I’m not a robot, but UFOs are boring.

“Every day,” Graves said in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday. “Every day for at least a couple years.”

The retired lieutenant’s matter-of-fact remark stopped “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker, who cut in: “Wait a minute. Every day for a couple of years?”

---

What I’m watching

Three seasons of Loudermilk, Peter Farrelly and Bobby Mort’s television series about a crotchety substance abuse counselor, just dropped on Amazon Prime. It feels like a show I should have known about for a long time, but in reality it existed only in Canada until March 2021, which answers the age-old question. A tree falling in the woods only makes a sound when if it hits the stream.

---

What I’m listening to

I know, I know, but “brutal” by Olivia Rodrigo—yes, the High School Musical actress—slaps, as the kids say.

If the Spice Girls were a punk band with modern sensibilities and were not Tories, they would be The Tuts. Sonia thinks they sound like Stella and the Very Messed, which is tremendously niche.

Anna Meredith is an English composer doing some inventive, pop-adjacent stuff.

I don’t know why I resist Audrey Nuna, because when it comes to “damn Right,” I cannot.

As always, here’s the full playlist with music recommendations going back more than two years now.

---

What do you think of today's email? I'd love to hear your thoughts, questions and feedback. I might even put ‘em in the newsletter if I don’t steal it outright.

Enjoying this newsletter? Forward to a friend! They can sign up here. Unless of course you were forwarded this email, in which case you should…

Swimsuit season’s coming. Try Noom, and you’ll quickly learn how to change your behavior and relationship with food. This app has changed my life. Click on the blue box to get 20% off. Seriously, this works.

We set up a merch table in the back where you can get T-shirts, coffee mugs, and even tote bags now. Show the world that you’re part of The Experiment. 

We’ve also got a tip jar, and I promise to waste every cent you give me on having fun, because writing this newsletter for you is some

Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself comes out June 8 from Penguin Random House. There is no better way to support this book than to pre-order a copy. You’re going to love reading what really happened at the Alamo, why the heroic myth was created, and the real story behind the headlines about how we’re all still fighting about it today.