Snitches
In Texas, snitches don't get stitches. They get $10,000.
Welcome to The Experiment, where we don’t like tattletales, unless they’ve got really good stories like Judge Rosie Speedlin-Gonzalez, who tells about the time her parents took her to the Alamo in “What Did He Say?” and Jack Hughes, who finds a surprising parallel between a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and a modern-day dilemma in “Half a Life Tenure.”
As always, we have recommendations on what to do (catch up with a traveling carnival), read (a professor’s gratifying review of Forget the Alamo) , watch (the video of our town hall in the Bexar County Courthouse), and listen to (an episode of Deconstructing Dallas I was on).
But first, do you know the Russian word for “whisper”?
Cultures that place a lot of emphasis on a concept typically have more than one word for it. Inuits famously have a dozen words for snow and 10 more for ice. Likewise, whispering is so important to Russian culture that they have two words for not just the simple noun or verb of whisper but for the whisperer him or herself. The role of the whisperer is differentiated between the “shepchushchii,” who whispers because he or she is afraid of being overheard, and “sheptun,” who whispers because he or she is informing on a neighbor, coworker, relative, or maybe even you. In English, we’d call a “sheptun” a snitch.
In the states, snitches are concepts we associate with prisons and, shall we say, overly policed, most often Black neighborhoods. In Russia, that’s the whole country, or at least it was under Josef Stalin’s Great Purge. Disloyalty and dissent got you sent off to gulags, and regular people were encouraged to report on each other, which made living in communal apartments terrifying. Sometimes people reported on others preemptively. If Ivan’s family got sent off to Siberia, the thinking went, then they couldn’t report on my family.
Children were taught that the walls had ears and to watch their tongues. The policy of mutual surveillance predictably terrorized normal life, as a woman, whose father was arrested in 1936, told NPR:
We were brought up to keep our mouths shut. 'You'll get into trouble for your tongue' — that's what people said to us children all the time. We went through life afraid to talk. Mama used to say that every other person was an informer. We were afraid of our neighbors...
During Stalin’s Great Purge, later popularized by a 1968 book as the Great Terror, about a million people were killed and hundreds of thousands more were imprisoned. People lived in terror of a knock at the door from a police officer come to take them away, but they didn’t know that everyone was, too. They saw neighbors disappear. They didn’t read about a million people in the newspapers, of course, and they certainly didn’t talk with their friends or coworkers about it.
The truth of the Great Purge was kept out of the news and history textbooks until Michail Gorbachev’s Glasnost, or openness, policy which finally allowed listed state censorship from, well, everybody, and Pravda was finally allowed to print the truth and Izvestia the news, which isn’t even a good joke if you speak Russian and grew up during the Cold War.
Children were taught that the walls had ears and to watch their tongues.
It’s easier to see faults with the proper perspective, easier to see the lipstick on someone else’s teeth than your own. And the Soviet Union, pared off as we were for so long, has always served the United States with a mirror image, as much a distorted reflection of ourselves as its own hot mess over there. We saw ourselves as the good guys, and they saw themselves as the good guys, but that just makes us enemies in the same war, two empires playing “I know you are but what am I” on an endless loop without any parents to pull the car over if we don’t shut up.
There have always been similarities. After 9/11, “If you see something, say something” became part of our national defense posture against terrorism. One time, in 2002, I asked a stranger to watch my bag so I could throw something away in a trash can within sight but far enough away to make me worry someone could swipe my stuff. “I don’t know you,” he said. We were all suspects against the homeland.
Texas took suppressing inconvenient truths like a pig to slop. When Rick Perry was governor, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, a name that strikes me more as an aspiration than a descriptor, hired researchers to produce regular reports on Galveston Bay, which is rising. The researchers wrote in the report that climate change was to blame for the rise; state officials edited the report to take out any mention of climate change or projections that the bay would continue to rise. The good news is that they didn’t replace it with overly optimistic potato crop projections.
And as I’ve pointed out before, The 1836 Project, which the Texas legislature created to promote a “patriotic” version of Texas history, carries more than a whiff of Soviet-style, state-sponsored, government-mandated balderdash.
But I’ve noticed a trend lately that, as much as I enjoy absurdity, actually has me a little scared.
That this could result in organized intimidation of Black and Hispanic voters is not beyond belief.
You’ve probably heard about the Texas Democratic lawmakers who are in Washington, DC. to prevent the legislature from passing a voter suppression bill that would empower partisan poll watchers “to sit or stand near enough to hear or see the activity” and sue any election official they say doesn’t do that. The bill even prevents poll watchers from being removed for harassing or intimidating voters unless they have been warned, which the ACLU calls a “one-time get out of jail free card for voter intimidation.”
That this could result in organized intimidation of Black and Hispanic voters is not beyond belief. As Elvis Costello said, “History repeats the old conceits, the glib replies, the same defeats.” When Texas Republicans did this in the ‘60s by making Black and Latino voters prove they understood the Constitution before they were allowed to vote, it was called “Operation Eagle Eye.” Now, because the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, it’s called the Republican campaign plan.
The Texas legislature did manage to pass an antiabortion bill that outlaws abortions after a doctor detects a fetal heartbeat, usually around six weeks. Except the law doesn’t exactly make it illegal. In a bit of lawyer ball intended to circumvent judicial precedent striking down other six-week abortion bans, the Texas law lets private citizens enforce the abortion ban by filing lawsuits against anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion. That means any U.S. citizen, not even necessarily a Texas resident, can sue doctors, nurses, Planned Parenthood receptionists, your aunt who drove you to Planned Parenthood, your preacher who counseled you about getting an abortion, anyone who contributed to a fund to pay for your abortion, and, oh yeah, you. If successful, the petitioner gets $10,000 and attorney’s fees. An abortion bounty, if you will.
QAnon’s latest targets are school boards
Finally, my friend Josh Berthume, who monitors the dark web for a living, says that QAnon’s latest targets are school boards, which could explain why Texas conservatives, some of them school board trustees themselves, are coaching parents and activists on how to “take back your school boards from the left and the progressives.” In some cases, this means trying to shout down trustees at board meetings, as happened in June near Austin.
In July, a Dallas-area school board member held a town hall to teach “parents, grandparents, and citizens on how identify and fight Critical Race Theory.” At CPAC later that month, two other school board members coached activists to use public records laws to harass school districts.
Going after elected officials and government bodies is one thing. Asking parents to turn teachers in is quite another. Amid urging state officials to force the state history museum to back out as hosts of the Forget the Alamo event, the Texas Public Policy Foundation posted instructions on how to purge politically disloyal teachers. Equity, diversity, and inclusion were secret synonyms for Critical Race Theory, the TPPF said. So were discussions of identity, liberation, and colonialism. A parent frightened that their child was being brainwashed could be made to see Critical Race Theory in anything.
The idea of urging parents to spy on teachers was apparently a step too far, even for Texas conservatives comfortable with suing the Lyft driver who drives a woman to get an abortion or posting Proud Boys in Houston voting locations to intimidate Black voters. The TPPF deleted the tweet, but the idea is out there. The conservatives’ latest way to enforce their worldview is to weaponize citizens against each other.
We know where this road leads, and it’s nowhere good. What you may not know is that even when you get there, we might not end up any wiser. Russians today largely remember Stalin as the leader who won the Great Patriotic War, which is what they call World War II. They also see him as a strong leader who could make the trains run on time. It’s not unusual to meet democratic activists in Russia these days who both advocate for liberal reforms and say they would happily accept another Stalin as a leader because he was strong.
In fact, polls of Russian citizens for the last decade show that they consider Stalin to be “the world's most outstanding public figure,” whatever that means. Never can tell with Russians or Texans. In fact, as one expert pointed out, the sharpest rise in Stalin’s posthumous poll numbers was among those 18-30.
“Their perception of Stalin is based on myth, fed by older generations,” she said.
Those who know their history are not prevented from repeating it, let alone recreating it, translated for a new age eager to snitch on those they consider unAmerican. Let’s hope it turns out better this time.
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Más
How we’re getting through this
Detoxing, maybe, I dunno
Learning to spot drowning victims
Visiting the Mighty Thomas Carnival
Building machines made out of words
Feeling weird about cheering Walmart
Stealing from history’s greatest leaders
Making plans to visit the Painted Porch
Getting attacked by a Mississippi senator
Wondering if Ready Player One was fiction
Watching comedians evolve their art forms
What I’m reading
Mark Barabak: “Remembering the Alamo, Texans fight over myth versus history” - Columns like this have been written for the last half century. Read a ton of them in the research for the book; now our book is part of that story.
“I don’t have militiamen protesting in front of my house, which is kind of what I expected would happen,” said coauthor Chris Tomlinson, a Houston Chronicle columnist who traces his Texas roots to 1849. “What I did not anticipate was the lieutenant governor using his office to shut down one of our events.”
Shena Dey: “How Some Districts Are Trying To Get Anxious Families Back Into School Buildings” -
Elizalde says building trust begins with one-on-one relationships and organic, unscripted conversations. She understands some families may not be ready to send children back — but with no remote learning option, Austin schools need students in their classrooms. In Texas, state funding for schools is tied, in part, to attendance. Poor attendance could lead to less money, Elizalde says, and that could lead to layoffs.
"A rock and a hard place doesn't even begin to describe how I feel."
ESPN: “Texas and Oklahoma to the SEC: The history, the drama and why it's happening now” - h/t to J.D., who writes, “There are larger themes here, but the Big 12 is also like the ESPN remake of Dallas. UT is JR, OU is Bobby. Even the drama is bigger in Texas.”
Texas' governor at the time, Ann Richards, was a Baylor grad. Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock held degrees from both Baylor and Texas Tech. As told by Dave McNeely and Jim Henderson, in the book "Bob Bullock: God Bless Texas," Bullock called Texas and Texas A&M's presidents to his office in early 1994 and told them: "You're taking Tech and Baylor, or you're not taking anything. I'll cut your money off, and you can join privately if you want, but you won't get another nickel of state money."
Dr. Manuel Flores: “Authors dispute Alamo 'myth,' seek to revise history” - This review gets at exactly why we wrote Forget the Alamo.
Then, it happened. In the seventh grade my teacher, a nun from the Order of the Sacred Heart, told my class that the Mexicans were the enemy at the Alamo and that we had killed all the Texas soldiers, including Davy Crockett.
Wait, my ancestors killed Davy Crockett, Travis, Bowie and all those heroic and valiant soldiers?
Nicolas Frank: “Alamo discussion largely preaches to a choir ready for a more inclusive history” - Hands down, best book event ever.
Stanford set the tone for the evening by declaring that the myth of the Alamo, which he termed “the Jerusalem of Texas” for its quasi-religious status as a touchstone of American history, has been “othering the dominant population” in San Antonio, and indeed all of Texas — a situation he said is no longer “a sustainable operation.”
Ernest Hogan: “Chicanonautica: Forgetting the Alamo” - I am so glad our book reached this reader.
The most disturbing things in the book are several personal, first-hand accounts of Tejano students being singled out in 7th grade history class as descendants of the killers of Davy Crockett, and how the bullying and harassment by their Anglo classmates started immediately.
James Poniewozik: “How TV Went From David Brent to Ted Lasso” - The best criticism helps you understand not just the show but the audience. This does that.
…irony and sincerity are themselves not enemy parties. They’re simply tools of art, used to achieve the same ends from different angles: to evoke emotion, to test what it means to be human, to play out ideas and to get people to see things with new eyes. One tool chisels, the other smooths; each does something the other can’t.
Devin Wallace: “More Development Would Ruin Our Neighborhood’s Character and That Character is Systemic Racism” - Felt a little guilty laughing at this one.
If we don’t stop this, I’ll be forced to sell my home for twenty times what I purchased it for and move to a beautiful coastal city in a gorgeous condo with a fat retirement fund. I’d rather end it now.
What I’m watching
We did an incredible forum at the Bexar County Courthouse in San Antonio where we talked about how Forget the Alamo could contribute to racial healing as they try to tell a more complete story about the Alamo. I’m posting the full video here, but the must-watch component of this is the opening statement by the county commissioner who set this up, my friend Tommy Calvert.
The New York Times calls Apple TV’s Physical “sarcastic realism.” It’s not getting great reviews, but it’s Feminism in the time of Reagan take on the ‘80s has something going for it.
What I’m listening to
Fun addition to the playlist this week: Gimme this early aughts art rock! Thank you, Teenage Sequence.
My friend Matt Zeller (and longtime reader — hi, Matt!) has started a podcast about Operation Allies Refuge, or the effort to get all the interpreters out of Afghanistan safely. It’s not for the faint of heart.
Rob D’Amico has a new podcast about the beginnings of the War on Drugs on the southern border. Good stuff.
And I went on Deconstructing Dallas with Shawn Williams and Ryan Trimble.
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Buy the book Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick banned from the Bullock Texas History Museum: Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of the American Myth by Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson, and myself is out from Penguin Random House.