Two Truths and a Lie
A game that does not require electricity, running water, or Ted Cruz
Welcome to The Experiment, where I hope you’re doing OK even though nothing is OK. I lived in Moscow after the Soviet Union collapsed, and it was never as bad as the last week was in Texas. So this week we’re going to talk about what happened.
Of course, we remember who we lost and recommend things to do (pre-order Maggie Smith’s new book of poetry), read (Chris Tomlinson’s failed state explainer), watch (Judas and the Black Messiah) and listen to (Tune-Yards’ “hold yourself”).
But first, have you ever played Two Truths and a Lie?
The name explains the game, which is a common ice-breaker: Someone says three things, two of which are true and one is a lie, and people guess which one is not true. I’d wager that Texas Republicans would be horrible at this game, because this week they haven’t been able to tell the truth if their lives depended on it. In fact, their lives haven’t. Ours have. Texans were promised limited government but got impaired leadership.
“This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America,” Gov. Greg Abbott said on Sean Hannity’s television show.
“This is what happens when you force the grid to rely in part on wind as a power source. When weather conditions get bad as they did this week, intermittent renewable energy like wind isn’t there when you need it,” Dan Crenshaw tweeted.
“Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business,” Rick Perry told Kevin McCarthy’s blog.
Lies, every one of them. Texans spent more time waiting for their elected officials to tell the truth than they did for the power to come back on, and some of them are still sleeping in the cold. I have friends in houses that were so cold they opened their refrigerators to prevent the food from spoiling. I have a friend who burned chairs to keep her son warm. I have a friend who had to take his dad out of hospice because the hospice lost power.
I have a friend whose sister lived in a nursing home that lost power overnight. She woke up with hypothermia. Later that day, her heart stopped.
The Texas economy has a solid foundation, but Texas politics has been flimsily constructed for the last decade, and politicians have compounded their error by thinking their ideology has caused a long period of economic expansion.
“We’re poised to lead our country into the 21st century with a brighter and more prosperous future,” said a powerful state legislator in 2013, “because of the hard work of the citizens of our state and the restraint that has been shown here in the Legislature in growing state government only as much as necessary to fund essential services.”
This is like thinking the rooster causes the sun to rise when in fact it was the booming economy that created such a huge tax base that enabled years after years of tax cuts. And every time they cut taxes, the economy grew, so they came to think one caused the other. This is largely the magical thinking that got sold under the Texas Miracle brand and explains why congressional Republicans think tax cuts are the solution to literally every problem.
As this ideology became divorced from reality, Republican politics became performative. Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz performed concern that the Jade Helm maneuver was a military invasion of Texas. Earlier this year, both supported baseless claims of voter fraud the 2020 elections, and our attorney general, Ken Paxton, who is currently under criminal indictment and a separate scandal over abuse of office involving a top donor, filed a suit to overturn the election results in other states. Both Cruz and Paxton supported the January 6 insurrectionists. A few years ago, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick made it the focus of the Texas legislature to ban men dressing up as women to molest young girls in bathrooms, which both never happened and was already against the law. Now he’s putting his legislative muscle behind a bill to legally require the National Anthem be sung before sporting events in taxpayer-subsidized facilities, because sometimes you have to take performative literally.
“First Amendment is cool and all, but have you tried state-mandated patriotic chanting?” wrote Elizabeth Dye in Above the Law.
That was last week. Dan Patrick hasn’t said much this week, because the culture wars don’t keep the lights on. Actual governing — not the posey stuff that gets you attention but the grinding details and real work of it — doesn’t seem like their job anymore, which is probably why Ted Cruz thought he wasn’t needed here.
While Texas Republicans were tilting at frozen windmills, here is how Texas became a failed state, unable to reliably deliver basic human needs such as clean water, reliable power, and shelter from an actual storm.
In 1989, a winter storm forced the grid to shut down power for millions of Texans, and federal regulators — with no power to force the Texas-only grid to do much of anything — produced a report with helpful tips to prevent this from happening again, which it did in 2011. A reporter went to the Public Utility Commission and found that 1989-era report on a shelf where it had been gathering dust ever since.
After the February 2011 storm plunged 4 million Texans into the cold, dark winter, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did another report and tried to make things simple enough for even the part-time lawmakers in Austin to understand: “The single largest problem during the cold weather event was the freezing of instrumentation and equipment.” In other words, things froze in freezing weather.
This time, the lawmakers at least appeared to do something about it. A rice farmer in the legislature passed a bill requiring utilities to disclose how they were winterizing their power plants so they didn’t freeze in the winter, and future Energy Secretary Rick Perry signed it into law. Mind you, the law didn’t require them to actually winterize, just tell the PUC what, if anything, they did, and soon they stopped even doing that, and the PUC never noticed. (That rice farmer is now the state comptroller and is generally considered the best of the bunch.)
All the world’s a stage, but you got to turn the heat on in the theater before you blame your daughters, the Green New Deal, and old man winter for Texas lapsing, albeit relatively briefly and temporarily, into a failed state. This week was so bad we all forgot about the pandemic because we were too busy using buckets of pool water to flush our toilets. This week was, in fact, worse than the early, panicked days of the pandemic when we wiped down our groceries because at least then the only thing they were out of was toilet paper.
“It wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t for all the lies,” said a neighbor who lost a lot of his possessions when his pipes burst. “First they said Texas was ready to handle the storm. Second they said it would only be a rolling 10-45 minute outage. Next they said power would return soon. And here we are five days later. None of that was true.”
I think it might be time for a change. Texas has overstayed one-party rule.
Who we’re remembering
My friend’s sister
How we’re getting through this
Making Thit Heo Kho Trung
Watching more foreign media than ever
Blowing a C-sharp on a Paleolithic seashell
Roasting butternut squash with lentils and feta
Pre-ordering Maggie Smith’s new book, Goldenrod
What I’m reading
Perry Bacon Jr.: In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors - I’ve been calling it a Cold Civil War but will expect this “Uncivil War” bop.
There is no campaign by Democratic elected officials to disenfranchise white evangelical Christians, a constituency that overwhelmingly backs GOP candidates, just as Black voters overwhelmingly back Democratic candidates. There was no widespread, systematic attempt by Democratic officials four years ago to disqualify the votes that elected Trump or to spur Democratic voters to attack the Capitol to prevent the certification of his presidency. While the left-wing antifa movement has violent tendencies, it isn’t an organized group — nor is it aligned with Biden or Democrats. And at least right now, national security experts describe right-wing violence as a much bigger danger in America than any violent behavior from the left. In an October 2020 report, the Department of Homeland Security called violent white supremacists the “most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.”
Bloomberg: “Texas Was Warned a Decade Ago It’s Grid Was Unready for Cold” - Be angry at this, not Cancun.
“Where did those recommendations go?”
Chris Tomlinson: “Don't blame Texas energy players for blackout, blame the electricity grid's irresponsible game” - Apparently if you don’t incentivize resilience, it ain’t getting built.
ERCOT needed a little more than 70,000 megawatts of juice early Monday morning when the fossil fuel plants failed and took 30,000 megawatts off the grid. Wind came within 1 gigawatt of meeting its obligation and then wind and solar outperformed expectations during the day.
What I’m watching
OK, Wandavision is not nearly as up its own bum as I originally feared, but you really have to be into Marvel and care about canon for this to land, because this is apparently just a show about comic book stuff.
Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek in a movie together should be bliss; Bliss was not.
The Map of Tiny Perfect Things on Amazon Prime was an amiably manipulative way to pass an evening. It’s a YA Groundhog Day, a Gen Z Palm Springs.
If you love stories about music production (check), have served in support roles for powerful people (check check check), and could use some low-stakes entertainment, The High Note might be for you. It was for me, big time.
PEOPLE: We all missed this movie, and it’s not for everyone. In fact, Wildlike is nearly 100% comprised of trigger warnings, but it takes such assured steps along its journey.
But as far as what deserves your attention first? Ladies and gentlemen: Judas and the Black Messiah on HBO Max is required viewing. If you need convincing, Ann Hornaday strongly recommends it, and the folks at NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour dug it.
What I’m listening to
Tōth wrote a song about hitting bottom, which for him was passing out at his aunt’s funeral when he was supposed to play “Ave Maria” on his trumpet. This song is called “Turnaround (Cocaine Song),” and his mom and remaining aunts are dancing in this video. Wish we could have run this in our Dryuary issue. This is a song of such sweet, optimistic resilience. “I should have turned around,” he sings, “but there was something inside that wanted to be free some day.”
Dessa’s dropped the title track of her upcoming album, Bombs Away.
Tune-Yards’ new song, “hold yourself,” builds to a powerful anthem about emotional self-reliance. Get it:
They held us close and dear
And told us lies that they've been telling themselves for years
They'll suffocate me so IHold myself now
I have to hold myself now
No choice of when and I don't know how
But I will hold myself now
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