An Open Letter to the Great State of Texas

Go.

If you feel that strongly about it, then just go. Please. Just... just get the fuck out of our union. If you feel that strongly about taking stimulus money designed to save and create jobs, to free up credit liquidity to get our economy going again, then don't go away angrily. Just go.

You have been an embarrassment to our nation long enough. Personally, I'd rather replace the state of Texas with Puerto Rico or an erstwhile-inhabited desert island in Fiji so we don't have to put up your constant irrationally egotistical boasting about how everything in Texas is bigger and better (despite never having fielded a World Series-winning team yet inflicting Connecticut Yankee George W. Bush on the rest of the world).

We're sick and tired of hearing new about you yahoos executing innocent men (and Supreme Court Justice Tony Scalia said that's lawful so no problem there) then launching a forensic investigation that would exonerate him only 5 years after you killed the man.

If you don't like your Social Security, if you don't like your government-run Medicare and Medicaid, if you don't like annual federal disbursements that help fund your schools and institutions of higher learning, your police and fire departments and other civil and social service agencies, if you don't like being included in transportation and infrastructure funding bills, if you don't like the billions in earmarks that your legislators have been getting for you all these decades, then fuck you. More for us.

Texas collectively has always struck me as that overweight, unrefined country bumpkin uncle who shows up only when there's free BBQ at the patriarch's house, the one the rest of the family can't stand but tolerates because, while you may be the farting, belching, ball-scratching, family-loathing right wing uncle, you've always been our farting, belching, ball-scratching, family-loathing right wing uncle. Yet, if you were serious about just never coming around again to eat our food, drink our beer and clog our toilet, then hardly any of us would shed a tear.

But know this: If for any arcane reason al Qaeda had considered your infrastructure critical enough to attack on September 11th, we would've been there in a heartbeat. If God forbid Galveston had again been struck by a hurricane like Katrina four years ago, we would've been there. If Timothy McVeigh had decided, instead, to bomb a federal building in Texas instead of Oklahoma City, we would've been there for our American brothers and sisters.

We would've started huge internet campaigns and relief organizations to supplement the federal response. We would've dispatched our local fire and law enforcement officials to help your people, volunteers would've poured in from all over the country to help out. Doctors and nurses and paramedics and ordinary volunteers would've put their lives on hold to help triage and treat the victims regardless of the nature of the emergency and the risks to our safety. We are Americans. That is what we do. The federal government would've stepped in with emergency funds and the president would've declared parts of Texas a disaster area, even if it would've taken FEMA five days to get there. We would've even rescued your pets.

But if you want to take your 24,326,974 people out of the union badly enough, if you honestly think that everywhere outside of your purloined state constitutes the entire United States, if you'd rather fly your Lone Star flag in lieu of the Stars and Stripes, if you are that determined then I guess we cannot stop you. If you want to further weaken the military infrastructure of the rest of our nation and make yourselves that much more vulnerable, fucking A. Go for it.

But we would've loved you as our fellow Americans. We would've put our lives in danger to help you Texans in the event of a catastrophe. We saw it in New York City. We saw it in New Orleans. And you would've seen it anywhere disaster would've struck your state.