HAPPY WEEKEND. The Authoritarians is back with a look at why Texans were freezing to death last week, and the answer is, COMMIE-NISM!
And, in honor of the Senator from Cancun, a cocktail recipe for the “Cruzan Overnighter.” Worth subscribing just for the drink.
Ben Fountain on why Texas needed electricity the first time, in the 1930s:
The Texas hinterland....which today forms the big beating heart of the state’s Republican base.... [was] a close approximation of 14th century peasant hell. The vast majority of rural Texans live without electric power, which meant no refrigeration, no water pumps, no indoor plumbing, no furnaces, no electric stoves, no incandescent lights, no motors to power machines for milking or shearing. Even for those of us only one generation or two removed from the farm, it’s almost impossible to conceive just how different life was, although the phrase “nasty, brutish, and short“ comes to mind. And the best guide to that time is the “Sad Irons“ chapter of The Path to Power, The first volume of Robert Caro‘s biography of Lyndon Johnson, which delivers a harrowing portrait of life as a medieval slog, plunked down in the middle of 20th century America. To take just one aspect of the slog: water.
Fountain, writing in his excellent Beautiful Country Burn Again, summarizes the cost of not having electricity: On average, farm families were using 40 gallons of water a day per person, 200 gallons per family, 4/5 of a ton every day, or in a year 73,000 gallons or 300 tons. This had to be pumped by hand and carried an average of 253 feet to the house, requiring 1,750 miles a year and 63 eight-hour days just to carry water because there was no electricity.
This work of course fell on women who suffered enormous health issues, especially perineal tears (vaginal tears, often from heavy lifting). In one study of Texas Hill Country women, 150 out of 275 had perineal tears, often third degree. Working in brutal pain, these women did laundry over boiling vats of water and cooked year-round over fires, hauling wood in and ashes out, while preparing most meals from scratch because there was no refrigeration. Their hands were blistered and burned from scrubbing, sanding, ironing, cooking, canning, hauling, and repairing. As Caro put it, “hauling the water, hauling the wood, canning, washing, ironing, helping with the shearing, the plowing and the picking. Because there was no electricity.”
Why not?
Back in 1935, legendary Texas politician Sam Rayburn campaigned for office by demanding rural electrification be sponsored by the US government. He pointed out that 50 years after power generation was invented, the free market had supplied just 3% of rural Texas with electricity. (Nationwide, the figure for farms was about 6 percent.)
Utility companies already knew they could make money running electricity to farms, but didn’t do so because the profit margins were too low. Instead, they organized a propaganda campaign against Rayburn and New Deal-mandated electrification.
Guess what they called rural electrification? They called it communist and socialist, of course. In the first episode of Astroturfing in American politics, Texas electrical companies trained thousands of employees to pose as ordinary citizens and complain via letters and public appearances that the New Deal was a communist takeover of private enterprise. (Rayburn won, and rural Texas got electricity through government funded cooperatives.)
Among the founders and supporters of this campaign against progress were Howard Hunt and the father of today’s Koch brothers, who in 1938 urged his countryman to look to Nazi Germany as a role model.
Nothing changes. The same people are selling the same lies. They want private profit no matter how bad it hurts their fellow citizens. They denounce bailouts for others, but demand them for themselves. Senator Ted Cruz suddenly rediscovered the need for fairness and price regulation only after the privatized system failed so badly that millions of Texans were left without electricity during a multi-day storm and the lucky few still connected received electric bills for up to $16,000.
They told us back in the 1930s that it was communism to expect basic electrification in rural Texas. Today they tell us it is socialism to expect basic services like heat, water, and electricity from contracted suppliers. People in Houston were lining up at spigots for water, like in Peru or India.
Some Americans will die on this hill. The mayor of Colorado, Texas, became briefly famous last week when he denounced his fellow Texans as Socialists for wanting “handouts” in the form of electricity they already pay for. He posted on Facebook that the town, county, state, and federal government “owe you nothing.” You would have to starve or freeze on your own, and “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish.”
Actually, he wrote “the weak will parish,” but bad spelling is not the problem. As Ben Fountain argues, American amnesia and fear-mongering for profit are the problem. Falling for the same lies over and over again is the problem.
BONUS RECIPE SECTION
“The Cruzan Overnighter”
Dear Senator Cruz, I have also spent one night in Cancun, many, many times, en route to, or returning from, Cuba. I also regretted those nights. I’ve never stayed at the Ritz Carlton. I have never paid, as your Goldman Sachs wife put it, “only” $309 a night.
You profit from politics that blame and denounce Mexicans, you support a border wall, and then you fly over it to enjoy their country as your fellow Texans freeze. Congratulations, you created one of the signature moments of hypocrisy in American political history.
In your honor I have created a signature cocktail, the Cruzan Overnighter:
*Fill glass with ice. Lots and lots of ice.
*Add 1 part Jose Cuervo tequila—cheap, tasteless, inauthentic. The original Jose Cuevo did personally kill one of his rivals in the tequila business, and get away with it, so you can take inspiration from his ruthlessness.
*Add 1 part Cruzan rum. This is a low quality product for getting blitzed on Spring Break in Cancun.
*Add 1 more part Cruzan.
*And add 1 more part Cruzan. (Pro tip: write the name of your hotel on your hand. Seriously!)
*Top with three drops of Aloe Vera gel, for the burns.
*Choke it down like you did when Trump called your wife ugly and your dad a murderer.
Only the strong will survive.
I might have to have many, many Cruzan Overnighters if the youth do not go back to school full-time in the fall. Wait...I don't think your essay was about that, was it? Shoot, maybe I should have read your journalism before drinking my first Cruzn Overnighter.