Going to put this at the top first, we'll see if it has any effect... Alot of the toplevel replies to this are so tone deaf and ignorant its mind blowing. For

Going to put this at the top first, we'll see if it has any effect... Alot of the toplevel replies to this are so tone deaf and ignorant its mind blowing. For starters, the author is a native texan, as am I, and grew up not far from where I was born and partially raised. He's well known for his work, so the sighing and gnashing of teeth about "liberal New Yorker..." is just dead wrong. He lives in Austin, as well, so this wasn't filed from the fever swamp imagination of Brooklyn (or whatever ppl visualize when they complain of NY). Its also important to note, guessing that many people didn't bother to read such a long piece, that it dwells almost exclusively on Republican politics in the state. And not from some inherently antagonistic place. One of the main interlocutors is Joe Straus, a jewish republican, who is regularly targeted for replacement by his more radical ostensible colleagues for....wait for it.....being a Jew in a position of power in Texas. Pretty sure this is so well known there was a Daily show bit about some years ago. The title is also quite apt. The condition of Texas demographics, not just along lines of race but urban/rural, income, education is also representative of the country at large. As is the vituperative nature of hyper-partisanship. Many of the points the author raises are similarly covered by other Texan journalists, like CD Hooks at the Texas Observer (who is excellent btw). And while other people are savaging Evan Smith here in the thread (wrongly) as some kind of anti-white race warrior, you could do far far worse than his work as well. I was born here (I'm here now, actually) I went to college here. I have family in Texas going back over a 130 years. This is a good piece, covering an especially bad period in Texas politics(the most recent lege session has been almost univserally savaged as reactionary, racist as hell and utterly broken). I hope if anyone bothers to find this comment and is actually interested in Texas and the state of its politics they'll give it a read.