What’s The Matter With Texas? feat. Steven Monacelli & Dr. Michael Phillips

in Texas. The state has always had a disproportionate impact on national politics. The annexation of Texas in eighteen forty five provoked the Mexican American War. From eighteen forty six to eighteen forty eight. The United States grabbed two thirds of Mexico's territory, and there was an ugly and bitter fight over the status of slavery and all that new

land the United States acquired. That's going to turn out to be one of the major causes of the Civil War, a conflict that resulted in the liberation of four million African Americans from slavery, but also the death of three quarters of a million Americans. Texas also was the epicenter of the Populist Movement, a leftist movement largely based in Texas that actually challenged the power of the Democratic Party

in the South. And if the Populist Party had succeeded, everything else that happened in America in the twentieth century in terms of Jim Crow, lynching, the Clan, etc. May have had a very different outcome.

There was Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who brought the country not only Medicare and Medicaid, but the nineteen sixty four Civil Rights Act and the nineteen sixty five Voting Rights Act, two issues that the right wing continue to fight against to this day. Those laws made African Americans perhaps the

most important constituency in the Democratic Party. Racist backlash to johnson civil rights legislation, urban uprisings and places like the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles, and white flight generally led segregationists and their children in the South, who had been loyal Democratic voters to switch allegiance to the Republican Party. Over the next three decades, another Texas president, Republican George W. Bush.

He aggressively embraced homophobia, tightened the ties between the Republican Party and the most right wing Christians in the country,

and made denial of climate change strict GOP orthodoxy. Of course, the Bush family's oil wealth was central to their rise to pa and broadly speaking, the wealth of right wing oil barons in Texas has helped push the Republican Party further and further to the right, in no small part due to a particular belief in a particular strain of Christianity, which we'll get to later in this episode.

wars in American history. Both of them disastrous failures. The combination of white backlash to the LBJ era civil rights initiatives, the intense religiosity of the Bush era and the Republican Party in that time period, and the sense of the United States was a declining power unable to impose its will on Afghanistan and Iraq opened the door of the

Donald Trump's ascendancy. In short two Texas presidents played a major role in making the Democratic Party vastly more diverse, more urban based, and more mainstream liberal, and the Republican Party more white, more right wing, more isolationists, and far more fundamentalists and skeptical science.

an outlet mall in Allen. Draconian abortion laws allow complete strangers to sue women who go out of state and their pregnancy, and new laws are being considered to prevent women from traveling through particular counties on highways who if they are seeking abortion, you know, they could be arrested for basically trying to leave the state to seek an abortion.

LGBTQ students. The first ever African American high school principal at Heritage High and yet another Dallas suburb, Colleville, was forced from his job when he sent an email to his high school community after the murder of George Floyd that acknowledged existence of systemic racism in the United States.

the main flashpoints of this fight. So the literary organization pen America reports that Texas and Florida lead the nation in book bands at public schools, with more than fifteen

hundred books banned in the state of Texas. Most of those books deal with issues like racism or LGBTQ experience, and one deputy constable in Granbury, a suburb near Dallas Fort Worth, even spent two years investigating three librarians on alleged felony charges of providing so called harmful materials to miners simply because they allowed miners to access acclaimed books like The Bluest Eye by Tony Morrison. According to an investigation by NBC News, the law enforcement officer Scott London,

was a member of the extremist Oathkeepers organization. He subpoened names of young readers who checked out supposedly objectable material, and he even secretly recorded his conversations with the librarians

who drew his unwonted attention. The investigative report that came out of this investigation into so called harmful materials was eight hundred and twenty four pages long, and no charges were ever filed, but nonetheless a lot of people's lives were made difficult and a bunch of books have been taken off the shelves.

constitution makes that the responsibility of the federal government. Texas so far has built thirty four miles of a wall Abbot valves will eventually extend along the entirety of texas twelve hundred and fifty four mile international border with Mexico. One estimate says that project, if it were completed, would

take thirty years and cost twenty billion dollars. The state of Texas has placed Buoy's entangled with razor wire in the Rio Grande River near Eagle Pass, a border town that's a major crossing point for migrants fleeing the violence and economic hardship in Central America, Venezuela, and the rest of Latin America.

likely to commit crimes on average. These initiatives have been deadly. In August twenty twenty three, a buoy trapped a twenty year old Duran and a small child, causing them both to drown. The Texas border patrols El Paso sector has become one of the deadliest areas of the border here, with one hundred and forty nine immigrants dying over a

twelve month period between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Recently, on a podcast, Abbot expressed regret that Texas has been unable to shoot immigrants who are attempting to enter Texas by crossing the Rio Grant and has complained that the Biden administration might file murder charges against border agents if such lethal force was used.

connects to the issue of abortion. Throughout the history of abortion laws in Texas, there's been a discussion of whether or not white Texans were committing what they said in the early twentieth century was so called Reese's suicide, a real panic that black and brown people would eventually out number whites and would seize political control of the state.

And this is tied to the abortion issue because throughout the history of abortion laws in America and in Texas, there's been a concern that white women are having abortions, and that really fuels some of the extremism in how Texas has approached this issue. Twenty twenty two, this state legislature passed the law that would allow a third party to sue anyone who helped a woman getting an abortion, although the courts have so far blocked enforcement of that law,

called Senate Bill eight. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton meanwhile has addressed another issue dealing with trans children, and again, trans children, if they're white, would be out of the reproductive demographic race that panics white racist in the state. He has tried to force doctors and other states to provide medical information on young people receiving gender affirming care outside of Texas, and the parents are trans children in

Texas have been investigated for child abuse. In each case, these extreme laws have been discussed in some cases imitated in other red states.

He believes that sort of rhetoric and pushes it. On the other hand, we've got the issue with LGBTQ issues in general. We've seen books being taken off the shelves as we've previously mentioned. We've seen rights taken away from

students with regard to their access to bathrooms. We have seen, as doctor Phillips mentioned, the targeting of parents, and a lot of this comes from this anxiety that students are being groomed into becoming LGBTQ in public schools, in public libraries, and other settings, the idea being that, yes, they're trying

to turn your kids gay, that's what they're saying. And so of course they're going to be extremely upset about any shrinking demographic numbers among the white population, or a growing acceptance of queerness or people being transgender, and so much of that is rooted in religious belief. But all of this it matters in a bigger perspective, and I think we can understand why some of this is so prevalent in Texas through the lens of Texas's importance to national politics.

Non Whites account for sixty percent of all Texans, and as a group, they vote mostly for Democrats, and they control most of the state's largest cities in terms of political dominance. But because of low voter turnout among people of color, laws that intentionally make registering to vote harder, making voting itself even more difficult, gerrymandering the general feebleness of the Democratic Party in the state. The state has remained in control of a very conservative, very white, Republican

minority for three decades. In Texas, every major city is blue except for one, and that's Fort Worth, which is in a place called Tarrant County. And I think it is not a coincidence that the largest, flashiest conflicts have often been in Tarrant County when it comes to things like schools, when it comes to things like books. Colleyville, as we previously mentioned, is in Tarrn County. If you've ever heard of the name South Lake, that's a town

in Arrant County. There are numerous national articles about issues that have emerged from this one single stronghold of Republican power in the state, which if it were to fall, would pretend great changes not just for the politics in the state of Texas, but perhaps even the nation.

that have a right wing political leadership. For instance, the Texas Republican Party platform adopted this year called for changes in the way statewide officials like governor would be elected, and essentially, the Republican Party called for creating a local

version of the electoral college. Under these proposed changes, a candidate for governor, lieutenant governor, all the down ballot statewide offices could win the popular vote and still lose the election unless they carry a majority of the two hundred and fifty four counties in the state, most of which

are very white, very conservative, very fundamentalist. If this became law, the proposal would guarantee permanent Republican rule in the state, and as I said, other Republican states are looking at this proposal. It hasn't been proposed as legislation, but that would really end any pretense of democracy because most people in Texas live in cities like the rest of the United States. Another way that Republicans have maintained their grip on the state is by waging a never ending culture

war centered on matters of faith. So If you really want to understand Texas, its culture and its politics, you can't avoid a discussion of religion. You have to dive into one particular type of Christian Christianity we've already referred to. This interpretation of the Bible motivates right wing voters and the vast rural sections of the state and the outer

suburbs and the major cities. It's disproportionately molded the state's laws and attitudes where it's African Americans, immigrants, and the people we've talked about, women, gay and trans people, and also non Christians like Jews and Muslims.

that they talk about. It's less about low taxes, it's less about being business friendly, it's less about letting you do what you want in your personal life, and it is much more about imposing a particular religious viewpoint on others through policy and the most vocal, perhaps one of

the most highly organized and certainly flush with funds. Sect of Christianity that is, you know, driving this is this group of Christian fundamentalists that religious scholars broadly describe as dispensationalists. So what's a dispensationalist. It's a fancy word for someone who believes that we are living in the end times.

The end times being this idea that at any moment now all true Christians will be whisked up into the clouds in an event called the Rapture, that an embodiment of Satan called the Antichrist will take over the world and try to destroy Israel. And you know, all of this is, you know, presaging the final judgment, you know, the day when the Lord Jesus comes down and he basically decides who's done well and who's done bad, and that settles it for all eternity.

for a particular purpose. He's going to come to prevent the destruction of all remaining Jewish people on the planet. And they believe that millions of Jewish people are going to die, those who survive are going to convert to Christianity, and when Jesus returns, he will establish what's essentially a divine dictatorship that will be a time of perfect peace and harmony, called the Millennium.

the end times. And it also has to do with one gentleman named Cyrus Scofield. But before we talk about Cyrus Schofield, a quick ad break.

learned from other evangelists, and he's a modernizer. He has adult education classes, correspondence courses on the Bible, and eventually he produces something published in nineteen oh nine called the Schofield Reference Bible that basically is the King James Bible with footnotes that he and his co editors have put together where they say, these strange verses in the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation that referred to beast with seven heads and ten horns, and you know,

these other strange creatures, and this highly symbolic language has a very literal obvious meaning, and that is the return of Jewish people to the state of Israel and how that marks the beginning of the end.

You have the rise of these fascist dictators, and there's a sense that the world as we knew it was collapsing. Capitalism might collapse, you know, you might have communists takeover, you might have fascist takeover. And then of course World War Two, and then finally the thing that really makes Schofield seem like he was onto something in terms of his Biblical interpretation. And this particular interpretation had been around certain variants for centuries and centuries, but it had always

been a minority view. But what really made it seem like Schofield was onto something was nineteen forty eight when the State of Israel is established, the modern state of Israel, because he had been saying this would happen, this would be the sign of the end. It becomes the point where a lot of churches ministers are measured by the degree to which they promote Scofieldism, and Protestant churches ministers get fired if they don't begin to talk about the end times.

twenties by allies associates of Cyrus Schofield. It had been a center of the study of biblical prophecy, and basically Lindsay's a student, and a lot of his peers said, basically he took his class notes and turned into a book. And his real effort. He had been a leader in the campus Crusade for Christ, which was an evangelical group that was trying to fight the counterculture hippies, LSD and so on, and so he had that experience and he brought it into the writing of a best selling book

called The Late Great Planet Earth. And The Late Great Planet Earth is written in the language of the time. He tries to use hippie type of lingo in to catch on with the youth culture, and it's his timing, just like Schofields is great. This is a time where there's an obsession with hidden knowledge. You have really popular books selling about the lost continent of Atlantis UFOs, the phenomena supposedly a spontaneous human combustion. Did ancient aliens build

the Pyramids? And if you went to a convenience store or a store department store, you might find racks of paper books with all this hidden knowledge. And people believed that there was something hidden because of Watergate and because of Vietnam, and so this became a phenomenal seller. It was the best selling quote unquote nonfiction book of the nineteen seventies. It later got made into a pseudo documentary that was narrated by the movie star Orson Wells.

giants like Walmart stocked the books. They sold eighty million copies, warehouses full of merch sequels, prequels, graphic novels, audiobooks, calendars, greeting cards, a shoot them up computer game based on the books. All of this stuff was centrally talking about the rapture, the end times. That's what the Left Behind series was about. And those who are left Behind are those who were not raptured, and these films center on

the chaos that breaks out right after the rapture. Really really popular stuff will play a quick clip so you can get a sense of what that's like. He took them to protect them, what from the darkest time in the history of this world, persecution.

holy sites in Islam. And there was a time where there was a diplomatic crisis caused by this believer in dispensationalism. Then, of course we have what had happened to Waco, where you had a sect very much obsessed within Times and with dispensationalism, led by a man named David Koresh nineteen ninety three. He led his followers on this fifty one day standoff with federal and state officials over the illegal

weapons that this group, the Branch Davidians held. Eventually you have an exchange of gunfire between the agents and the Branch Davidians, and then on April nineteenth, the Feds decide to charge in and there's a fire and seventy six people die, including twenty five children.

this is a man named John Hagy. He is the pastor of a twenty two thousand member church in Texas called Cornerstone Church. And I think he has a global audience as large as one hundred million people. So back in the day, as a twenty eight year old young man, he took part in the Wallace Youth, which is an organization devoted to supporting the presidential candidacy of white supremacist Alabama Governor George Wallace in nineteen sixty eight. Yeah, let's just hear from Wallace real quick, in the.

with a hurricane. He really said that He's also called the Catholic Church a false cult and has falsely claimed that Muslims are commanded by the Qur'an to kill Christians in Jews. So he's a really moderate guy when he comes to his word choice in his rhetoric.

set aside land for the Palestinians to establish their own nation, that that leader is violating a divine commandment to quote not divide my land, and there will be terrible consequences. So I one dispensationalists pastor basically said that the United States has economic problems whenever it fails to support Israel.

Hage in twenty fourteen, said that a small outbreak of the Ebola virus in the United States was God's vengeance against President Barack Obama for supporting the establishment of Palestinian State. And of course, when that is a big attitude amongst a really significant block of voters, that makes the United States really have problems when it tries to mediate in that conflict.

Christian Zionist movement for starters. He formed an organization in two thousand and six called Christians United for Israel, which has like a reported ten million members in the United States. Not sure how accurate or real that is, but you know, he has donated through his organizations more than fifty eight million dollars to right wing extremists in Israel's specifically ones that have you know, sponsored settlers to move to the occupied West Bank in you know, violation of international law.

And he's you know He's pushed Congress to take a hard line on the Palestinian issue of Palestinian statehood. He has the ear of elected officials in Texas, so state level politicians like Greg Gabbett and Dan Patrick have been seen with him at campaign events, have featured him at campaign events. Hagey has tried to, you know, influence a number of issues and has had success. He was sought as someone whose endorsement mattered in the presidential elections of

George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was an early supporter of Donald Trump, and he influences other major pastors as well. And so it's it's hard to say that people like this don't matter, particularly whenever you know, they have been invited to speak during big events like the March for Israel in twenty twenty three, which drew tens of thousands of people to Washington, DC. And who was there, John hage And here's.

Jewish people control the world's finances. He talks about the Rothschild family, which has always been an obsession of anti Semites, you know, the secret puppet masters of the world, you know, who rob the typical, the average person of money to gain wealth. They cause wars to enrich themselves. He actually described Hitler based on nothing as a half breed Jew, and he said that Hitler was sent by God himself.

So he's Hitler was an emissary of God as a hunter to persecute Jews in Europe in the nineteen thirties and nineteen forties, specifically for the purpose of forcing them to leave Europe and settle in Palestine. And you know, he said that this was all part of the Divine plan. Nazism was part of the Divine plan.

working with someone like Haig. You know, obviously that relationship is cynical because you know, people like Hagy are able to help bring material resources to Israel and further solidify the relationship that Israel has with the state of Texas.

I are having this conversation. You have some of the wealthiest American supporters of Israel, like hyper conservatives, such as the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Addison, who have spent quite a bit of money flying Texas politicians like Governor Greg Abbott, the Agricultural Commissioner, said Miller, members of the state legislature to Israel to promote close business ties and to ensure that weapons manufactured in Texas and that Texas oil flows to that state.

who is he? What's his deal? He's a pastor. He's based in Midland, which is in West Texas, and over the last decade, Dunn has dumped tens of millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of far right politicians and political action committees that promote incendiary messages, including the one group that I previously mentioned was caught meeting with a

self admitted Hitler fan Nick went Is. Nevertheless, Dunn is named alongside Hagey on the annual list of Israel's Top fifty Christian Allies published by the Israel Allies Foundation, of which Done incidentally is the chairman of the It's like the Christian Advisory Board. So yeah, this really really powerful donor who has his thumb on the scales all across the state. He too, is an End Times prophecy believer,

and he's not just a believer. He preaches it at his own church in Midland where he's a pastor.

who oppose Israeli policies can protest. So, for instance, twenty seventeen, Texas passed has Spilled eighty nine a law that banned to stay from doing any business with any company or individual contractors who participate in the boycott of Israel that

many activists have participated in. And on March twenty seventh of this year, when you began to have a wave of protests across the nation and in Texas, and there were major protests at the UT Austin campus at the University of Texas at Dallas, which is in a suburb called Richardson another one at the University of North Texas

UT Arlington University of Texas at San Antonio. Abbott responded to these protests by issuing an executive order that defined a common slogan chanted by supporters of Palestinian statehood from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free, as antisemitic, and it required public colleges and universities to review their free speech policies and to punish what the state regards

as anti Semitic speech by faculty and students. And it targeted two specific groups, two student groups, the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice and Palestine, to be disciplined for violating these policies the State of Texas saying these words are forbidden.

All across the state, we've seen pro Palestinian protests or what you could call anti genocide protests or calls for divestment at these various universities, and arrests have happened at least three different universities.

focus on salvation. That Christianity is not about changing this world, because this world is doomed and the only person who's going to fix anything is Jesus himself. But nevertheless, these dispensationalists at the same time are very happy to be involved in politics that's not involved in social or form. I want you to you know, Schofield was living at a time of progressive movement when they were trying to end child labor, trying to make workplaces safer, and so on.

Today we're dealing with issues of wealth, inequality and so on. The dispensationalists will say believing that humans can fix those problems as satanic, But nevertheless, you should be involved in politics if it involves denying women sovereignty over their bodies, if it evolves banning people from gender affirming care and so on, but that politics is okay and so and we see this with this activism and trying to suppress a particular side of the Israel Palestine debate.

you know, best represented by Kenneth Copeland. He's the richest pastor in all of the United States, and his whole thing is, yeah, if you know, you give, you get, and so you give me your money, and you prove that you're you know, holy person, you will be rewarded. In turn, you will be healed, all of your things

will be solved. And then the other thing that it's overlapping with this End Times theology belief is what you know, we might just call the Seven Mountains dominionist trend or dominionism broadly speaking, which you may or may not be familiar with, but it really just breaks down to this idea that Christians should be at the top of all of the mountains of society and these are just you know, basically stand ins for the segments of society they think

are important, so education, media, politics, what have you. This is a really growing idea as a sort of meme in right wing Christianity in these sort of non denominational churches, which are the fastest growing and largest segment of churches I think we're talking about.

for dispensationalism, they are a hugely influential budding block. Thirty nine percent of Americans have told polsters that they believe we're living in the end times. And the simple fact is, if you think the world's going to end, you're not going to invest much time in making the world better, making it a more just place. You're not going to

try to clean the water, clean the air. Half of Evangelical Protestants in the United States believe that supporting Israel is absolutely essential to fulfilling Bible prophecy, and that group constitutes a third of all adult Texans, and they want to love Israel to death because they believe that if they push Israel to annex the West Bank, to take the most aggressive standards Palestinians, that will provoke the wrath of the Antichrist, which will lead to armageddon. And they're

willing to make that sacrifice. They're willing to fight for the Second Coming to happen down to the last Jewish person. And this is creating instability for the world and putting the United States in a very difficult place in the world stage, and the chain of events leading to our position currently visa the Middle East can be drawn back to this state.

doing the Lord's work. It is easy to treat your opponents as in human, less than human, to see them as other than someone who has equal rights and equal standing.