I’ve never been that far to the south but lately I’ve been reading and watching those novels and movies.
The prevalent idea is: in this world (Texas?) you are alone, nobody gives a cr*p about you, do not trust anyone because they’ll take advantage of you, ridicule and mock you. The world (or maybe only Texas?) is an inhospitable, inhuman, Darwinist place.
I have lived in Texas my whole life. My knee jerk reaction is no, absolutely not.
First off, what part of Texas?Texas is a huge state with several metro areas, smaller cities, and lots of rural areas. Eas h has their own quirks.
There are parts of Texas that are so racist that POCs shouldn’t drive there at night. There are parts that are as progressive as any other metro area in America (at least within the limitations of the state government). There are parts that are essentially artist communes. Texas is huge and diverse. No one viewpoint can capture it all.
Texas is huge, and just like any other place, your experience will vary depending on where you are. Most movies use the rural backdrop as their setting. But there are huge and dense cities as well, where most people live.
So which parts of Texas are actually like Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I want to be sure to avoid those.
Not at all. Our state government sucks ass tho.
I lived in Louisiana for a while, and I met a bunch of people from Texas.
Texas and the south in general, while having a lot of problems, do still have lots of beautiful, thoughtful, and amazing people there who didn’t ask to be born into such a shithole, and they do what they can to make it better.
A lot of them are artists, I’ve known several musicians from Texas who are good people and while they may be centrist they’re “leftist” by Texan standards. They are pot smoking hippies in most Texans eyes.
In Louisiana in particular, there was an unexpected but large group of Linux enthusiasts, even at the university level. I remember Whitebox Linux being a complete re-implementation of Redhat that one of the schools endorsed.
My local coffee shop was run by a Linux enthusiast who programmed his own till. He lived above the shop and ran it for years. He was kind and giving and once made my friend and I free coffee when we came in wild-eyed from a night of tripping absolute balls. He was also a pot smoking hippie, but really a pot smoking hippie, not just viewed as one.
These books and films are about the dregs of the dregs. You only encounter the worst if you go looking for the worst. In the south especially, most “shady shakedowns” are pretty fucking obvious and telegraphed if you have half a fucking brain, so it’s fairly easy to avoid most situations of that nature. You’re not exactly working with the most clever people when dealing with the “criminal element” of the south, which can limit their capacity for deceitfulness.
Lone Star is a review.
Theres 30 million people in Texas. I’ve barely been, but it pretty much conformed to my expectations as someone who has been to other parts of the southern US, and places with Spanish speaking populations.
I love Texans but when I worked telephones when I was younger, only the most awful people were exactly the kinds of Texans you’re describing. Maybe it was because we were strangers but there is a part of me that’s still terrified, especially of Dallas people, because of it.
