the texas tilt: tilting at windmills

With the rise of Texas power outages during the cold snap of February 2021, a new Don Quixote has arisen. Many of them, actually. Their new, imagined enemy? Windmills. Windmills, Texas GOP governor Greg Abbot and his many deviant political and media allies claim, are the culprits; the cause of the blackouts. It is the non-existent “Green New Deal” that is to blame for the present disaster!
 
To say that such a fantastical claim is false is an understatement. It is an out-and-out lie. Even if it were true, the electorate, I guess, would not be expected to ask, “Hasn’t the GOP controlled Texas state government at all levels—governorship and legislature—for the past, like, million years? If windmills are the problem, didn’t GOP politicians put them there? So, aren’t the blackouts the fault of GOP mismanagement?”
 
But, though deviants, these liars are cleaver enough to know their electorate well. They know that the electorate will not ask such questions. Nor will the people acknowledge the truth: the blackouts are their own damn fault. It is they, the people, that put GOP leaders in power. It is the GOP leadership that as deregulated and privatized Texas energy companies. It is that deregulation and privatization that is at the root of Texas’ present power outages.
 
You see, the electorate doesn’t believe anything it doesn’t want to believe. And their politicians know this. So, their politicians, like the magicians, sorcerers that they are, read the tea leaves of the electorate’s perverted mind and magically channel the electorate’s discerned madness right back at them.
 
And what will come next. Why, the people will take the bait. They will tilt at windmills till Texas and hell freeze over.
 
It is no more than the people deserve. The capitalists to whom the GOP gave full control over Texas’ power grid, told the people decades ago that it was not a trustworthy social partner. Business, the great guru/ sorcerer, Milton R. Friedman, openly and shameless declared, had no object other than profit. Business only had a responsibility to its shareholders. It had no social responsibility. The public be damned. And so, what did the electorate do? It elected business-friendly GOP leaders to hand over their survival in heat and cold to private power companies that had nothing but the interests and profits of their shareholders in mind. Producing energy for the people was a distant second.
 
I am not blaming the victim. The electorate is no victim. It is the culprit. The electorate was told straight out, as clear as clear can be, what to expect. Energy companies would sell the people out for profit. But the people didn’t want to hear it. So, they created fantastical alternative universes. Their political leaders channeled the madness right back at them. Now, as they face the danger of freezing to death, the people will follow the false prophesies of their GOP magicians and tilt madly at windmills.
 
The Hebrew prophet, Micah, was faced with the same political and societal reality in his day. He was confronted by a people who would only hear what they wanted to hear. These psychotic masses were served by indecent, debased, and shameless perverts who channeled back at them the madness they preferred above truth and reality.
 
“If a liar and deceiver comes and says,
   ‘I will prophesy for you plenty of wine and beer,’
      that would be just the prophet for this people.”[1]
 
I have said it before. I will say it again. I truly fear that America has crossed the Rubicon. There is not enough balm in Gilead or the world over to heal America of the madness it so readily accepts and in which it so arrogantly glories and gloats. It is willfully indecent. Psychotic. Sadly, I highly suspect “that the day of grace [is] past.”[2]
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!


[1] Micah 2.11
[2] Mormon 2.15