I Already Can't Stand Rick Perry
And: Is Texas Americaland?

I really knew almost nothing about Rick Perry until a few weeks ago and I already can't stand him. You might think that's a hasty judgment, but the thing is, it turns out that I already know the guy. The macho strutting and posturing, the hatred and disdain for those who disagree with him, the blatant goddamn stupidity...unless I (and many others) are way wrong, it's all there.

The thing I don't understand about these assholes is all this macho bullshit. I grew up on a farm in the Missouri Ozarks...which, when we stopped growing crops and started raising more beef cattle, became legally a ranch. We owned and rode horses. I've always owned and shot firearms. I've got as much connection to all that stuff as Perry. And, to be honest, there was more than a hint of the hillbilly about our family. We were pretty damned country when I was a kid. We were not what you'd call progressive, nor sophisticated. "Faulkneresque" might describe us better. But you know what there wasn't any of? Macho bullshit. Oh, there was bullshit; just not that kind of drag-show check-out-my-uber-masculinity nonsense. We worked hard, we hunted, we rode around on tractors and in pickups, we even wore cowboy hats in a straight-up, keep-the-sun-off'n-yer-head, non-ironic way. (More often: feed caps. There was some inclination to save the cowboy hats and boots for trips to the annual horse show over in the county seat.) But there was no time, energy nor inclination for nor towards that macho crap.

We did not posture nor strut around so that people could check out how tough and manly and shit we were. Such a person would have been derided mercilessly back home, back in the day. I guess things are different in Texas...I guess they're really, really different. Back home, back in the day, a guy like Perry'd be getting his clock cleaned with some regularity, just on general principles. In Texas, apparently, his performance art or whatever it is apparently plays pretty well. This helps to solidify my hunch that Texas is like Americaland or something...an amusement-park version of the real thing...