All Texans are American, but not all Americans are Texan.

Ignoring the shout from the peanut gallery ("And thank God for that!"), I will proceed.

For some time, most Americans and even a few Texans have been aware that the condition of "Texanness" is problematic. Texans generally see no reason whatever to venture outside the borders of Texas (again, we hear the voice from the peanut gallery), believing that the state is God’s own country.

When Texans do decide to travel, people everywhere have noticed there is something about them (speech? attire? attitude? affluence-on-parade?) that is somewhat irritating. Traveling Texans usually don’t notice such reactions. If they do notice, they interpret them as quaint, entertaining native customs.

For as long as we’ve had Texas in the world, all of this has been a given and everybody sort of got used to it.

Then came the 43rd president of the United States, who wore his Texanness on his sleeve, and it all became too much, both for people outside of Texas and for at least one person inside the state who could be described as a thinking Texan.

Given the scale and scope of global problems generally, I have spent most of my adult life 1) as a resident of Texas and 2) trying to think and live less as a citizen of that principality and more as a citizen of the world. Ephemerae such as "nationality" seemed to belong pretty far down on the list of things to worry about.

Then another of that endless series of surprises which comprise "life" brought me up short. Like this:

Not long ago, circumstances were such that it was time to sell the house and move.

Those circumstances happened to coincide with a period when I was, with considerable delight, making my way through a series of novels, all of which are set in a certain beautiful state just to the west of Texas.

Pondering the problems of selling, moving, and buying, I one night sat bolt upright in bed with the (for a Texan) astonishing—and liberating— thought: "Why not move to New Mexico!!!"

Non-Texans may already be guffawing at the fact that I would find this idea astonishing, and if you are, I understand.

I assure you that any Texans who have read this far are not guffawing. They are, most of them, in shock at the mere suggestion of Leaving.

Frankly, so was I at first. How could I, a lifelong Texan, produce such a heretical thought?

But I had produced it, so I pondered further. The more I pondered, the better I felt: What a glorious thing life might be without this burden of permanently nested Texanness!

I played out fantasies of waking up EVERY MORNING in a place that WASN’T TEXAS and was forced to see clearly how much my (supposedly cosmopolitan, global-citizen) life was shaped by 1) having been born in Texas, and 2) keeping a Texas address as my primary residence.

Over the years I’ve written my share (actually, I often choose to think, MORE than my share) of scathing satire about Texanness. But this new thought of Leaving opened undreamt of vistas of hope. What insights, impossible of access in Texas, might I not gain by, say, waking up every morning in Santa Fe?

Obviously, my tongue is in cheek here, Reader, but I must remind you, it is only partly in cheek. I’m nailing myself and my own heritage and burden of provinciality. If you bear with me, I’m about to nail yours as well.

For, you see, the problem of living in a place of such extremes as Texas is more complex than those who don’t live here might think. Easiest to deal with are the obvious truths and idiocies of the Texas stereotype. Once you start going below that simple if objectionable surface, you get into real trouble, which consists mainly of a great deal of wrong, sometimes dangerous, thinking and acting-out on the part of Texans.

Believe me, "Don’t Mess with Texas" bumper stickers are the least it.

The result, for anyone making some effort to think his way through life, is a quite heavy perceived burden. This burden has two parts. One is the sincere desire to protect Texas from itself and its worst extremes. The other is the equally sincere desire to protect the rest of vthe world from—and warn it about—these same extremes.

To do less is at the least to acquiesce in—and thereby passively approve of—widespread stupidity. But doing less can in some cases also mean closing one’s eyes to misbehavior far more serious than mere stupidity. I’m thinking, for one example, of the continuing, frequent state-approved murders carried out at the penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas.

Having for some days dallied with the fantasies of Leaving, I finally wound up Not Leaving, which is to say, Staying. Such is the lethargy and momentum of decades of habit (though limited finances did also play a role). With the decision to Not Leave came guilt-filled comparisons to those thinking Germans who in the 1930s chose to not leave and justified their staying as "inner emigration."

That is, I came to see myself as one who was "in Texas" but was not "of Texas," if you get my rather shaky point.

Blessed (or cursed) with compulsively analogical thinking patterns, I also, during the period of fantasies of Leaving, could not avoid toying with my OTHER national allegiance (and here, Reader, is where you get yours).

Yes, I allowed myself the luxury of fantasies about selling the house and moving not just beyond the borders of Texas but beyond the very borders of the United States.

And you know what? That thought was even more liberating than the thought of leaving Texas.

If the burden of Texanness is great, I realized, it is as nothing compared to the burden of Americanness in this period of Yankee hegemony .

Depart, set up shop in Cuernavaca or Rio or Auckland even, and leave Imperial America to heaven.

Tempting, yes?

But you non-Texan Americans can, for various reasons, no more do that (most of you) than I could pick up my meager belongings and hie me to New Mexico.

What it came down to was a kind of nationalistic trap. Being a Texan these days is not so much a matter of double-allegiance. It’s more a matter of double-indemnity, or worse yet, in long-range moral terms, double indemnification.

Here, then, I stay.