Big D
and the Texas Syndrome

We’ve repeatedly—and at length—gone on about what’s dangerously wrong with the present cockeyed version of America. We’ve also gone on at length about how a lot of what’s wrong can be traced back to, well, Texas (here, and here, and here, for a few examples).

No need to repeat those arguments. As Dear Leader is fond of reminding us, you’re either with us or agin’ us.

Behind the obvious parallels of braggadocio and over-consumption and hyper-machismo and so on (Texas : America = America : the World). there is a hidden, or at least forgotten, part of the Texas experience that hasn’t yet translated up to the national (and international) level.

In the vernacular, it’s called "the chickens coming home to roost." In words of more than two syllables (bye-bye, Bush), it goes like this.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, when the Middle Easterners finally took control of the only thing of value they had, Texas rode the price of oil up-up-up. For those who weren’t in Texas when it happened, it’s hard to imagine the profligate splendor of that time. Outward and visible signs remain in the gaudy skyline of Dallas. (The Houston skyline, strangely and surprisingly more tasteful, is another story.)

Big D was riding the petroleum tsunami, but there was another, bigger "D" in Texas that nobody was paying attention to: Denial.

Talk was common in those heady days of $100-a-barrel oil. Not if, but when. Everybody knew it was just a matter of time, and if oil at $50 had produced a Texas nirvana, why, the cowboy mentality boggled at trying to imagine what might result from twice that price.

Of course what happened was just the opposite. For various reasons, instead of doubling, the price dropped in the mid 80s very fast to a mere $6.

Because of the other big "D", Denial," nobody was ready for such a disaster. It was in those days of collapse that the term "see-through skyscraper" was coined for all the very highrise buildings around the state now emptied of high-rolling tenants.

Who was hurt? Mostly it was the middle and small guys who were wiped out. There was, to be sure, damage to the big guys (lots of banks changed hands and names) but you’ll notice that Exxon etc. we still have with us.

The hidden, forgotten damage was to the landowners all over Texas who years and decades ago had struck what seemed like sweetheart deals with Exxon et al. Lots of these ranchers lived big off their percentage of every barrel of oil pumped from beneath their soil. But lots more tried to live a lot bigger, using the forecast value of the oil leases to leverage themselves up-up-up the financial ladder.

When the price of crude dropped tenfold, they had nothing—actually, less than nothing—left.

Result: massive, widespread bankruptcy, of which the once-well-known savings-and-loan scandal—how quickly we forget!—was only a small part.

Billions of expected future dollars vanished almost overnight. The scavengers came from the East Coast, from Europe, from Asia, and found a harvest of real-estate roadkill spread across the state.

All of which is no plea for sympathy. (Far from it. The greedy deserve what they get.)

My point is: The parallel of America Now to Texas Then is frighteningly precise. Not just because of the precarious petroleum situation—though that is dangerous enough, but because of a whole range of national denials:

How long can we continue to subsidize the country on a mountain of foreign indebtedness? Who knows? Maybe if we don’t think about it, the problem will go away. How long can we continue to spend $500 billion a year on the military to make the world safe for what George Bush thinks of as "freedom"? No problem, as long as he keeps telling us we’re winning the "war on terrorism" and we keep believing him. How long can we continue to ignore the already enormous and widening gap between the richest 1% and the poorest 40%? Not to worry. Trickle-down cures all, yes? How long can we keep ignoring the condition of the schools, the massively uninsured poor, the burgeoning prison population, the continuing rape of the environment?

And so on.

Texas denial in the 1980s was massive. But compared to American denial now, it was minuscule.

And how can our vaunted leaders persist in such denial?

It’s easy if you think carefully about what happened when collapse came in Texas.

The Bushes and their country-club buddies, well-connected politically and well-invested internationally, came through the disaster in BETTER SHAPE THAN EVER. Bush senior, remember, made it to the White House in 1988. And here we are now in Baby Bush’s second term.

Where’s the hurt? For those people, it was nowhere.

Their experience is that "painful" adjustments may occur, but they’ll come out on top. The only people hurt will be the suckers who believed their free-market, free-environment, what-me-worry speeches in the first place.

They—the ones at the top of the financial food chain—are not the ones in denial. They KNOW what may happen but have, they believe, no reason to worry. So what if the sea level rises 30 feet. It’ll just make their Aspen property more valuable.

The only ones now in total denial in America are the same ones who were in denial in Texas 20 years ago: the one who can LEAST afford denial but who are LEAST willing to face reality. You want an outward and very visible sign of present American denial? Check out the automotive dinosaurs called "SUV’s" clogging the freeways.

* * *

"The China syndrome" refers to the old idea that if a nuclear power plant goes out of control it could burn its way straight through the earth all the way to China. I’d suggest that "the Texas syndrome" in which America now finds itself may well prove to be similarly—and ironically—apocalyptic, with massive Yankee debt soon to leave a smoldering hulk of an economy here, and a damaged but extremely wealthy, functioning economy on the other side of the planet.

If you drive across West Texas today, everything looks fine. The big change that happened 20 years ago was mostly invisible: a change of ownership. No doubt when you drive through America 20 years from now, everything will look fine. The question is: who will own what? The smaller but fascinating question is: How will that America look back on the present leaders in Washington, as the patriotic scourge of terrorism, or as the heedless parasites that wrote fini to American democracy?