Three-Point Shots, Vol. 1, No. 10: Lege Session Week 17

Greg Abbott mortifies us again, some thoughts on Bryan Slaton and Jolanda Jones, and some West Texas sounds to calm you down and help you chill.

Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, an occasional series briefly surveying three interrelated stories of passing importance. Three-Point Shots is a part of my Life Its Ownself Substack page. If you enjoy reading it, please 1) hit the Like button, 2) subscribe to the Life Its Ownself, and 3) share it with others in the link below. Also, comments welcome and encouraged.

Tuesday, May 2, 2023

         We are now in the last month of the Regular Session of the 88^th Texas Legislature. Members of both chambers are arriving bright and early for committee hearings, then participating in floor debate from 10:00 until 6:00 or 7:00 p.m., then back to the committee hearings to wade through still more bills.

         Underneath the superficial insanity, tempers are fraying and members and staffers are struggling to keep their cool. “No Whining” buttons are making their biennial reappearance like swallows at Capistrano. So take a five-minute break and listen to a thunderstorm rolling in across the high desert!

1.    Greg Abbott’s Despicable Dog Whistle

Last Friday night, in a tragic and violent episode that is becoming the norm, not the exception, in Texas, five people were killed in Cleveland, Texas, northeast of Houston. The massacre was triggered after the victims asked their neighbor to quit firing his gun in the early morning hours, since their children were trying to sleep. Wilson Garcia, who’d asked the gunman to stop, recounts what happened next for the Associated Press:

And then, 10 to 20 minutes after Garcia had walked back from Oropeza’s house, the man started running toward him, and reloading.

“I told my wife, ‘Get inside. This man has loaded his weapon,’” Garcia said. “My wife told me to go inside because ‘he won’t fire at me, I’m a woman.’”

The gunman walked up to the home and began firing. Garcia’s wife, Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25, was at the front door, and the first to die.

           A cold-blooded murder like this offends the morals and sensibilities of the community. And so it should. A governor’s job at such a time is to honor the victims, to offer comfort and solace on behalf of a grieving state, and to pledge law enforcement resources to bring the killer or killers to justice.

           But the last thing Greg Abbott wanted was citizens jumping his shit about another mass killing, especially right after his fellow Republicans had insulted the Uvalde Massacre victims by making them wait 13 hours to testify in a hearing just the week before. Kimberly Mata-Rubio, one of the Uvalde parents, spoke for all of them when she finally testified:

         “I arrived here today at 8:00 a.m., and as we waited more than 13 hours I’m reminded of May 24, 2022, when we waited hours to be told our daughter would never come home. I expressed confusion then, and I’m perplexed now.

         Did you think we would go home?”

(I wish I knew how to embed the Twitter video of her remarks. It’s heartbreaking. Please watch.)

           So Abbott – whose brand is increasingly neither Christain nor compassionate, but cruelty as public policy – hit upon a new “frame” for talking about the tragedy: blame it on the victims (wink, wink).

         After near-universal revulsion at his comments, Abbott “expressed regret” on Monday morning. Not for what he said, mind you, but for the fact he may have been in error about at least one of the victims, who was legally in the USA. In an appalling repeat of his cowardly blame game from last summer, Abbott blamed his slur on unnamed “federal officials” [who] provided mistaken information.

         To be clear: he did not regret that he cheapened the deaths of five residents of the state; he only regretted that he was misinformed about one of them.

         Of course he’d rather talk about illegal immigrants than the pandemic of gun violence that grips Texas. Politically, it’s better for him to remind us that the gunman didn’t kill a nine-year old child, or his young mother; he killed illegal immigrants. “Those” people are not entitled to the same human sympathy or protection of the state’s laws as the rest of us.

         And every racist, nativist, xenophobic dog in America heard that whistle. It may not be enough to make him a serious presidential contender – frankly, I don’t think anything is – but Abbott is committed to the dark path he set out on a few years ago.

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2.    What to Make of Reps. Bryan Slaton and Jolanda Jones?

(Representatives Bryan Slaton and Jolanda Jones)

         A few weeks ago, I mentioned Rep. Bryan Slaton (R.-Royse City), a reactionary back-bencher whose new claim to fame was that he seemed to have plied an underage intern with alcohol and then had sex with her, as laid out in a complaint given to the House General Investigating Committee.

         At about the same time, the entire full-time staff of Rep, Jolanda Jones (D-Houston) resigned, complaining in a letter that she had created “an abusive and hostile work environment” that included an inappropriate relationship between her son, who serves as an unpaid factotum in the office, and a 26-year old intern. The letter became public and led to a Texas Monthly interview in which the former staffers elaborated on their problems with their boss. It also was referred to the General Investigating Committee.

         The General Investigating Committee issued four subpoenas on April 14, although it did not disclose the targets or the subject matter of those subpoenas. Yesterday, the Committee announced it would hold a “due process hearing” on Thursday about one of the cases.

         Without knowing much of the specifics of the two investigations, let me make two general comments about the culture of the Texas Legislature:

1.    The public does not know even 1% of the sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior going on in the Legislature.

2.    The public does not know even 1% of the inappropriate workplace behavior – abusive or rude treatment of staff, personal errands, late night phone calls, inappropriate requests – going on in the Texas Legislature.

         And what if they did know? A few years ago, Olivia Messer of the Daily Beast wrote a scathing exposé of the rampant culture of sexual predation in the Texas Legislature. But nothing happened. The monster #MeToo wave washed over the Capitol and left it untouched.

         Part of the problem is that legislators are reluctant to expel a fellow legislator (unlike their counterparts in Tennessee or Montana). And there’s a logic to it: no matter how pathetic a hound dog Bryan Slaton is, or how extreme a taskmaster Jolanda Jones is, they were still elected by their constituents. But that does not mean that the Texas House and Senate have no tools at their disposal to discipline a member whose behavior does not meet the minimum standards of what Texans should be able to expect.

         We the public may learn more about the specific circumstances of these two situations through the committee’s investigations, although that is unlikely: the Slaton complaint and the Jones letter and news story tell us as much as we’re likely to learn. Which does not mean there isn’t some fascinating gossip floating around the Capitol, and that the insiders don’t already know more about these events than we’re ever likely to learn.

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3.    ASMR: Your Moment of Zen, Trans-Pecos style

         ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response, and it’s apparently a thing. It is the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by both physical (light and pleasurable tingles, sparkles, fuzziness, or waves of relaxation in the head, neck, spine, and throughout the rest of the body) and psychological (deep and soothing feelings of relaxation, calmness, comfort, peacefulness, restfulness, or sleepiness) sensations. It can be triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and thus a whole ASMR industry has evolved, with thousands of audio and video recordings to stimulate that response.

         There is nothing like being in the Trans-Pecos to get me into ASMR state, and so I thought I’d share a little auditory file with you. Read the words below and then play the audio:

         The afternoon is cloudy and cool, with a steady breeze blowing. Off to the north, the skies over the mountains darken, throwing shadows on the sun-kissed mountaintops. As the clouds draw closer, you hear the occasional rumble of far-off thunder. The breeze strengthens, setting the nearby fir tree to singing. The birds coo and chirp and squawk, the background music of the day. As the wind strengthens and the thunder draws closer, they settle in on tree branches. Still, peacefulness fills the air and you know you are in the right place and time to experience this.