Three-Point Shots, Vol. 3, No. 7: June 6, 2025
We used to dream great dreams in our land. We thought we could make life better for everyone, and actively worked to do that. When did we become so petty?
Welcome to another edition of Three-Point Shots, 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. Comments are welcome and encouraged.
But first, your moment of Zen … the setting sun hides behind clouds on its way to the horizon, Marathon, Texas, May 29, 2025.
Friday, June 6, 2025
Quote of the Day:
"I worked around cattle all my life and I guess I learned all there is to know about it, and I think I can sum it all up in one thing: You can't drink coffee on a running horse."
- Samuel Brenner, Lubbock, Texas
1. Requiem for a DREAMer
In 2001, Texas became the first state in the nation to offer in-state tuition to undocumented children who, brought to the United State through no agency of their own, completed their high school education in Texas and pledged to become citizens. At the time, the state’s leadership, including Governor Rick Perry, actively supported the idea. Eventually, 24 states and the District of Columbia enacted similar programs.
Texas was a different, more idealistic place then. It was in the middle of a tech boom that was bringing companies and jobs to the state, and forward-thinking Texans realized that a well-trained workforce that utilized all the state’s natural human talent was vital for its future.
I personally know some DREAMers, as they are called. Most of them earned their degrees, became American citizens, and are productive members of society.
Ah, the good old days. Texas voters now are a meaner, cruder, stingier lot, which is why we have grinches like Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick and Ken Paxton sitting atop the totem pole. And why, when the racist disgraces running the federal government decided to sue the state for treating DREAMers like an asset, not a liability, Texas surrendered without a shot.
The handwriting was already on the wall, though. Bills to end the DREAM Act program gained traction in both the Texas House and Senate during the recently-completed legislative session. As an example of the perfidy so prevalent in our public policy these days, SB 1798, the Senate version of the DREAM Act repeal, not only would deny DREAMers access to in-state tuition but, according to the Texas Tribune,
require students to cover the difference between in- and out-of-state tuition should their school determine they had been misclassified. It would have allowed universities to withhold their diploma if they didn’t pay the difference within 30 days of being notified and if the diploma had not already been granted.
Why kick them when you can beat them with a baseball bat?
And, as we all know if we give it a thought, the DREAM Act is a smart investment, even while the DREAMers are getting their education. According to the Texas Higher Education Board, DREAMers pay $58.3 million in tuition and fees to receive discounts worth about $11 million. At the end of the process, they are U.S. citizens with college degrees eager to contribute to the Texas economy. This used to be called “progress.”
Now, unfortunately, getting a break on tuition is the least of their worries. They are more at risk of entering a campus building and being swarmed by masked ICE agents, who bind and gag them and rendition them to a prison in South Sudan.
An afterthought and a warning: the author of the odious Senate bill is Mayes Middleton, who has been in the Legislature since 2018, bringing a uniquely mean-spirited and intransigent style to every issue. He made his money the old-fashioned way – he inherited it. He has announced that he is running for Attorney General next year to replace the ambitious Ken Paxton, who hopes to topple US Senator John Cornyn from the seat he has held since 2002. We have, alas, not seen the last of Mayes Middleton.
2. Measles, Because, Of Course We’re Doing Nothing
Texas, the second largest economy in the U.S. and the eighth largest in the world, is also the center of the worst measles outbreak in the U.S. since measles was declared “eliminated” in 2000. As of this morning, there are 742 confirmed cases in Texas, part of the 1,168 confirmed cases across the country. Two infected children have died and 94 patients have been hospitalized.
I link these two factoids – Texas’s economic power and a life-stealing plague – because they are emblematic of the state’s public policy schizophrenia. We’re going to do everything we can for the oil and gas companies, and cryptocurrency speculators, and billion-dollar AI data centers, but fuck you if you contract measles.
Texas Monthly has an interview this month with Katherine Wells, the public health director for the city and county of Lubbock. Lubbock is the closest major city to Gaines County on the Texas-New Mexico border, which has 411 confirmed cases and a large Mennonite population. Gaines County is Ground Zero for this national outbreak. Wells is working full-time to contain the outbreak and keep it away from big population centers.
The disheartening thing about this outbreak is the ease with which it could have been prevented. Gaines County has a MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccination rate of about 82%, compared to a national average of 93%. The best weapon against any infectious disease, health experts agree, is “herd immunity” – a critical mass of the population who have received a vaccine against the disease. It does not eliminate the occasional case here and there, but prevents the disease from spreading like wildfire, as it has in West Texas.
Unfortunately, public support for widespread vaccinations, once very high, is declining around the country, and political leaders are encouraging it. The Texas Legislature just passed a bill that will make it easier for parents to opt their chidren out of vaccine requirements.
And vaccine skepticism has gotten a big boost from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., (who, it should be noted, has no training in medicine, immunology or epidemiology) and who has said, “There’s no vaccine that’s safe and effective.”
But here’s the problem: measles doesn’t knock on doors in Gaines County and ask, “Are y’all Mennonites?” before putting a young child on a respirator for three days to fight off infection. When parents who have “done their own research” send their contagious kids off to school, other kids catch the disease as well, and may suffer even more adverse effects.
This is why we cannot have nice things any more.
3. D-Day: Ganas No More
Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the largest and most successful military operation in history. About 160,000 Allied troops (from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, but with Australian, Belgian, Czech, Dutch, French, Greek, New Zealand, Norwegian, Rhodesian and Polish naval, air or ground support) disembarked from about 6,000 ships and landing craft manned by over 95,000 naval personnel. Most faced immediate and deadly withering fire from German emplacements on the beaches. Another 18,000 airborne troops also parachuted inland from 11,000 aircraft and gliders to support the troops on the beaches.
The Allies suffered 10,500 casualties (killed, wounded, missing, prisoners) that day, but had established beachheads in Normandy by nightfall.
I recite these facts to ask a question: is the Free World capable of pulling off another D-Day? Could we summon the political, economic and moral will to undertake such sacrifice? Most importantly, could the United States take the lead again? Do we have the ganas we’d need to pull it off?
I am pessimistic. The U.S. has become an unserious nation; we have become an unserious people. It did not start with Donald Trump, but it may very well end with hum. We have grown tired of the responsibilities of world leadership, allowing a xenophobic, isolationist minority to draw us inward. The postwar world order, which the United States did so much to create and enforce for 80 years, now seems a burden and not a blessing. The principles on which that order was founded – respect for sovereign borders, the rule of law, self-determination, human rights, free elections – now seem almost anachronistic as a xenophobic, totalitarian wave sweeps much of the first world.
If there is a better example than this country’s immoral and imprudent abandonment of Ukraine, I cannot think of one. From the point of view of America’s history and traditions, there is no argument whatsoever for abandoning Ukraine to fight Russia alone. But our President, Vice President, Secretary of State and congressional leadership have all shamed themselves by kowtowing to Russia.
Maybe on this D-Day, we can reflect on the country this once was and summon up the ganas, the fighting spirit to insist our country take a leadership role in the world again. Otherwise we can sit and watch the kakistocrats and kelptocrats pick our national carcass clean, and then blame immigrants and that one trans athlete in Idaho for the loss of the American Dream.
A great closing line, I must say.
Thanks for sharing! Great photo, too!