Mess With Texas
Kicker of asses.
After the election I promised myself I’d avoid writing about
politics at least until 2014 – I know a lot of you don’t find this shit as
interesting as I do, and I already beat the political horse pretty well to
death in the latter half of 2012. But there’s really no way I can write
something that isn’t at least a
little political after what happened in Texas last night, because never in my
life have I had so much admiration and respect for a woman who in all
likelihood was wearing an adult diaper.
Quick recap: Texas governor Rick Perry is arguably one of
the worst people on Earth, and recently he convened a special session of the
Texas legislature so the GOP could railroad through a bunch of radical
legislation too crazy to be passed during the regular session, when it would’ve
been necessary to gain support from Democrats to pass anything.
One of the GOP’s big aims for the special session was to
pass an abortion bill that would’ve closed all but five of Texas’s abortion
clinics, which would deprive hundreds of thousands of women in rural Texas of
the access to a safe abortion that they’re guaranteed under federal law.
Using a bunch of parliamentary jujitsu, the minority
Democrats were able to delay the vote until the last few hours of the special
session, at which point Texas state senator Wendy Davis attempted to filibuster
for the remaining 13 hours in hopes of delaying the vote until after the
special session ended at midnight.
When you filibuster in Texas, you have to stand the entire
time without so much as leaning on your desk, you must speak continuously about
a subject germane to the bill being debated on the floor, and you’re not
allowed to leave the floor for any reason whatsoever, up to and including going
to the bathroom. Basically, if one person wants to hold up the legislative
process in Texas, they’re welcome to do it for as long as they can stand, talk,
and not pee. (Or pee where they’re standing. Politics is gross.)
So for twelve hours Senator Davis – once a poor single
mother who went on to attend Harvard Law School – stood and talked continuously
about why the bill was a bad idea, while every Republican in the room carefully
scrutinized her every word and action for a slipup or violation that would
allow them to end her filibuster and pass their shitty law.
I immediately take back everything I said last week about
the pressures of being a wedding officiant – Wendy Davis just did the public
speaking equivalent of an Ironman Triathlon while being nitpicked by a room
full of fat, ugly, old white men who at one point tried to end her filibuster
because she put on a back brace.
With close to an hour remaining before the end of the
session, the Republican senators ended Davis’s filibuster on a technicality,
but Democrats continued to run the clock with more parliamentary delaying maneuvers.
Then, when the Republicans tried to call for a vote in the last ten minutes,
the hundreds of assembled spectators in the gallery and the thousands of
supporters outside resorted to Autzen Stadium tactics and caused as much ruckus as
they could to prevent the vote until the legislative session ended at midnight.
That video is one of the most exciting things I’ve seen
in a long time. As you may remember from my ill-fated trip to a town hall
meeting, I think that our country’s biggest problem is that the people making
laws are out of touch with the people they’re representing.
So to see an angry mob of ordinary Texans show up and simply
yell so loud that the Republicans were unable to screw them over is almost as
satisfying as that Saturday Night Live
alternate ending for It’s A Wonderful
Life where everybody goes and beats the shit out of Mr. Potter. This bill
was so noxious that the people of Texas actively opposed it when their elected
representatives no longer could. I’ve always thought it was amusing that Texas’
most conservative fuckwads go to work in the state’s most liberal city – I
never dreamed it could be this beneficial.
I don’t think that this is how our government should work. I
don’t think that democracy should come down to endurance contests, quibbling
over whether a back brace is the same as leaning on a desk, and angry mobs disrupting
legislative proceedings. The amount of time a politician can stand up and talk
doesn’t have any bearing on whether his or her ideas are worth listening to,
and nobody voted for that mob.
But I also don’t think that there’s any room for restrictive
voter ID laws and excessive redistricting in a democracy, and the Republicans have
been making use of those tactics for close to a decade now. Trying to take the
moral high ground hasn’t gotten us anywhere. If the GOP can kill a gun control
bill that 92% of the country approves of, it’s only fair play for a bunch of
angry liberals in Texas to make too much of a ruckus for the Republicans to do
their job.
What’s more, at least the Democrats crowdsourced their dirty
tricks in Austin last night. If capitalizing on public discontent is what it
takes to flush radicals out of office, so be it. The sooner that public
sentiment destroys the Republican Party, the sooner it can be used to destroy
the Democratic Party and then hopefully party politics as a whole.
The Republicans are still in control in Texas, and Prick Perry has already called another special session to get his way.
It’s also pretty likely that Wendy Davis will be redistricted out of a job come
the next election – without the Voting Rights Act the Texas GOP will be quick to exact revenge.
Of course, this won’t be a problem if she just runs for
governor instead.
Truman Capps can’t think of anything he’d want to
do nonstop for twelve hours.