Clunker

This is a story that begins at the DMV and ends with my getting all nostalgic. (There is also no mention of Mormonism for all of you who are getting bored or irritated with the topic.)

Last week, the day before my twenty-ninth birthday, I formally became a Texan. Previously I had voted, purchased a house, and registered my car here, but I defiantly held on to my Washington state driver's license. Sadly, it was due to expire on my birthday, so with an entire day to spare I trudged my way over to the DMV in order to fully subscribe myself to the Lone Star State. It was an altogether unpleasant excursion. In addition to confronting the acidulousness incident to aligning oneself with the union's most insecure state, I couldn't find one of the necessary documents in the glove compartment, which necessitated a rather stupid adventure around Houston.

I drive a 1988 Toyota Camry. It was a gift, of sorts, from my grandparents. They had both gotten too old to drive safely, and as a poor undergraduate I was more than grateful to have even an old grandma car to drive. Since I got the car my grandfather has died and my grandmother has been stricken with Alzheimer's, but their car is alive and healthy—or, at least, as healthy as a 23-year-old car has any business being.

A few emotions keep me driving that car: pragmatism (read: cheapness), complacency, even stubbornness. But I also feel a sense of nostalgia for the old Camry. My grandparents were generous, loving people—my grandfather in particular was a seriously classy dude—and visiting them over summers is a fond childhood memory.

So when I got the car, I didn't take much out of it. The glove box was full of old receipts, insurance cards, and maps, but I left them in place. Occasionally, as I rummage around the car looking for something, I'll happen upon something—directions to the store?—written in my grandfather's nearly illegible scrawl. I appreciate the occasional opportunity to remember him through something done by his hand. It's almost stupid, really—if I want to keep them, I should take these mementos and put them somewhere safer and more permanent than my car. But there really is nowhere else for them to go.

Unfortunately, after the debacle with the DMV I decided that, memories or no, the time had come to clean out the glove compartment. Last night Amanda and I went through the pile of stuff, deciding what to keep. Initially I was determined to keep whatever I could, or at least anything with their handwriting on it, but it didn't take long to concede to the practical: if I can't keep this stuff in the car, what am I going to do with it? Am I going to set up a scrapbook of old tire warranties and road atlases? Fortunately very little in the glove box had anyone's handwriting on it, so virtually everything was scrapped.

Before we threw everything away, however, Amanda spotted this certificate, which she expertly photographed:

Amanda loved it in an 80s-vintage sort of way—an old document showcasing the aesthetics of its age—but I decided to keep it as a token of all the things we threw away. A representative of the Les Schwab Tire reciepts and Nationwide Insurance cards that we couldn't keep. A tribute to Jack B. Stout, the salesman who sold my grandparents this car more than two decades ago. And a link to the past. After Amanda photographed it, I took the certificate, put it into the envelope provided by Peterson Toyota, and stuck it back in the glove compartment.

It... belongs there. Is that weird?

The state secedes

Yes, yes, yes. I know. It's been "a while". I'm sure you've all missed me. I have excuses: research qualifiers, paper reviews and revisions, recruitment weekend, composition projects, and a well-connected Finnish engineer have all distracted me from serving up rhetorical goodness for my (four or so) devoted fans.

I started a few posts--one on the tragedy of fading memory as it relates to William Goldman's "The Princess Bride" and one on an unfortunate quote by the otherwise-brilliant Bertrand Russell--but I didn't finish them. Those were shaping up to be complicated posts, and it takes me a lot of effort to organize and articulate my thoughts correctly. So, in keeping with my Gaussian approach to this blog, I've scrapped them--at least for the time being.

But today's topic is perfect for the blogger in a hurry. It's stupid, it makes me angry, and it requires only a minimum of analytical horsepower: Texas secession and the anti-tax tea parties.

On Wednesday, while at a tea party rally in Austin, Texas Governor Rick Perry suggested that if the Federal government didn't start listening to the American people, secession was a real possibility: "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."

First, let's get one thing straight. Texas has no special "secession clause" built into its constitution or treaty of annexation. (Even crackpot secessionists admit this.) It's as mythological as the idea that Texas's state flag is uniquely allowed to be flown at the same height as the U. S. flag (in fact, ANY state flag can be flown at the same height. Perhaps Texas is the only state insecure enough to feel the need.) Texas is no more allowed to peaceably secede than any other state, and that question was settled about twenty years after Texas joined the union.

There's a lot to pick on here: the irresponsibility of a standing governor publicly (even if hypothetically) suggesting secession, the obvious hypocrisy of waving an American flag while calling out for secession, and the absurdity of invoking the Boston Tea Party when you have elected officials in Congress. But this article covers those issues, so I'll leave them alone.

Instead, I want to make a different point, which is one of timing. Why are people suddenly so outraged over governmental excess? We've been engaged in "unsustainable" government spending for several years now, and no one complained nearly this loudly. The primary difference is that now there's a good (although perhaps debatable, but still: most credible economists [sorry, Ron Paul, you don't count] agree that SOME sort of stimulus was necessary) reason for it.

So I'm forced to conclude that a "secondary" difference is the real reason for all the protesting: there's a Democrat in the White House instead of a Republican. In other words, this is mostly an exercise in mob-driven partisanship. Hard-core conservatives are hell-bent on complaining about the new administration, so they decide to rekindle their rage over something that didn't get them all that upset a year ago.

It's frustrating for me as a (nominal) conservative, because it's becoming increasingly difficult to take conservative leadership seriously unless you're a party loyalist (which I'm not). This sort of redneck populism has all the intellectual honesty of an NRA pamphlet, and it appeals to roughly the same audience. Unless their goal is to shore up political capital in the former confederacy, encouraging people to "tea bag" Obama isn't exactly a winning strategy.

Of course, if that is their goal, I guess it works out pretty well for them if the secession movement takes hold. It'll simplify the problem of choosing a presidential candidate.

Who knows what might come out of that?

Texas, our Texas

Texas is a great place to study patriotism gone wrong.

In our Thanksgiving road-tripping, we've seen a few "Texas edition" F-150s and Silverados. As best as I can determine, though, Ford and Chevy don't actually produce Texas edition trucks. It's just a custom decal kit, something you can put on your truck to promote the my-state-can-beat-up-your-state arrogance for which Texas is (justifiably) well-known. And I'll be honest: I'm often convinced that the "everything is bigger in Texas" mentality can only be explained by widespread small-phallus overcompensation. So maybe dealers should put one of these in the glove compartment of each "Texas edition" pickup.