Jack of Harts

It is impossible to overestimate how much September 11, 2001 affected Texas. Texas soldiers had always marched to war and came back having seen the world outside their State. And when one of their own, now President of the United States, said that the whole world was going to hear from America after terrorists brought down the Twin Towers in New York City, the Texans cheered and went out to fight again. They came home after seeing the world, meeting new and interesting people as the old saying goes, and then killing them. They came home from fighting against the Islamic Jihad to a nation bitterly divided by partisan politics, and some might say they became disillusioned. Others say they simply began to recognize the world around them. Renewed calls to simply secede from America, as proponents claimed they had the right to under their original annexation, made national news, though generated little actual action. But as the years and decades passed by, Texas made quiet preparations to make certain that they would remain standing should Bad Things happen in the other States.

Many in Post-War Texas tried to march back the many reforms necessity had pushed on them, especially for women and minorities. The fighting men (largely White Men) had come home, and it was time for them to take over again and restore balance. But women and minorities had prospered under the War Economy, and they were not ready to go back to their good little corners and disappear again. They protested, and when their protests were broken up, the average American saw it on their new television sets via the fledgling networks that dominated the time period. Americans were horrified and demanded change, and an alliance of Republicans and Northern Democrats finally succeeded in pushing through a new round of Civil Rights legislation and federal action that outlawed Jim Crow, Segregation and all of its bastard children, and introduced nationwide rights and protections aimed at women as well. They also built the federal civil protection infrastructure to make certain that these laws would be enforced. This destroyed the Democrats’ ability to crush any opposition by simple fiat and Texans began openly converting to the Republican Party again.

World War II fundamentally changed Texas both in her economic and her cultural sectors. The federal government needed factories, hospitals, schools, and military bases, and Texas had plenty of young men looking for better opportunities. Nearly a million of them volunteered to go fight, and hundreds of thousands of farmers found much better jobs in the vacated industries. Women, Mexicans, and Negroes went to work in important positions in unprecedented numbers to fuel the sudden requirement of maximum production of all war supplies. Hundreds of thousands of Americans came to Texas for military training, and nearly a hundred thousand German prisoners were sent to Texas to work the fields for years. Texas saw people and ideas from all over the world, and that shattered the political and cultural dominance the Democrats had crafted in the last century.