The District Manager Pt. 3

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amwriting, June 30, political crime, political issues, Texas, Texas Author, Texas legislature, Texas politics

 

By what I’m able to gather, this meeting has something to do with sex trafficking in the county. Seeping in from the city, just due east, this is a growing enterprise that has finally caught the attention of public servants.

As pretentious as this collection might be, as they banter around the table, all talk is loaded with good intentions. The only problem is that these good intentions mean suspending civil liberties.Th e worst is the local congresswoman. She even suggests spying on one’s neighbors. Yes, the helicopter mentality spins in mysterious ways. If a child scrapes their knee on the sidewalk, then the abrasiveness of concrete must be regulated, or at least investigated. If those diabolical shoelaces were complicit in the fall, then…something must be done about that as well! Followed to its logical conclusion, said child will never be allowed to leave the playpen, that too bereft of playthings—too dangerous.

When this meeting mercifully ends, I’m left with the impression that given another fifteen minutes someone was going to suggest a law banning men—any man—from coming into contact with children under thirty. To his credit, my boss has said very little.

Brenna has vanished.

The Rep. and I make conversation as we filter out into the blazing heat.

“So how do you like living in an apartment?” he asks, shielding himself from the offensive elements with this hand.

“It’s taking time…getting adjusted. At first it was so claustrophobic, having lived in the country for so long.”

“Are you gonna sell the place?” he asks, tugging on his clothes as if he’s on fire. The boss is huge, not fat but tall and big boned. If he weren’t so uncoordinated he might have played basketball.

“I don’t know. The taxes will go up without the homestead. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.”

“Well, Wagoneer County will miss you if you pull up stakes for good.”

This is so obviously a false claim that it is diffcult for me to pretend otherwise. “Yeah, maybe.” I shrug, squinting my eyes. I’ve left my sunglasses in the car.

“How long has it been?” This question is even more awkward, exacerbated by his twitching under the sun.

“You mean since Ann…?”

“Yes.”

“Coming up on a year.”

Before parting, we are interrupted by the congresswoman from the meeting. She still fails to acknowledge me, although I have met her probably seven-hundred times. It doesn’t matter, I’m ready to go. Though this is a Thursday, tomorrow is the Fourth. Besides, she’s had so much plastic surgery at this point she looks like a freak and I don’t feel like faking it.

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Texas and Its Place in the Late Western Crisis

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brexit, Byzantine Empire, Politics, roman empire, Texas, western civilization, western values

Disclaimer: This bit of commentary has no great thesis pointing to a solution. It merely serves to pose a series of questions.

If you accept the notion as I do, that Western Civilization is dying, then all examinations of its provinces must be viewed through a lens of decline. And though the purpose of this piece is not the study as to why this breakdown in occurring, it is necessary to mention several facts:

1) Birthrates in the West are at unsustainable numbers. If not for immigration, these numbers could pose demographic catastrophe.

2) The supplemental populations (immigrants), if not properly assimilated into Western values, will induce civilizational extinction. (I define Western Values as classically liberal ideas: free enterprise; equality of the sexes; freedom of peaceful expression in all its manifold forms; etc.)

3) If the West follows on its current trajectory it is doomed.

4) The American state of Texas is one of the healthiest political designations in the Western world.

Question: What is the future of a healthy limb if the vital organs that that limb is attached to are on life support?

(As any critical mind will discover from reading the above, some of my ‘facts’ are actually conjecture, assumptions if you will. But I prefer to characterize them as educated hypotheses going forward.)

It may be the supreme trick of history that the Lone Star State finds itself in this predicament. To be equipped with the greatest sail, just as the wind ceases and the waters evaporate. Yet this is where Texas is located on the vast historical timeline.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the eastern portion of that empire lasted for another thousand years. The center of this empire was Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople.

The Byzantine Empire was both a relic to fallen classical civilization (with Christian overtones) and an urban conduit through the Medieval Period. And though its fall to the Ottoman Turks (Muslims) in 1453 is the academic end of the Middle Ages, The Byzantine Empire was a cultivator of its own unique and influential civilization, having never experienced a dark age the likes of the rest of Europe.

We live in an age where we are told by our institutions that there are no possibilities. Accept decline, disease, defeat… That somehow these ailments will lead to Utopia. But the Brexit vote signals that there may be another path…Is self-preservation soon to be hip?

 

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The District Manager Pt. 2

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elections, house of representatives, political crime, political issues, Texas, Texas legislature, Texas politics

 

I keep the engine humming and hang back after I roll into the slanted parking space across from the courthouse. I’m waiting…waiting for the politicians to siphon into the historical structure. I don’t want to get stuck talking to anyone I don’t have to.

I’m not wearing a suit—thank God—but a rather cheap, white, short-sleeved golf shirt and black slacks. Still, I can feel a significant sweat stain on my back as I enter the building. One of the benefits of working for a state official is that you can bypass nearly any security. I flash the sheriff’s deputy my badge and skip the metal detector altogether.

The meeting is at the top, on the fourth floor. This is an old structure and the air-conditioning kind of sucks. As I climb the circular steps, I haven’t stopped sweating. I ascend upon a display of the Six Flags Over Texas. The cigarettes have caught up with me I guess, because here at the top I’m out of breath.

“You need to lay off those things, Mason!” the assistant prosecutor comments, his voice echoing into the recently restored rotunda. He’s loitering in the spherical lobby and thumbing his cell phone. Like all prosecutors’ side men, he lacks any sense of the political, he’s a plain asshole, in fact. We have an understanding: I don’t like him and he doesn’t like me. I enter the meeting room, squeezing past his suited, unaccommodating bloat.

My boss is already there and is sitting towards the front of an immense wooden table with other officials from the area. He nods in acknowledgment of my existence. The remaining seats are filled with different experts: a few cops and several county elected officials. The assistant prosecutor snakes the last available seat. I pull up a spare chair. After assessing this cabal, my attention is drawn towards the large expanse of bookshelves that line the length of the opposite wall. The shelves are filled from floor to ceiling with tan, hardback editions of the Southwestern Reporter, an old-school legal resource from the days before computers.

Introductions are in order, and when it’s my turn I stand and give my name and occupation. “Mason Dixon!” I declare, knowing that those in the room who don’t know me will think it almost strange, maybe somewhat comical. “I’m the District Manager for House District 100!” My boss, the state rep who I work for, signals discreetly with his hand for me to sit down.

I am distracted as the meeting fires up. From the corner of my right eye, I notice a figure enter the room. She pulls out a chair and gracefully sits down. I turn my head towards the entryway where she is presently sitting, as proper as in a pew. It’s Brenna, the county judge’s assistant. She’s staring right at me with a giant smile across her rosy cheeks. We have met before. Here at the courthouse, in fact. I felt something then. I feel it now.

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Texas Politics in a Nutshell; or Not!

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political issues, Politics, Texas, Texas legislature, Texas politics

 

The state of Texas is both diverse in population and immense in size. One cannot judge it as a component of a larger entity, but rather as an entity itself. The fundamental socio-political struggle the state is enduring at this point in history is the classic struggle between the rural and the urban. This struggle has been going on for some time, and has been examined in commentary since before the Johnson administration. Like all struggles it has its own peculiar evolution.

One could say that the conflict has its modern origins in the assassination of President Kennedy, which occurred in Dallas, 1963. Kennedy is said to have referred to Dallas, as well as the state as a whole as, ‘nut country.’ At that time Texas was still captive in its entirety to what I call the ‘cowboy ethos.’ The cowboy ethos was a leftover from the days of frontier settlement. It required a strict ethic of self-reliance. This self-reliance in turn required a strict intolerance of the collectivism inherent in urban culture.

After Kennedy’s death this ethos was shattered, but not destroyed. The assassination of America’s youthful president sparked in Texans, particularly Dallasites, a sort of neurosis. This neurosis was less about guilt, and more about identity.

What is modern Texas? Can we reconcile the frontier with the post-industrial reality? 50 years on this struggle has yet to see its conclusion.

‘God, Guns and Guts,’ though not necessarily coined for the Lone Star State is still a fitting motto even today. And yet it isn’t really representative of the whole. As I stated previously, Texas is itself a country, and should be dissected as such. The only problem is that the usual lines of demarcation don’t apply. The rural psychology continuously seeps into the urban. As far as socio-political expression is concerned, this interceding is expressed in that phenomenon called suburban. Texas is rife with suburbs.

And this simple/complex dynamic is at the core of Texas’ Public Policy.

One can learn a lot by looking at the representatives that respective districts send to power centers to assumptively express and work their will. Working in Austin at the state capitol is to be one of many neurons bouncing about in the central nervous system of the body politic.

The following series of commentary that will follow will begin with Texas’ big cities, which have, due to population, the upper hand in all three branches of state government.

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The District Manager Pt. 1

Tags

amwriting, crime, political crime, political issues, Texas, Texas Author, Texas legislature, Texas politics

 

Doing the right thing means you don’t eat.

I should have known this almost universal of maxims. But I refused to acknowledge it. I steered and stuttered my way through traffic, distracted along the way by a series of dead dogs that filled consecutive ditches. I love dogs.

After winding through an arbor of live oaks that shrouded the wealthy streets, I arrived at the scheduled meeting at the Fort Bryan County Courthouse…

Introductions are in order, and when it’s my turn I stand and give my name and occupation, “Mason Dixon!” I declare, knowing that those in the room who don’t know me will think it almost strange, maybe somewhat comical. “I’m the District Manager for House District 100!” My boss, the state rep who I work for, signals discreetly with his hand for me to sit down…

I can’t help but dwell on the meeting I’ve just left as I head east into the big town. No matter what its good intentions, government is a bully. The collateral damage nearly always disproportionate to its benefits. But something happens to people after they get elected to office. In reality, there are no good guys. Maybe at some point in the past there were, but not anymore.

The closest thing to a good guy is me. And what is it that I do?

I’m Mason Dixon—really. I’m the District Manager for House District 100. Nobody knows what I do, and that’s the beauty of it. Nobody sees me coming. And what do I do? If you’ve got a problem with a government agency and can’t get anywhere …if you’re tied up in red tape…maybe I can help. It doesn’t matter if you are having trouble renewing your driver’s license or a family wants to see a loved one, one last time before they die in prison. I will go to bat for you. It isn’t political—far from it. Some English author once said, “Heroism begins where politics ends.” That’s me. Nobody knows what I do. I can help anyone, anyone but me that is…

When I finally pull up to the District Office it’s getting dark out. This sucks. Why? The D.O. is haunted. No bullshit, it’s creepy. Our office is housed in the center of Fort Bryan, in the historical district. The building we rent is as old as anything for fifty miles. It’s situated in a complex of buildings, constructed around the turn of the last century. The D.O. is in an old bank, in fact. The walls are several feet thick. They had to be, so as to withstand a dynamite attack. The place looks like a citadel. All the buildings on our block are connected in typical early twentieth-century fashion. What’s interesting is that they are connected by a labyrinth of internal passageways as well. I’ve only ventured their stairwells on one occasion—too creepy. Anyway, according to local lore, the building that the D.O. sits in was once held up, with several people getting killed. It’s said that it’s haunted by these victims. I fucking believe it. We share the place with an oil and gas company, but this late nobody’s here.

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TEXAS: Myth and Modernism

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political issues, Texas, Texas Author, Texas politics

Of all the political designations on the global map perhaps none are more misunderstood than Texas. The Lone Star state has yet to live down its stereotypes. Natives regard it as bigger than life and rich with a varied and colorful past. Outsiders often see it as vulgar and braggadocios, its assets at the root of its flaws.

If Texas were smaller, like say, Louisiana or Kentucky, it could potentially dwell in that attractive hinterland of quaintness. But Texas is large, as big as a country (as Texans love to remind), and therefore draws, perhaps unfairly, a disproportionate degree of criticism and scrutiny.

But for all the images it conjures of cowboys riding the wind swept plains, the image that best describes modern Texas is that of the astronaut. Unfortunately this image has fallen from the collective imagination by a world which has lost confidence and has hidden itself, where streaming is available, in self-absorption and immediate gratification.

The great irony of this is that the astronaut once symbolized innovation and a faith in the future, and the daring to charge into that future without fear.

This is the real Texas. This is the modern Texas.

In fact, one will not discover a more cutting edge, diverse or dynamic civilization anywhere in the world. Next to Texas, New York can appear insular and California dated.

Where both these states increasingly decline into two tiered societies of the super-rich or dependent poor, Texas’ middle class is not just thriving, but growing. Through moderate taxes and regulations the state has enabled an environment ripe for invention.

Though the vast and ethnically varied small towns of Texas are filled with many individual charms, the cities are its true export:

Houston, long known as the energy capital of the western world, has in reality evolved into a global city. Its port will soon be one of the biggest on earth. None can rival its medical establishment. African Americans have the highest standard of living here than anywhere else in the U.S. Its cultural attractions and world class restaurants enjoy a universal reputation.

Austin, the capital, possesses all the blemishes of a growing, upstart adolescent. But it is these blemishes that have made it a melting pot of creativity, and one would be hard pressed to find an area with a higher concentration of artistic energy in America. And this energy is not limited to the arts, but finds its way into the many and varied independent eateries.

Dallas is the cosmopolitan jewel. Slicker and more polished than Houston or Austin, it still sports many of the finer qualities of both those cities.

And for local color on a grand scale there is always San Antonio and Fort Worth.

The perception of Texas has suffered much after two (arguably) failed presidencies in the past fifty years; waring executive leaderships’ that have highlighted most of the state’s bad and little of its good; almost caricaturing the state to the point of absurdity.

But it is components of the cowboy mentality of both these presidents’ that has helped propel the state economically into the stratosphere. A place reserved for the most prosperous of autonomous nations.

And so it comes full circle…

Will that which brought Texas to the threshold of dominance be that which keeps it from its place in that rare pantheon of places that have shaped the modern world: Paris; London; New York; California; Brussels; Beijing…

…Texas?

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Writing The District Manager, Pt. 2

Tags

amwriting, political crime, political issues, Texas legislature, Texas politics

I’m a sentimentalist by nature. In my first novel The Representative, the protagonist John David Dothan is afflicted with an incurable romanticism. I have to confess that this particular attribute was extracted from me personally. As such I possess a proclivity for and towards a softening of things. Refinement by its very nature is of the feminine. But there is an element of escapism at its core. Too much of this is an unhealthy thing.

Enter my second novel, The District Manager. Where The Representative was narrated in third person, past tense, DM is in first person, present tense (with instances of first person past tense). Mason Dixon, the story’s narrator and protagonist, is my reaction to Dothan. Mason is a stoical creature. His tale is told with Spartan desperation. However insecure and sensitive he might be, Mason is cloaked in armor: his perspective, the masculine.

This makes Mason Dixon a consummate outsider. He is alone and his aloneness can only be expressed in gritty realism. There is little softening of observation. He is a simple animal, scratching for survival in a world of ugly beasts hiding behind confected status.

I believe we are on the cusp of a new age of censorship. It will not be long now before people begin to go to jail for what they say, write or broadcast—in fact it’s already started. Though this has its roots in the political, it will transcend that in very little time, encompassing every aspect of our lives. The reason for this censorship is a fundamental inability of westerners to accept or deal with reality. This is at the core of what we call Political Correctness. Anyone with any sort of awareness of the world around them knows this predicament ends badly.

The western world is rife with faux security. Its movies and entertainment are increasingly fantastical. With each new terror episode we collectively recoil into our thin bubble of fantasy. I have nothing against quality works of unreality (I’ve authored a novel of stories in the gothic genre). But by objectifying our experiences and distilling them through the creative filter we not only better understand the circumstances that shape our lives, but also add a human factor to our fast 24-hour news cycle; a news cycle that is increasingly dehumanizing due to its rapidity.

Our entertainment is in need of an adrenaline shot to the heart. It’s time to wake up.

 

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Writing The District Manger

Tags

amwriting, political crime, political issues, Texas legislature, Texas politics

Writing The District Manger was a taxing experience. It literally drained me emotionally, physically, and dare I say, spiritually. Mason Dixon, the story’s protagonist, is a haunted if not a disturbed man. The tale is told in the first person. Inhabiting Mason for the time it took to complete the first draft of the novel left me in an unhealthy state: one that literally found me in the hospital by year’s end.

Mason is an emotionally stoical character and an introvert, two characteristics that I do not personally possess. Shifting into that mode on a repeated basis disrupted my equilibrium dramatically. The one attribute of his that was borne from the author is the protagonist’s outrage at injustice, which often reaches the point of hyperbole. Like I said, I was left in an unhealthy state.

The District Manager is a fast paced, realistic gothic novel. It begins by suggesting, and then later climaxes with an underground dog fight; the scene in question very disturbing for its realism. The version of this scene that actually made it into the final novel was contrived after much editing. I was advised that the original draft was simply too over the top. However, my editing team had to concede, despite their consternation, that the original was very well written.

When I was still conceiving The District Manager I had the odd circumstance of coming into contact with an individual who was intimate with persons who had actually been convicted and incarcerated for illegal dog fighting. Over numerous drinks he described to me in considerable detail the process by which this violent, illegal enterprise is conducted. I knew after our discussion that even the best of my imagination could not sculpt a more compelling/disturbing picture than what he related.

I went with it. Hardcore realism.

When the book was finished and the editing process was complete, I found the novel to be both an enlightening and dislocating experience. The District Manager is a train wreck; a train wreck you cannot take your eyes away from…I hope.

Enjoy. 🙂

 

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