YOU CALL YOURSELVES TEXANS WITH A STRAIGHT FACE? YOU ARE NOT

Texas. This is what the GOP of Donald Trump has done to us. This is where state and federal leadership fealty to party over state has brought us. Bulldozers in Big Bend. No matter how much we protest. No matter how many of us don’t want this. No matter that pristine nature, sacred in a modern world, is being treated as just another construction project. With all the attendant profits that brings. No matter that avid Trump supporters in Texas are now in disbelief that this would be happening in our state. This is what we voted to lead us and now we are reaping the terrible whirlwind. Elections have consequences. And now Santa Elena Canyon is just another consequence. No one should be surprised. “When I saw the photos of the bulldozers in front of Santa Elena Canyon, I thought of another sickening image: the two colossal, 1,500-year-old Buddha statues in central Afghanistan being blown up by the Taliban in 2001. What is happening is Big Bend is an act of mindless zealotry being sold as border security. And it forces us to realize that the things of this earth that are beautiful and sacred and mysterious to most of us will always be regarded by a cynical, powerful few as just being in the way.” The damage done will be infinite. And which of our Texas politicians will laud a border wall they helped put through God’s country? Because they absolutely did help. They helped because they didn’t stop it. So what good are they?