the several times ive visited and family i had there gave me the distinct impression that, despite it's constant mythmaking, it's a more repressive place with a broad, servile underclass of minorities where a small minority owns an absolutely deranged number of guns while most people are just going about their lives trying not to get locked up or shot.

certainly, its history as

• the only state that seceded TWICE to preserve slavery
• the entity that premeditatedly exterminated its abolitionist and free thinking communities
• the most aggressive policers of their own internal history to forget and destroy a rich tapestry of racism, cowardice and sniveling betrayal of the human spirit

has had an impact on the general perception of what "texas" is, both within and from outside.