Facebook Is Offline In West Texas (Short Story)
Tesla: Three Weeks From Zero (Short Story)
I arrived in West Texas armed with exactly two reference points:
I had lived in Kentucky for a few years.
I thought I knew what racism looked like.
This turned out to be like saying you’ve swum in a hotel pool and therefore understand the Pacific Ocean.
1. The Welcome Committee
The first man I met shook my hand for so long I began to suspect he was testing my grip strength for livestock purposes.
“So where you from?” he asked.
“Kentucky.”
He nodded slowly, as if filing paperwork in his soul.
“And before that?”
“New Jersey.”
He nodded faster now.
“And before that?”
I realized West Texas did not believe in origin stories that stopped at the state level. This was genealogy with a lie detector.
“Well,” I said, “my parents—”
He interrupted. “No, no. I mean… originally.”
This was my first lesson: in West Texas, everyone believes they are asking a neutral question while holding a loaded one behind their back.
2. Church: Where Jesus Loves Everyone (Terms and Conditions Apply)
Church was friendly. Excessively friendly. The kind of friendly where people smile with their mouths but squint with their ancestry.
A woman hugged me like I was a long-lost cousin and said,
“We’re so glad you’re here. We don’t see many… new faces.”
Another leaned in during prayer time and whispered,
“Don’t worry, honey. We don’t see color.”
This was said loudly. During prayer. While directly seeing color.
The pastor preached about love, unity, and how Jesus welcomed everyone—then seamlessly transitioned into a sermon about “protecting our way of life” from “outside influences,” which apparently included:
immigrants
cities
colleges
tofu
and something called “coastal thinking,” which I assume is when thoughts come with an ocean breeze.
After service, a man clapped me on the back.
“You’re one of the good ones,” he said warmly, like he’d just awarded me Employee of the Month for my entire race.
3. The Park: Diversity, But Only Accidentally
At the park, parents watched their kids like hawks trained specifically to spot difference.
One woman smiled at me nervously while her child played near mine.
“So… what do you do?”
“I work in tech.”
Her shoulders relaxed.
“Oh! I thought you were—well. Never mind.”
A man jogging past nodded and said,
“Great day, huh?”
I nodded back.
He slowed down.
“Just curious—what do you think about all this stuff going on in the country?”
“What stuff?”
He squinted.
“You know. Stuff.”
In West Texas, “stuff” is a personality test.
4. The Golf Club: Polite Segregation with Collared Shirts
At the golf club, racism wore khakis and spoke in indoor voices.
A man complimented my swing and said,
“You play real well. Didn’t expect that.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, you know.” He laughed. “Just didn’t.”
Another guy asked where I learned to golf.
“Public course.”
He nodded sympathetically.
“Well, you’re doing great considering.”
Considering what was left hanging in the air like a Confederate ghost.
The clubhouse TV played sports, then news, then suddenly everyone remembered they had opinions.
One man said,
“I’m not racist, but—”
Everyone leaned in. This was the keynote address.
5. The Party Invitation (or: The Soft Disqualification)
The party invite came with enthusiasm.
“You should come! We’d love to have you.”
Pause.
“I mean, it’s mostly family.”
Pause.
“And church folks.”
Pause.
“And, uh… you might feel more comfortable bringing someone… like you.”
I thanked him for his concern about my comfort while marveling at how uncomfortable he was.
Another invitation included helpful guidance:
“Just a heads up, some people might ask questions. They don’t mean anything by it.”
In West Texas, this translates to: Brace yourself.
6. Kentucky vs. West Texas: A Scientific Comparison
Kentucky racism had been subtle. Quiet. Like a dog that growls but stays on the porch.
West Texas racism was a marching band. Loud. Cheerful. Convinced it was being hospitable.
Kentucky would whisper,
“Well, bless your heart.”
West Texas would grin and say,
“We love everybody—long as they know how things work around here.”
7. The Final Realization
Eventually, I understood: this wasn’t hatred so much as certainty.
Certainty that the world had a proper order.
Certainty that deviation required explanation.
Certainty that curiosity was kindness.
They weren’t trying to exclude me.
They were trying to locate me.
And when they couldn’t quite figure out where I fit, they smiled politely, invited me to church, and waited patiently for me to become easier to understand.
Which, in West Texas, is the funniest joke of all.
How to Grow a Church: Best Practices for Sustainable and Spiritually Healthy Expansion
Immigrant Derangement Syndrome Blaming brown-skinned people for everything bad ........... Americans suffered a litany of horrors thanks to the Trump administration during 2025 – refusal to disburse emergency aid, soaring measles cases, collapsing small businesses, vindictive prosecutions, wanton destruction of the federal government, and (soon) soaring health insurance premiums. But few incidents were more shocking than the two-month siege of Chicago, in which America’s third-largest city was terrorized by a gang of violent, sadistic thugs. ........... What happened here for more than two months is unlike anything in recent American history: the federal government sending agents dressed for war into neighborhoods of the country’s third-largest city to arrest mostly people who look Latino and to ask questions later. To target people largely on the basis of their skin color, on the presumption that they may be in the country without documentation, or that they may have a criminal record, or an association with a gang. .............. “only about 1.5% of those detained for immigration-related reasons had been convicted of a violent felony or sex crime.”
............ consider the spectacular Sept. 30 raid carried out on a South Side apartment building — a building administration officials claimed was a base for a Venezuelan gang. “SWAT teams,” reports ProPublica, “rappelled from a helicopter, knocked down doors and hurled flash-bang grenades. They arrested 37 immigrants, most of them Venezuelans, who authorities say were in the country illegally. Agents also zip-tied and, for several hours, detained many U.S. citizens.” After all that, Federal prosecutors didn’t file charges against a single resident of the building. ............... And while the ICE tactics are blatantly illegal according to legal experts, they have been allowed by a corrupt Supreme Court that is clearly more intent on enabling authoritarianism than on than protecting the Constitution. ............. It’s clear that claims about crimes perpetrated by immigrants are just an excuse to inflict a reign of terror. And they’re also part of a much wider pattern of hostility to mostly brown-skinned immigrants that has nothing to do with the stated justifications. I call this IDS – Immigrant Derangement Syndrome – the syndrome of blaming immigrants for everything bad in America. And those bad things include both actual events – such as soaring housing costs – and fantasies that exist only in MAGA’s imagination, such as a wave of violent crime. .............. assertions that immigrants are taking away jobs from native-born workers, or depressing their wages, just don’t stand up under scrutiny. All the evidence suggests that foreign-born workers are complements, not substitutes, for native born workers. And as the native-born population ages, we really need immigrant workers, both directly to care for seniors and indirectly to keep the economy growing as the native-born labor force shrinks. .............. JD Vance claims that immigrants are responsible for soaring housing costs. Yet academic studies of the link between immigration and rents — studies the Trump team itself cites! — show that such effects, if they exist, are small. And any reduction in housing demand caused by mass deportations is surely outweighed by the fall in housing supply as America loses foreign-born construction workers. ................ Until a few days ago I thought Scott Bessent would easily win the prize for the most absurd anti-immigrant argument of the year after he claimed that high beef prices were due to migrants bringing sick cows into the country. But then Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar, weighed in, claiming that immigration has stalled U.S. technological progress. As many people quickly pointed out, immigrants played key roles in some of the achievements he extolled as proof that we don’t need immigration, such as the moon landing. A brief examination of the origins of the legions of engineers in Silicon Valley shows how insane Miller’s claim is. .............. by December only 38 percent of Americans had a favorable view of Trump’s handling of immigration, down from 49 percent in March, while 60 percent disapproved. ............ Immigrant Derangement Syndrome is therefore a top-down phenomenon, not a broad popular movement. It reflects the perverse obsessions of MAGAdom, with racism a key component. If you are an immigrant with brown or black skin, you’re a target regardless of how exemplary your behavior – as the growing attacks against Indian-Americans show
. ............ Movements centered on bigotry eventually eat their own. Don’t imagine that your political record will protect you. Consider how JD Vance, while spouting Christian nationalism, has to defend his Yale-educated Indian-American wife from racist, anti-Hindu attacks. Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump-endorsed Republican senatorial candidate for Ohio, is now pleading for an end to the bigotry and hate directed at him by other Republicans. ............ And now we have Ben Shapiro, of Jewish descent and a long-time MAGA stalwart, calling out Tucker Carlson for platforming the antisemitic and anti-Indian Nick Fuentes. Because who could have seen the movement’s antisemitic turn coming — ........... The good news is that, as I said, IDS is a top-down phenomenon, not a broad popular movement. And in the end, I believe that the basic decency of most Americans will prevail. Many Americans are already sickened by MAGA’s wanton cruelty and bigotry against immigrants, and I believe that their numbers will grow. To paraphrase Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Americans will soon understand that hate is too great a burden to bear.
