How Texas Made the Old West Even Wilder and Bloodier
texasmonthly.com
texasmonthly.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and...
And its hard to argue with the result the Texans got.
As the title indicates, the book demolishes one of the biggest myths in American history: the legend of the Alamo. The author follows the trail of hagiographic heroism from 1836, the year of the iconic battle led by William Barret Travis, a man whose own memoirs show that he was a syphilitic womanizer. Like many of the slave traders and land speculators who illegally crossed into the Mexican province of Tejas, Travis was a failed businessman, crushed by debt, who abandoned his wife and children in Alabama to play soldier of fortune on the frontier. Worse, this incompetent officer disobeyed direct orders from Sam Houston to evacuate the old Spanish mission at the Alamo, which was understood by virtually everyone to be impossible to defend against the Mexican army. The predictable result was total defeat and slaughter. After that, myth-makers began re-writing the history to turn the Alamo into a heroic tale of military glory. The mission itself was mismanaged for more than a century, large sections of the original structure were allowed to fall into disrepair, and the iconic shape of the Alamo building - the bell-shaped facade on the front wall of the chapel - was added many years after the battle of 1836. Today the battle over the Alamo continues in the form of struggles by the community to recover the authentic history of the place, while hard-line conservatives insist on maintaining the fiction of the fake past.
https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Alamo-Rise-Fall-American/dp/19...*
The part that ends up being truly harmful is state legislatures passing laws based on perceived views of 'The Old West'
Looking at you Wyoming.
The factual accuracy doesn't actually matter though. The laws are being passed based on the current generation's values. And that seems fine with regard to values. "Genuine belief" is kinda what makes a thought a value.
And so what? We got, and get, a lot of entertainment out of this mythologizing. As a child I knew that much in the movies about the Alamo was BS. No damage was done. We still played cowboys, indians, Mexicans and Texians. The good guys (usually) win!
Its the same for war movies (in fact, for all movies) with over-the-top, word-of-mouth stories depicted as reality. Its a story for God's sake!
Might as well be complaining about Aesop's Fables.
He talks about taking a horse and cart alone into Oklahoma “Indian territory” and how he scrounged up an old pistol because he was afraid of being scalped. He spends two nights camped out and every group of native Americans that pass by him just entirely ignores him.
He also talks about going to see the Dalton gang just after their famous shootout, and mentions how it was weird to see the bodies just laid out and people cutting scraps of clothing off them as souvenirs. He said it wasn’t romantic at all, just depressing.
The modern version is people who are afraid of Chicago.
I thought America has a serious gun problem. Or is it so exaggerated that it is irrational to be afraid of a city that's in or around the top 10 highest rates of gun homicides in the country?
For perspective, in 2022 42,514 people in the US died in car accidents, which works out to about 0.01% of the population, so about half that rate. Would you say the fear of Chicago is more or less than twice the fear of driving?
There are specific patterns (albeit probably not as strong) to deaths in car accidents. Why ignore one and not the other?
They're not probably going to kill you. They're going to just take your shit, maybe beat the shit out of you or knock you out if you resist. In my case, I managed to call their bluff and they did not pull the trigger, I punched them and then managed to narrowly get away.
If you live in these rough neighborhoods are you going to call the police, have their jacked up corrupt policeman show up, basically releasing a wild hyena in your home with access to secret torture sites[0]? Just to hear "sorry for your luck, we can write a report and then do nothing about it, but maybe open an investigation on you."
No, you're going to buy a gun/knife, spend some time at the range, be ready for next time, and go on with your life. This shit doesn't show up in the statistics like it would for podunk town.
It would be safe to assume that for every random (non gang related) person who is killed there are many times more assaulted or robbed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Chicago [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
You are far more likely to die in a car accident driving through.
I think this is underselling the issue a bit. I lived in Hyde Park and heard shootings on a monthly basis, had a friend shot in an attempted robbery, and in general had a visceral sense of ongoing gun violence around me that I've never had in NYC, SF, Dallas, Austin, Seattle, or any other major American city where I've spent a lot of time.
Sure, Hyde Park is a bit of an anomaly in terms of being both highly violent and having things worth touristing for, but 'any large city has neighborhoods like that' doesn't ring true for me.
I live near a ~100k person city and a local legislator (from a very rural district) claimed they wouldn't go into the area without an armored car, to much mockery. My wife, at the meantime, was doing visiting nursing in the same neighborhoods. The worst interaction she had out on the streets was a family laughing (justifiably) at her parallel parking.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/rochester/news/2016/10/28/...
(Same guy was later arrested for wire fraud and bribery. Concern about crime was projection, as is common.)
Every city has these stories. You'll hear gunshots (and there'll be a higher per-capita gun death rate) in rural areas too.
If you ignore rates, sure! NYC for example doesn't have near the same level of gun violence
This is how they got to me.
I was working in a hospital in a 'meh' business area surrounded by a high-crime predominantly black neighborhoods. Sure you are generally fine at the hospital, or during day in the surrounding business district, but then you have to drive past that. The population we served noticed when I got a flat tire, because I was the only white face around at ~3am when my shift ended, and they moved in on their prey.
And that's how it works out. The tourist might be ok. The locals have to drive through bad areas sooner or later to work, get something they need, and when their vehicle fails they strike.
The crime stats do not back up that it is particularly dangerous https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/il/chicago/crime.
Everyones lived experience is different and perception of risk is deeply personal. But statistically if Hyde Park is too dangerous for you then no place in Chicago is safe enough.
What about being robbed, assaulted or someone breaking into your parked car?
Why isn't this a "murder problem?"
Why is a century-old piece of technology you can manufacture in your home workshop (mills and 3D printers aren't regulated yet) in China, Germany, wherever the "problem?"
The US firearm homicide rate is higher than most other countries everything homicide rate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
US: 5.763/100k (of which 3-4/100k are firearms: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...)
Germany: 0.823/100k
China: 0.502/100k
> Globally, the U.S. ranks at the 93rd percentile for overall firearm mortality, 92nd percentile for children and teens, and 96th percentile for women.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/2024/oct/compa...
We are absolutely abberant if you chart it (the one titled "No Other Rich Western Country Comes Close").
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/14/upshot/compare-these-gun-...
* The US has a lot more guns than most other developed countries.
* The US has a lot more murders than most other developed countries.
* Places like Chicago are, statistically, not all that different in this regard from elsewhere in the US.
The US has a murder/firearm problem at a population level. The chances of any randomly selected individual being part of it remains fairly low. We simultaneously should be ashamed of our clear violence problem, and recognize that "and then I started blasting" is not a great response to it.
Focus on "urban" people in Chicago is a misdirection by folks who'd rather not deal with the national-level concerns.
The same people who want you to think Chicago's ~26.9/100k homicide rate is terrifyingly scary want you to think COVID's ~279/100k was not.
>US: 5.763/100k (of which 3-4/100k are firearms)
>Chicago's ~26.9/100k homicide rate
So Chicago has a ~5x increase over the national average homicide rate and you're calling guns a "national-level concern".
Can you help me understand why I should have gun control in my ~2.6/100k county just because Chicago has 10x that rate?
Chicago's guns come from outside Chicago; it's surrounded by very permissive jurisdictions. (Trump supporters like to call this sort of issue "open borders".)
Your county's seemingly "low" rate is 5x that of China (0.5/100k), 3x that of Germany (0.8/100k), double the city of London (1.4/100k). It's abberantly high still, by international standards.
Big cities in Europe are largely safer statistically than even the low-crime areas of the US.
Because we are in the developed world, and "at least we're better than Pakistan" is probably not the highest of bars we should aspire to as a country?
> Those are more in-line with US population size than Germany, London, or China
The EU, if you prefer - similar size, population, state+federal(ish) makeup, developed world, mix of wealthy and poorer jurisdictions, etc. - has a 0.86/100k rate.
Keep going on this. Why is the US inherently better than Pakistan/Nigeria/Brazil?
Historically? Colonialism.
Currently? Yeah, I'd rather live here in the developed world.
If every country in the world had the same area as every other country, then you could draw a line from total population to population density, but of course that is not the case.
You’ll find dramatically lower rates for comparable populations.
You're a straight up moron if you sleep on the streets of Chicago without a weapon. Here's a hint, get on a rooftop, out of sight.
You call a tow truck.
>A friend who has worked in Chicago his entire life tells me it's not that violent. He's a tail gunner on a school bus
Looking at the data - you can spin it either way, because of how the violence is distributed and segregated inside the city.
Gun control advocates?
"You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what's going on in Detroit and other, other cities, all Democrat run..." - Trump
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...
"All over the world, they’re talking about Chicago. Afghanistan is a safe place by comparison. (Laughter.) It’s true."
(It isn't.)
The past was generally rife with problems that hadn't yet been solved. Some of those were technical and some of them social. But dismissing it all as racism or whatever is misleading at best. People (generally, I'm sure there's a few exceptions) aren't romanticizing the racism or the violence or the outhouses or the lack of antibiotics or any other negatives that have since been solved or improved upon, when they romanticize these periods of history.
There's a similar and misplaced admiration of Sparta, which is wrong headed since Sparta wasn't even all that good at military matters, and, compared to other city states of the time, a failure at everything else.
They were fascist assholes who murdered slaves as a rite of passage, but they were also good soldiers. No reason to deny that.
https://acoup.blog/2019/09/20/collections-this-isnt-sparta-p...
While the Spartans weren't a disaster, and in some respects they were marginally better (but in others, worse), the statistics don't lie: they had an average track record, certainly not on par with their current reputation. They didn't excel at any particular strategy, they were just hoplites like every Greek at the time. Their track record is disappointingly average:
> We get 12 victories, 11.5 defeats and 0.5 draws
Hardly impressive, right? And this is excluding naval battles, if we include them the Spartans do slightly worse.
> Sparta had a formidable military reputation, but their actual battlefield performance hardly backed it up. During the fifth and fourth centuries, Sparta lost as often as it won. Spartan battlefield tactics were a bit better than other Greek poleis, but this is damning with faint praise. The spartiates themselves were mostly like every other group of wealthy Greek hoplites. But the Spartan military reputation was extremely valuable – the loss of that reputation during the Peloponnesian War does much to explain the rough decades Sparta would experience following its end.
He also explains Sparta was also a self-defeating, ever-shrinking society, which ultimately proved to be its demise. But you're not disputing this, so this is just a side note.
Without the context of the relevant battles those numbers mean nothing. E.g. Thermopylae was one of the losses but it would be hard to interpret it as evidence of the Spartans' average military capabilities. War is not football, to keep score. Rome lost more battles to Hannibal than they won, but they erased Carthage from the face of the earth.
As to Bret Deveraux, my opinion is that he's a fucking idiot. You say he "specializes in dismantling this kind of pop culture myths". What he really specialises in, with respect to Sparta, is trying to troll nenoazis and other idiots who are the Spartans' biggest fans, by pointing out what fucking losers they were (the Spartans; but also by extension the neonazis). That's an easy win.
Nobody thinks Sparta was some great beacon of civilisation, except perhaps for people who take all their history from watching 300. It was Athens that was a beacon of civilisation, Athens who went down in history for its contributions to science and culture, Athens whose glorious ruins are visited today by millions every year, when Sparta is lost forever, not even its location known. And good riddance to those fascist assholes.
Anyway Deveraux is writing a blog and you shouldn't mistake blogs for sources of historical truth.
Still, a bit of a different situation though.
I agree with your comment, and also agree it's not exactly the same situation. The romanticization of the Old West is much closer to the current political climate in the US. There's also the baggage of the "Lost Cause" that still permeates their politics, sadly.
It was mostly a nitpick, I just wanted to point out this kind of misguided fascination for old history has also impacted the Roman Empire, Sparta (which I mentioned because there's a kind of rightwing admiration for "Spartan values", which is hogwash), etc.
The problem is that they romanticize it, paint an inaccurate picture of it, and also try to draw conclusions about modern life based on these misconceptions.
It's not about mocking them because of the outhouses.
By the way, I don’t think anyone wants to return fully to those times. The question is, on what ways can we return and get the maximum benefit for our people? That is a conversation worth having.
You need to make some of that quantitative to even have a reasonable discussion about it or we are just talking about mental images, whether that be little house on the prairie or the artful dodger.
Your chronological snobbery reminds me of a similar blindness that modernity has for the "women and children first" policy when the Titanic was sinking. When they made the movie, the director deliberately altered the story because he believed nobody would believe the truth. Yet the truth is, women and children were a whole lot more likely to survive than men, indicating that policy must have taken place[1].
The reality is, if you read first-hand accounts of the west, you see an incredible optimism, an incredible amount of sacrifice and an incredible amount of shared community on the west. That is so alien to our modern culture, where most people know a prophet of doom and gloom, people think that "community" is something you can purchase with a membership or find online, and conspiracy theories (real and imagined!) are a constant hot topic.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_and_children_first#20th_...
It’s interesting that you’re accusing me of snobbery when I’ve made no quality arguments at all. Yet you have very specific descriptions of now that villainize it in as broad strokes as you praised the past.
So, pointing out ethical failures accurately is "crapping all over it"?
> Are you going to complain that they didn't have running water and electricity in the old west while you're at it?
I'm going to suggest that objecting to enslavement, and objecting to having a well with a bucket, are not anywhere on the same spectrum.
You seem to be arguing from a truly dishonest, and fundamentally immoral, basis.
(seriously!)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristi_Noem#%22Meth._We're_on_...
> On November 18, 2019, Noem released a meth awareness campaign named "Meth. We're on It". The campaign was widely mocked and Noem was criticized for spending $449,000 of public funds while hiring an out-of-state advertising agency from Minnesota to lead the project. She defended the campaign as successful in raising awareness.