How Greg Abbott ruined a town
Shelby Park is an attractive little irregular polygon of grass and a parking lot along the Rio Grande in the little border town of Eagle Pass, Texas. It was there that the town planned a festival centred around Monday’s solar eclipse. The town spent a lot of money getting ready for crowds of celebrants that would have meant good food, good music, good fun and a good deal of money pumped into the town’s little economy.
But Texas governor Greg Abbott had another idea. Instead he decided to sacrifice the town’s innocent fun for a nightmare symbol for MAGA propaganda. Eagle Pass is across the river from Mexico where millions of illegal aliens flood across the border every second, Abbott would have everyone believe. So he fenced off the park, stretched deadly submerged razor wire in the river and sent a state militia of heavily armed goons to “protect” a happy place that required no protection.
People who live in Eagle Pass will be the first to tell you they always felt safe there. Before Abbott’s invasion it was a quiet, peaceful, sunny place. No more. For the first time in their memories the citizens of that serene border town felt scared. MAGA cretins in trucks festooned with Trump flags came roaring in to reinforce Abbott’s national guard. Overnight the paranoid moron who squats like a poison toad in Austin orchestrated a horror on the town. He ruined their party in the name of a lie. That lie is being cynically exploited in a despicable ruse intended to unseat the President of the United States.
“I’ve always felt very safe here,” one resident of Eagle Pass said last month. “This is a good place to raise your children. Today downtown was the first day that I felt unsafe just walking down the street in broad daylight.”
Finding no illegal aliens to torture and kill, frustrated MAGA vigilantes turned on each other, starting fights and causing problems for a town that didn’t want them. It was like a scene from The Magnificent Seven, only this time there was no one to rescue them. Abbott’s border guards prevented lawfully authorised federal Border Patrol agents from peacefully entering the area and quietly doing their usual jobs.
So a day that was supposed to be a day of family fun turned into a day as dark and terrifying as a permanent eclipse. The malign spirit of Greg Abbott was there, and he made damned sure that nobody was going to enjoy being a citizen of his state, not on his watch.
Thanks to the governor’s wholly unnecessary intervention, the planners of Monday’s festival moved the day’s event to the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino, a venue for 10,000 people, a tenth the number they expected to attract. Abbott ruined the day and cost the town any chance of making up the money they invested. Behind it all, like an enormous dark blight blocking their sun, was the bloated image of Donald Trump, making America great again. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.