If the Democracy survives, future history books will not be kind to these hoodlums. Although their power was based on lies and corruption, it is still unacceptable that such a large portion of the population considered them the good guys.
Currently reading Doug J. Swanson’s detailed history of the Texas Rangers, Cult of Glory (a real “myth buster”). Swanson expands on the pronouncement of Maxwell Scott and prints both the legend and the fact.
Two things caused me to stop early in the book and think. The first was in a section devoted to John Salmon Ford, Old Rip (a sobriquet indicting Ford’s prominence as a Texas Ranger who dealt savagely with any person he deemed a bad-guy). Ford attempted to create a slave empire in northern Mexico as a by-product of the Mexican-American War. He failed.
Remembering Shirley Knight: In the 1960s there were a dozen films that made such an impact on me that I often think of them after over fifty years. This is one.
