posted a photo of a stadium full of overjoyed Longhorns fans<\/a> at my alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin, and called it \u201ca problem far worse than he could have ever imagined.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\nThe problem, in Bo\u2019s Texas, was that the kids bursting with joy looked foreign to him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At UT, football is religion \u2014 almost to the point of tribalism. It doesn\u2019t matter what shade you are on the outside. If you\u2019re a Longhorn, you bleed burnt orange.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sign up for the This Week\u2019s Top Stories newsletter to get the latest stories delivered to your inbox<\/p>\n
THANK YOU!<\/p>\n
You’re all set.<\/p>\n
CLOSE\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why Bo\u2019s post was always going to backfire. The backlash came from Republicans as well as Democrats. Senator John Cornyn condemned what he called French\u2019s \u201cintolerance and racism,\u201d and Karl Rove called the post \u201craw, uncut bigotry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notably, one Republican stayed silent: Attorney General Ken Paxton, the man who claims to be running to represent all Texans.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I spent 17 years as a U.S. diplomat, the face of America in countries where I watched democracy unravel in real time. My story as a Texan \u2014 and Texas itself, in all its contradictions \u2014 was often what resonated most when I was overseas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last summer, the Trump administration carried out a mass purge at the State Department that pitted us against each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year, Ken Paxton and Bo French fed into racist anti-Asian tropes in Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And I know what it is like to watch politics turn people into categories \u2014 loyal or disloyal, American or foreign, one of us or one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That instinct is bigger than any one politician or party. And ordinary Texans are often the ones who live with the consequences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I have family near Dallas who have watched Ken Paxton try to stop a Muslim community before it is even built, simply because of the faith of the people who want to live there.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Outsiders who don\u2019t know Texas tend to paint us as a caricature \u2014 gun-toting cowboys, insufferable racists, a place where everyone thinks the same way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I tell people I grew up here, especially among coastal elites, I\u2019m often met with pity. How did you survive?<\/p>\n
I tell them how grateful I am to have been born in Texas \u2014 Fort Worth, to be precise \u2014 because it is a place where multiple truths can coexist.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mom\u2019s best friend is a white evangelical Republican doctor who prayed for me after I was pushed out of the State Department last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We do not agree on much politically, but our friendship has never required either of us to pretend otherwise.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That kind of contradiction is harder to capture from a distance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Texas can be deeply conservative and deeply welcoming. It can produce ugly politics and extraordinary generosity. It can be fiercely proud of its traditions while changing underneath them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It can make room for the person who thinks differently from you \u2014 and then serve that person barbecue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That is the Texas I know.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Maryum-Saifee-dolly-llama.jpeg\")
Maryum Saifee with Dolly Llama<\/p>\n
Provided by Maryum Saifee<\/p>\n
My favorite proof of what I mean is a photo I keep coming back to: me, on our family\u2019s farm, wearing a Longhorn shirt, trying to feed a very stubborn llama.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her name was Dolly \u2014 the Dolly Llama, pun very much intended.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was probably from somewhere in the Andes: a non-native Texan with buckteeth, attitude, and a feisty, independent Texan spirit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was as Texan as the rest of us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the beauty of Texas.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate. Brandon Bell\/Getty Images Former U.S. diplomat and Fort Worth native…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":457038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[409,116,118,117,1967],"class_list":["post-457037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-election","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news","tag-ken-paxton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/457038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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