Armas Weekend Reader

5-6 March 2022

You’re getting the Weekend Reader a day early this week thanks to the demands of my own workflow. The theme is unsurprising: war, war, and war. But there is also change, and the future taking shape whether we grasp it or not. All we have to do is watch, and wait. 

One note before we begin:

Today, 2 March 2022, is the 186th anniversary of Texas Independence. We declared ourselves a nation in the darkest imaginable passage. As the delegates met at Washington-on-the-Brazos, the Mexican enemy was pouring armies northward, the fall of the Alamo was imminent, and the tragedy of Goliad was shortly to unfold. Within a week, the Runaway Scrape would begin: the headlong flight of the whole Texian nation toward the Sabine River, and safety. Farms, towns, homes, the work of lifetimes were abandoned and burned. The roads and paths were choked with families and pioneers fleeing the dictator’s advance, knowing that if he reached them, their fate was death. Every rational calculus pointed toward the extinction of Texas and the Texians within weeks. It was the end. 

In these straits, the Texians declared independence. Texas went on to lose every single battle of the year 1836 — except the last one. All they had to do was keep faith, and keep fighting. It was enough.

The Weekend Reader starts after the jump.