from Hacker News

How Texas Made the Old West Even Wilder and Bloodier

by bikenaga on 5/5/25, 7:34 PM with 94 comments

• by NorthOf33rd on 5/6/25, 12:50 PM

  Texas is good at mythologizing its patently terrible origin stories. See the Alamo.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forget_the_Alamo:_The_Rise_and...

• by chiffre01 on 5/6/25, 2:04 PM

  When you go to any Western state, you see this romanticization of cowboy mythology everywhere. People genuinely believe it, and it’s been several generations since the actual cowboy era, so facts about the period are scarce.

  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.

• by giardini on 5/6/25, 4:34 PM

  Texas didn't do it - Hollywood did! And for a good reason - to make money!

  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.

• by kacesensitive on 5/6/25, 12:47 PM

  This is a good reminder that the mythologized "Code of the West" wasn't some noble cowboy ethic—it was born out of postwar resentment, racial violence, and frontier lawlessness. It's easy to forget that much of what's now framed as rugged individualism was originally just unchecked aggression from people who couldn't handle losing a war. The romanticization of this period by early 20th-century writers smoothed over a lot of ugly history.

• by dueltmp_yufsy on 5/6/25, 2:19 PM

  Well they made the their state brand slogan "don't mess with Texas", so makes sense.