At first you go bankrupt slowly, then all at once. - Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises The first place i encountered the swiss cheese model was in failure analysis. And while it isn't an applicable metaphor in all things, Texas governance seems apt. It's following the post-war arc of most petro-states: Oil is found, multinationals come in, wealth is inequally distributed, inequality rises, populists come into power, cronyism replaces competence, competence leaves for greener pastures, populists insist that the people of the One True Faith shall triumph in the face of adversity and Fifth Columnists. So while things may have been stable and self-sufficient back when Ann Richards was alive, 25 years of cronyism and demagoguery mean there's plenty of dry tinder about and one spark is a dozen brush fires. Thing is? These are all just tribulations to the One True Faith. If virtue is on your side, you can justify everything that's going wrong as just the destiny you're supposed to experience and any justification you care to espouse will be accepted. Greg Abbot exists because there is nothing that will get Texas Republicans to vote Democratic and the more racist and reactionary the Republicans run, the more racist reactionaries will come out to vote. Texas has always deigned to be a member of the United States, but not really. It's the Texas Republic, temporarily down on hard times. What better way to differentiate yourself from the other 49 than by going your own way in all things at all times? If that chases away everyone competent, then they weren't really Texans anyway - see Venezuela, Iran or Turkey. There are those who require an internal framework of beliefs to be logically consistent... but they aren't true believers, because if your internal framework requires logic than OBVIOUSLY you lack faith. FAITH is what lets you believe all shooters have mental health problems and that a Good Guy with a Gun will stand between paradise and perdition. And if it didn't work? Well, then the people involved were faithless and they aren't really our people anyway.