An observation by Roald Dahl on Texas, from the short story The Last Act:

...during those trips, he and she had often spoken about Texans in general and how difficult it was to like them. One could ignore their coarseness and their vulgarity. It wasn’t that. But there was, it seemed, a quality of ruthlessness still surviving among these people, something quite brutal, harsh, inexorable, that it was impossible to forgive. They had no bowels of compassion, no pity, no tenderness. The only so-called virtue they possessed — and this they paraded ostentatiously and needlessly to strangers — was a kind of professional benevolence. It was plastered all over them. Their voices, their smiles, were rich and syrupy with it. But it left Anna cold. It left her quite, quite cold inside.
“Why do they love acting so tough?” she used to ask.
“Because they’re children,” Ed would answer, “They’re dangerous children who go about trying to imitate their grandfathers. Their grandfathers were pioneers. These people aren’t.”