You can’t spend much time in Texas without seeing a reference to the Rangers. No, not the baseball team, which should have disbanded the moment their 2015 season ended in complete humiliation. They borrowed their name from the law enforcement agency, which has popped up everywhere from The Lone Ranger to Walker, Texas Ranger to Fallout: New Vegas. While state police forces exist throughout America, the Rangers are the oldest, most mythologized, and the most messed up.
They inspired all these TV shows. Which are all the same franchise, but still.
The Rangers trace their history back to 1823, when a few men were hired to protect new settlers, but they were officially founded in 1835. Their initial role was to protect Texans from outlaws and native raids, and they served in battles against Mexico. Today they have more typical law enforcement duties, but from their earliest days they were portrayed as an incorruptible force of civilization.
And that’s the image they still project today. Chuck Norris’ Walker was a hokey morality play about the perfect man using karate to stop generic bad guys. You can buy hagiographic books like The Ranger Ideal and Lone Star Justice, or romances like Texas Ranger Heroes if you need cowboy cops in your bathtub and wine night. Their official history discusses their “toughness” and “ferocity” amid life or death struggles, essentially reducing them to a series of badasses with badass nicknames doing badass things. A semi-official motto/brag based on an apocryphal story is “One riot, one Ranger.”
