Texas has Austin, Dallas, and oil. All three are things we'd like to keep; the first two are mainly dragged down by the rest of the state, and the rest of the US still needs the last, for now.
Yeah sure, population of 30 million people, but let's just write them all off as forgotten. Or be a grown up and realize that Texas and the wider world are not black and white and more a variety of grey shades. There are bad people here, there are also good people here.