Either way, the widespread narrative where Texans suffer through this every ten years because they're right-wing morons who have the government they deserve whilst the rest of the country happily avoids it thanks to their superior government doesn't stand up to scrutiny at all.
But a huge reason the situation now is much worse is simply due to the duration of the cold - without power and heat for days there were a ton of second-order effects, primarily burst pipes everywhere. Yet the power system failed very quickly, early on Monday morning. And a huge reason it failed is because none of the recommendations were followed after 2011. And systems that did follow those recommendations (e.g. El Paso, not on Ercot) fared much better.
I have no doubt the historic breadth, severity and length of current cold snap would have caused lots of problems, even if we were well prepared. But on the contrary, I find the misleading ones are the ones claiming this was a "totally unforeseeable" and a "once in a lifetime" event to deflect responsibility for a complete lack of preparation.
The setup of the energy market in Texas makes it pretty much impossible for providers to adequately weatherize their equipment. The only way for this to happen is for government to mandate adequate preparation for this kind of event.
And while this kind of event is obviously rare, it is only "once in a lifetime" for the very shortest of lives. The 2011 FERC report called it a "once in every 10 years" event, which is uncannily accurate.