I am grateful for the results of this election. So very grateful that enough people engaged in the process to work toward holding this administration accountable for its lack of genuine leadership for the people. I am grateful that character won out in race after race across the country. But, today as I pen these words I am equally filled with grief that Donald Trump, Ken Paxton, Greg Abbott and Dan Patrick were ever elected in the first place.

As I woke up today and saw a clip of Ted Cruz on Facebook saying with his best somber tone, that they will turn Texas around. He wnet on to say that he said this to mourners he encountered at Home Depot as he was shopping. According to him three people approached him almost weeping and in shock that Texas turned blue. Let me break this down for you.

First off, the likelihood that Senator Cruz went to Home Depot to shop for anything for his home is slim to none. If you know about Ted and his posh lifestyle, you know he has people for those menial tasks. He also very likely said he went to Home Depot to be sure to name drop Home Depot because one of the GOP’s largest donors is the owner of the place. Rafael is simply so good at presenting a nonexistent but seemingly true scenario to his listeners that they rarely scrutinize him like I do. But here is the truth about MAGA Republicans like Ted, if one is to believe them, one must scrutinize their every assertion. I believe the most important ground we have won in this election is that when James Talarico tells us he went to Home Depot and ran into average Texans, we will know that he actually did. We won’t need the video evidence (Talarico’s team will likely share it first there anyway). Integrity is what we have been craving for and in this blue wave, across Texas and around the country, we have won it in spades. It will still be messy and difficult but we will get the truth at hello. That is huge for me, for us.

My greatest concern for the people I care about and our country in general, is that too many have lost their personal ability to intellectually engage in life that continues to allow for mature independent thought. Our modern life has made is grossly soft when it comes to processing information. How did Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, Shawn Hannity and others so greatly influence my generation? They presented information as true that we swallowed as such. They presented their take on life packaged as entertainment or as biblical expertise and we took it in with little or no scrutiny. We did this in part we did this because we weren’t aware that people with wealth and platforms of influence could actually tell us things we wouldn’t want to believe. We were the proverbial frogs in the pot on the stove with our intellects slowly being boiled. I seriously believe it is way past time to reclaim our selves

Reality tells us that human beings we are intrinsically wired to think, to question, to evaluate and reason. It is the parent’s goal and intention from their child’s infancy that stimulates thinking, reasoning and good decision making. As a nation we all want leaders with integrity that we can trust but we are losing ground in obtaining those kind of people every single day. I believe it is because we the people have surrendered way too much of our rational, emotional and mental selves to others. We are too focused on aligning perfectly within our tribes and groups and keeping each other corralled within the pale.

We must return to using our own minds to process information and in doing so, let others disagree with us without the need to write them off. But it will require a lot of us. It will first require that we understand our shared humanity. It will require that we rethink how we speak and interact with each other. I think the dark media has schooled us in verbal cruelty that is not intrinsic to who we really are and we might want to evaluate that. I am going to.

In summary, though this decade has taken every ounce of our energy in order for is to stay engaged in life, we have done it. But in all honesty, we have much yet to endure as the realities of what has been done to this country over the last two years play out. We haven’t even started to feel the impacts of DOGE, The Big Beautiful Bill, tariffs and most of all the war that isn’t a war yet. There will be some hard times ahead, maybe even harder than we have known up to now. We will get through them with wise minds and stout hearts. We will.