Bigger or Better: Life outside of Texas

When nothing is true, anything is possible.             An environment that is buried in misinformation, propaganda, lies, and conspiracy theories is an environment where nothing is true.  Efforts by independent organizations and individuals to research and fact-check are quickly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of misinformation.  Truth takes effort to find, establish, and defend, while lies – especially when the lies don’t need to be consistent or make sense, they just need to take up time and space – can be generated with abandon .   Even when a lie is repeatedly debunked, it can continue to cause problems.  If you repeat the same lie over and over and over and over again, it eventually becomes accepted as true, or at least gains a sheen of validity. When nothing is true, those with power can do as they please.  When nothing is true, then political, economic, and religious elites have no external or internal checks on their actions.  Tyrants, oligarchs, and religious extre

Love is a weird state, but I'd rather be in Love than anywhere else. As long as Mark is there with me. The Young Women in our church congregation threw a Valentine's dance this weekend as a fundraiser for Girls' Camp. Mark suggested that we go, and who am I to turn down a man's offer to dance, especially when he is the Love-of-My-Life? So armed with that-one-free-dance-lesson-we-had-together-last-year, we showed up to show off. Just Kidding. We showed up to have fun. Which is what we had. We slow-danced, we upbeat-danced, we swing-danced, and after a rough start, we sort-of latin-danced. Or at least we danced while a Latin song was playing. That's like the same thing, right? Altogether we are dance novices, but I was happy, and he was happy, and nobody told us to leave the dance floor. So it was a success. We retreated to a table to snack on some goodies, and got recruited to play a version of The Newly-Wed Game. Which I've never played before, and