In Search of Fellowship: Food Trucks, Fitness Facilities, and the High Cost of Community

It started with a video from a woman looking for a community of thinkers.

She wanted to connect with people who were deconstructing Christianity, questioning the Bible, and trying to understand why they no longer believed. She talked about family members who assume that people leave Christianity because they've been hurt by a church, when sometimes the problem is much simpler: the theology doesn't make sense to them, they find parts of it immoral, or they believe the religion has contributed to harm in the world. She wanted people interested in examining biblical narratives, history, archaeology, psychology, and the real-world impact of Christianity. If that sounded like you, she invited you to join her live and become part of the community she was trying to build.

I thought it was interesting. And then I thought about my own relationship with Christianity, which has been complicated for as long as I can remember.

I've been deconstructing Christianity and the Bible since I could read, but nobody told me there was anything wrong with that, so I never left church. I liked the social part. The parties, the community service, the fellowship, the regular gatherings. I wasn't necessarily attending because I had resolved every theological question known to humankind. Sometimes I just wanted to see my people and eat something somebody brought in a foil pan.

So I responded with a confession of my own: I've been deconstructing Christianity since childhood, I like the social part of church, and is that bad? It probably is, I joked, but I like what I like.

Then I told a story about a church I'd visited while looking for something closer to home. It had food trucks before service, a full gym, a coffee shop, and all the makings of a place where I could spend time, meet people, and participate in activities without having to drive across town. I was intrigued. The amenities were promising. The possibilities were endless.

Then they held an anti-abortion service.

And that was that. I never went back.

I thought this was a funny story about a theological skeptic who almost got seduced by a church's amenities package, only to discover that the fine print included a position on reproductive rights that conflicted with her values. Apparently, I had accidentally opened a debate about the ethics of religious participation.

One person explained that sitting in a pew signals acceptance of a church's beliefs and suggested I look into Unitarian Universalists, Quakers, progressive denominations, and other alternatives. The advice itself wasn't unreasonable. The delivery, however, felt a little like being called into the principal's office for enjoying the cafeteria. I had already stopped attending the church! My butt was no longer in the pew OR the gym.

I clarified that I wasn't defending the church's politics. I was looking for something close to home with activities, community service, and people who stay out of women's uteruses, among other things.

Another person announced that they had stopped reading at my question, “Is that bad?” and answered yes, because people's need for community was holding the planet back in the Dark Ages. We could have community without religion, they argued. We didn't need God or the threat of eternal damnation to motivate us to be decent human beings.

The funny thing was that I had answered my own question almost immediately. “It probably is,” I wrote. 😂

But more importantly, I wasn't arguing that religion was necessary for community. I was explaining why I liked the community that churches had built. Those are two different conversations.

I don't need to be convinced that atheists can have friends. I know people can gather, volunteer, eat, dance, sing, and do all manner of wonderful things without believing in God. My question is less philosophical and more practical: Where are the people who will actually show up?

Because I have tried to build community without religion. I have organized gatherings and suggested regular meetups. People said they wanted to come. They expressed enthusiasm. They seemed to like the idea. And then, for one reason or another, they didn't come.

It's a familiar problem. Everybody wants community until community requires putting on pants, leaving the house, and following through on a plan.

At some point, I decided to try a run club. I don't particularly enjoy running, but I was told that some people walked and others took shortcuts. This seemed promising. I could participate in an activity, meet people, and perhaps establish the kind of regular social connections I was looking for.

I was out here treating hobbies like a necessary evil in the pursuit of fellowship.

Unfortunately, the walking situation was not as advertised.

I would walk, sometimes take the shortcut, and still arrive last. By the time I got there, everyone had already started conversations. I had missed the beginning of whatever story was being told, so I was left trying to figure out who we were talking about and why everybody was laughing. The social event had started without me, and I was essentially arriving late to a conversation that had no convenient entry point.

Then came the group picture.

One day, someone needed to leave early, so the group decided to take the picture before that person left. Understandable enough, except that I was still walking. When I finally returned, I asked when we were going to take the picture.

“We already did,” they told me.

WE ALREADY DID?!

WHO IS WE?! 😂

I had joined a group to find community and somehow ended up participating in a social event that required me to complete a physical challenge before I could access the fellowship. By the time I arrived, the fellowship had already begun, and apparently the commemorative photography had concluded.

I wasn't trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. I was trying to make friends.

And it's not as if there aren't other places to go. There's a food truck park near me, for example. People gather there, eat, hang out, and enjoy themselves. On paper, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable place to meet people.

Except most people arrive with their people.

They're there to spend time with friends they've already made, not necessarily to make new ones. Nobody is standing around hoping a random woman will wander over and ask if she can join their table. And while I suppose I could approach a group and introduce myself, I've tried variations of that before. It's awkward trying to figure out whether you're being friendly or interrupting somebody else's evening. You can technically insert yourself into a social situation, but that doesn't mean the situation was designed to welcome you.

There's a difference between a place where people gather and a community that gathers people.

At a food truck park, the gathering is incidental. People come for the food and bring their existing relationships with them. At church, the gathering is part of the point. People return on a regular schedule, participate in shared activities, and have opportunities to become familiar with one another over time. You're not necessarily expected to arrive with your own group of friends. You're allowed to come as a person looking for connection.

That's what I'm after. Not just somewhere to go, but somewhere where showing up by yourself doesn't feel like you've missed the part where everybody else became friends.

That experience helped clarify something I hadn't quite put into words. I need a community with a low barrier to entry. I want to be able to show up without having to be good at a particular activity, share a specific hobby, or prove that I belong before the social part begins. I want to be able to participate in different ways, depending on my interests and availability, while still seeing familiar faces regularly.

And that is one of the things churches do remarkably well. At least, the organizational model does.

Church isn't necessarily organized around a single activity. You don't have to be a runner, a singer, a dancer, or a crafter. You can attend Sunday service, go to a fellowship meeting on Wednesday, volunteer for a service project on Saturday, attend a potluck next month, or join a group outing later in the year. You might not enjoy every activity, but you don't have to. The activities can change while the community remains.

There's a schedule. There's a building. There are people responsible for organizing things. There's a reasonable expectation that Wednesday fellowship will happen on Wednesday, rather than everyone receiving a message at the last minute announcing that the gathering has been moved to Monday. People can plan their lives around recurring events.

And when you keep seeing the same people, relationships have a chance to develop naturally. You don't have to start from scratch every time you want to socialize. You don't have to organize every gathering yourself. You can simply show up and participate.

Churches have infrastructure. They have systems for making community happen.

That infrastructure is precisely what I keep running into trouble finding elsewhere. A group can be full of lovely people and still struggle to maintain consistent gatherings. An activity can be fun and still not provide the kind of community I'm seeking. A group chat can be full of people who enthusiastically agree that everyone should get together, but that doesn't mean anyone will reserve a table or put the date on their calendar.

The difference between wanting community and maintaining community is follow-through.

Of course, churches don't always make participation easy. That promising church, for example, required people to become members before joining its ministries and volunteer opportunities. I had actually looked into participating in those activities even though I wasn't interested in attending the anti-abortion service. But membership meant a formal relationship with an institution whose beliefs I didn't necessarily share. The very structure that made the church appealing also created a barrier to participating on my own terms.

That's the contradiction I'm wrestling with. I appreciate the infrastructure, but I don't necessarily want the theological package that comes with it.

One commenter eventually suggested contra dancing, community choir, and library craft groups. She described how dancing could lead to community dinners and potlucks, and observed that people with “granny energy,” regardless of age, are often the ones who organize community. I appreciated that she seemed to understand what I was getting at. Those are perfectly reasonable places to meet people, and I suspect the granny-energy people are doing some of the Lord's work whether they believe in Him or not.

But those suggestions still illustrate the distinction I'm trying to make. Contra dancing is organized around dancing. A choir is organized around singing. A craft group is organized around crafting. If I don't particularly enjoy the activity, I'm back to trying to make a hobby work because I want the social benefits.

I've already done that. I joined a run club even though I hate running. I was out here treating hobbies like a necessary evil in the pursuit of fellowship, and I still couldn't get in the group picture.

What I want is something broader: a community that offers multiple ways to participate, where the activities provide opportunities to connect rather than serving as the primary price of admission. I want the freedom to attend a volunteer event one week, a potluck the next, and a random social gathering after that. I want to be able to skip the things that don't interest me without losing my connection to the group.

I want a community that doesn't require me to have a hobby. My hobby can be showing up.

This is not a new revelation for me. When I was younger, I used to joke about opening a Christian nightclub. It would have lights, music, dancing, and alcohol. The Bible has plenty to say about drunkenness, but the question of drinking alcohol itself is more complicated. My proposed solution was a wristband or punch card that allowed everyone one or two drinks, after which they were cut off for the evening. Responsible drinking! Social connection! A business model!

Looking back, I was apparently trying to solve community building before I understood how difficult it is to get people to attend a monthly meetup. I wanted an environment where people could gather, have fun, and build relationships without having to agree on every theological question. I was thinking about the experience, the atmosphere, and the opportunities to connect.

Maybe that's why I find it frustrating when people assume that my interest in church community means I'm defending religion. I'm not. I can recognize that religious institutions have done tremendous good and tremendous harm. I can appreciate the food drives, mutual aid, friendships, and organized service while criticizing institutions that support policies I believe hurt people. Acknowledging the good doesn't erase the harm, and acknowledging the harm doesn't mean every positive experience was meaningless.

I don't think every institution must be entirely good to have something worthwhile to offer. But I also don't think the benefits automatically excuse the harm. Each community has to be considered on its own merits, including the consequences of its beliefs and actions.

That is why I left the church with the excellent amenities. The gym was a selling point, not a binding contract. The food trucks were lovely, but they weren't enough to make me overlook the reproductive-rights position. I could enjoy the facilities and still decide the institution wasn't for me.

I just wish finding the alternative were easier.

When people say, “You don't need religion to have community,” I agree with them. But the statement skips over the hard part. Building a dependable community takes organization, continuity, commitment, and people willing to keep showing up. It's not enough to say that people could get together. Somebody has to make the gathering happen, and the group has to keep coming back.

I don't need a community of people who agree with me about God. I'd be happy in a room with devout Christians, atheists, and everyone in between, provided nobody felt compelled to convert or correct the others. I want people who can coexist, do good, have fun, and occasionally eat together without turning every disagreement into a referendum on somebody's character.

I want the fellowship without the theological entrance exam.

And I would prefer not to have to run to earn my place in it.

If I ever open that Christian nightclub, the group picture will be taken only after everyone has returned. There will be food. There will be a reasonable drink limit. The schedule will be consistent. Nobody will be required to enjoy running.

And reproductive rights will not be up for debate.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a gym to find, a food truck to track down, and a community to locate that understands the difference between saying “We should get together sometime” and actually getting together.

Because apparently, the hardest part of finding fellowship is finding people who will show up for it.

Preferably before they take the picture.

The Unwritten Rules of Airplane Etiquette: Who Appointed You Secretary of the Sky?

There is something about boarding an airplane that transforms otherwise reasonable adults into unpaid federal agents of the Department of Other People's Behavior. A person who wouldn't think twice about a stranger wearing sandals at the grocery store suddenly becomes a forensic investigator when someone removes their shoes at 35,000 feet. A passenger who has never read an airline's actual policies will confidently explain what everyone is and is not permitted to do with an armrest. Someone will write a 700-word Facebook post because a stranger reclined their seat two inches. And heaven forbid somebody bring a crying baby aboard. You would think the parents had smuggled a live marching band into the overhead bin.

Apparently, flying does not merely transport us from one destination to another. It transports us into a parallel universe where personal preferences become universal laws, minor inconveniences become moral failures, and everyone believes their interpretation of proper behavior should be binding on the entire cabin. Welcome aboard. Please fasten your seatbelt, return your tray table to its upright position, and prepare to have your character questioned because you have toes.

Let's start with the latest controversy: passengers removing their shoes on an airplane. Someone posts a video of a passenger sitting with bare feet, and suddenly the comment section resembles a town hall meeting about the collapse of civilization. "People have no common decency anymore!" "Keep your nasty feet to yourself!" "They need a sign next to the seatbelt sign telling people to keep their shoes on!" Ma'am, the seatbelt sign is there to communicate a safety requirement. Are we really proposing that the Federal Aviation Administration add a footwear clause because somebody saw an ankle?

Let's establish a few things. Removing your shoes is not automatically a hygiene violation. Feet are body parts, not hazardous materials. Some airlines provide slippers or other amenities on certain longer-haul services, and changing out of your shoes is a perfectly ordinary part of long-distance travel for many passengers. Prolonged sitting can also cause fluid to accumulate in the lower legs and feet. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discusses this as a consideration during long-distance travel, particularly when travel lasts four hours or more, and recommends moving the legs frequently and walking periodically when possible. People with certain risk factors may need additional precautions. That doesn't mean everyone who removes their shoes has swollen feet. It does mean that discomfort and the desire to stretch are plausible explanations for behavior that spectators might otherwise interpret as a character defect.

And removing your shoes is not the same thing as putting your feet on somebody else's armrest, touching another passenger with them, or rubbing them all over shared surfaces. Those are different behaviors. If someone is deliberately smearing bodily residue onto a shared surface, that's a reasonable thing to criticize. If someone is sitting in their own seat with their shoes off, the mere visibility of their feet does not establish that they are doing anything wrong. Now, are there practical considerations? Absolutely. Foot odor can affect nearby passengers. Bare feet touching shared surfaces can create hygiene concerns. Some airlines may have policies governing footwear, and passengers should follow applicable rules. But notice what happened here: we went from discussing specific behavior that might affect other people to treating the absence of shoes as an offense in itself. Those are not interchangeable arguments.

And I have a question for the barefoot brigade: If somebody removes their shoes and keeps their feet in their own space, what exactly is the violation? Is there a measurable hygiene problem? A documented safety issue? A rule the passenger has broken? Or are we dealing with the fact that you personally don't want to see feet? Because you are absolutely entitled to dislike seeing feet. You are not automatically entitled to turn that preference into a universal rule.

Next, we have the armrests, which have somehow become the subject of international negotiations despite being approximately three inches wide. The conventional wisdom is that the middle-seat passenger gets both armrests because the window passenger gets the window and the aisle passenger gets the aisle. I actually think this is a reasonable etiquette convention. The middle seat is generally the least desirable position. You don't have a window to lean against, and you don't have the additional space or easier access to the aisle that the aisle passenger enjoys. Giving the middle passenger priority over both armrests is a small way to compensate for that disadvantage.

But here's the important distinction: this is a social convention, not a universal law of aviation. There is no general FAA regulation assigning the left armrest to one passenger and the right armrest to another. Actual seat configurations vary, and airlines may have different layouts. Yet people discuss the issue as though someone in the middle seat has received a legally enforceable property deed to both armrests. "Middle gets both. That's proper etiquette." "Share, like a normal human being." "Or buy a different seat." "Each person gets one." Somewhere, a man is sitting in 14B with his elbows tucked against his ribs, wondering how his economy-class ticket accidentally enrolled him in a graduate seminar on distributive justice.

The irony is that these debates usually start with a perfectly reasonable question: How can three people share limited space comfortably? But they quickly become arguments over who deserves what, who is being selfish, and who should have paid more money to avoid the problem entirely. My preferred approach is simple: acknowledge the middle passenger's disadvantage, make a reasonable effort to share, and communicate if necessary. You know what else works? Bringing a neck pillow, a blanket, or a jacket that can provide a little extra comfort when the armrest situation isn't ideal. Because some of us are not interested in spending an entire flight negotiating a bilateral armrest treaty. I would rather improvise. The armrest is three inches wide. The argument doesn't need to be three hours long.

Few things unite airplane passengers quite like the belief that the person in front of them has committed a personal offense by reclining their seat. The conversation usually goes something like this: "I paid for my space!" "So did I!" "Nobody needs to recline!" "Then why do the seats recline?" EXCELLENT QUESTION, EVERYONE. WE'RE MAKING PROGRESS.

Let's start with the facts. Seat reclining mechanisms are part of the seat design on aircraft equipped with reclining seats. Their existence doesn't mean passengers should recline without considering the people behind them, but it does mean that reclining is not inherently an etiquette violation. The U.S. Department of Transportation has also recognized that airline seat dimensions and passenger comfort are important issues in its work on airline consumer protection. The practical reality, however, is that seat pitch, seat width, and reclining mechanisms vary across airlines, aircraft, and fare classes.

And this is where context matters. Reclining during a long overnight flight when passengers are trying to sleep is not necessarily the same situation as reclining abruptly during meal service. A passenger using a laptop may be affected differently from someone trying to nap. A person with limited mobility or a medical need may have different comfort considerations. There isn't one magic rule that resolves every situation. A little consideration goes a long way. Recline gradually. Be mindful of meal service. If the person behind you is visibly struggling, a little communication may help.

But the idea that the person in front of you has committed an act of aggression simply by using a feature built into their seat is worth examining. Your discomfort can be real without the other passenger being a villain. Sometimes two people have legitimate needs that conflict because the airline has given them insufficient space. That's a design and capacity problem, not necessarily a personality problem. You can be frustrated by the person reclining in front of you and still recognize that the seat itself is part of the problem. The aircraft manufacturer did not design a cabin with generous personal space and then send an evil recliner to ruin your day. The airline sold both of you tickets.

Now we arrive at one of the most emotionally charged airplane debates: babies who cry. I understand the frustration. A crying baby can be difficult to listen to, particularly during a long flight when you're exhausted and can't easily move away. But a baby crying is not automatically evidence of bad parenting. Babies cannot regulate their emotions like adults. They may be tired, hungry, overstimulated, uncomfortable, or distressed. Changes in cabin pressure during ascent and descent can also contribute to ear discomfort.

The CDC's travel guidance recognizes that pressure changes during air travel can affect the ears, including in children. Swallowing, sucking, or other age-appropriate measures may help alleviate pressure-related discomfort. And while parents can take reasonable steps to comfort a child, they cannot guarantee that the child will never cry. That is not how babies work. If a parent is actively trying to soothe their child, I am not sure what additional punishment the internet believes should be imposed. Should they issue a formal apology to every passenger in rows 12 through 28? Should the captain announce that the family has been placed on probation?

There is a difference between a parent ignoring a child who needs attention and a parent trying unsuccessfully to soothe a distressed child. The sound may be unpleasant in either situation. The circumstances are not the same. We can acknowledge the inconvenience without demanding that parents accomplish the biologically impossible. A public space is shared by people at different stages of life, with different needs and different levels of control over their circumstances. Sometimes that means enduring a few minutes of noise. You are allowed to be annoyed. The baby is not obligated to understand your travel itinerary.

Here is where airplane etiquette becomes especially entertaining. People want other passengers to consider their comfort. Fair enough. But sometimes the definition of consideration is simply, "Please behave in whatever way makes me most comfortable." The problem is that there are dozens of passengers in a cabin, and their preferences can conflict. One passenger wants the window shade open while another wants to sleep. One passenger wants to recline while another wants more knee room. One passenger wants to remove their shoes because their feet hurt while another doesn't want to see bare feet. One passenger wants to talk while another wants silence. One passenger wants to stand up and stretch while another doesn't want anyone moving through the aisle while they are trying to sleep.

If we treat every personal preference as a binding rule, we end up with an impossible set of expectations. The shade must be open and closed simultaneously. Nobody may recline, but everybody must be comfortable. Nobody may make noise, but children must somehow stop being children. Passengers must be able to stretch, provided they never move in a way that anyone finds annoying. Congratulations. We have invented a flight that can only be operated by mannequins.

This is why I think it helps to distinguish between actual rules, reasonable social conventions, and personal preferences. Actual rules include applicable safety instructions, crew directions, and airline policies. Passengers should follow them. Reasonable social conventions include sharing limited space, respecting other people's personal boundaries, avoiding unnecessary noise, and exercising consideration when reclining or using shared facilities. Personal preferences include disliking bare feet, preferring a particular armrest arrangement, wanting the window shade in a particular position, or finding someone else's harmless habits irritating.

The categories can overlap. A personal preference can point to a legitimate concern, and a social convention can become part of an airline's actual policy. But they are not automatically the same thing. The fact that you dislike something does not establish that it violates a rule. The fact that something is customary does not mean every departure from the convention is rude. And the fact that something is permitted does not mean consideration for other passengers is irrelevant. We need all three distinctions if we're going to share a cabin without turning every flight into a courtroom drama.

There is also a useful psychological distinction between experiencing discomfort and interpreting that discomfort as evidence of another person's wrongdoing. Those are separate processes. Psychologists studying social judgment have examined how expectations, norms, and context influence our interpretations of other people's behavior. When someone violates an expectation, we may perceive the behavior more negatively than we would if the same action occurred in a context where we considered it normal.

For example, bare feet at a beach are ordinary. Bare feet on an airplane may be considered unusual by some passengers. The physical feature hasn't changed, but the social meaning assigned to it has. Similarly, someone stretching their legs in a fitness class is unlikely to provoke the same reaction as someone performing the same movement in an airplane cabin. Context matters. So do shared expectations.

But there is an important caveat: this doesn't mean every negative reaction is irrational or that every etiquette complaint is merely a personal bias. Some behaviors really do create hygiene concerns, interfere with others, or violate reasonable expectations. The challenge is determining which situation we're actually dealing with. Consider the difference between these statements: "I find bare feet unpleasant." "I don't want someone else's feet touching my belongings." "I don't want a passenger rubbing their feet on shared surfaces." The first describes a personal preference. The second describes a personal boundary. The third raises a concern about behavior affecting a shared environment. They are different claims and deserve different responses.

When we collapse them into one giant category called DISGUSTING, we lose the ability to discuss what actually happened. And then the conversation becomes less about solving a problem and more about finding people who agree that the other person is gross. Social media is particularly good at rewarding this kind of escalation. A post framed as a public service announcement can attract people who share the same frustration, and each response can reinforce the impression that a personal preference is an obvious, universal standard. A hundred people agreeing that something is gross establishes that a hundred people find it gross. It does not, by itself, establish a universal etiquette rule. Popularity is not the same thing as evidence. Neither is a very enthusiastic comment section.

Since we're discussing evidence, let's be precise. There is research and official guidance concerning several issues relevant to air travel, including prolonged immobility, circulation, pressure-related ear discomfort, cabin safety, and airline seating configurations. The CDC advises travelers on long-distance journeys to move their legs frequently and walk periodically when possible, and it provides guidance on the risk of travel-associated blood clots. The FAA establishes safety requirements and provides guidance concerning passenger conduct and crew instructions. The U.S. Department of Transportation publishes consumer information and rules addressing aspects of airline service, accessibility, and passenger rights. Airlines establish additional policies that may apply to particular flights, seating arrangements, and onboard conduct.

These sources are useful because they help distinguish documented considerations from assumptions. However, there is an important limitation: there is no single scientific study that establishes the definitive etiquette answer for every airplane dispute. Official safety guidance cannot tell us whether the middle passenger morally deserves both armrests. Medical guidance cannot determine whether someone should find bare feet aesthetically acceptable. And the existence of a common social convention doesn't automatically prove that violating it causes harm.

We should be careful not to use the word data as a decorative accessory for our opinions, either. If a claim is about health, safety, or hygiene, we should look for evidence relevant to that claim. If the claim is about courtesy, we should be honest that we're discussing social expectations and competing preferences. The point isn't that etiquette doesn't matter. The point is that we should know what kind of argument we're making. If you want to establish that a passenger's behavior is unsafe, identify the safety concern. If you want to establish that the behavior is unhygienic, explain the hygiene issue. If you want to establish that it is inconsiderate, explain how it affects other people. And if you simply don't like seeing something, you are allowed to say that, too. You just don't get to turn your personal discomfort into scientific evidence by typing it in capital letters.

I don't believe airplane etiquette should be reduced to "Everyone can do whatever they want." That would be a terrible way to share a confined space. Passengers should respect personal boundaries. They should avoid deliberately creating messes or strong odors that affect others. They should follow crew instructions, exercise reasonable judgment, and recognize that their actions can affect people sitting inches away from them.

But consideration must work in both directions. A passenger who removes their shoes because their feet hurt deserves the same basic presumption of good faith as a passenger who prefers to keep theirs on. Someone who reclines their seat should consider the person behind them, but the person behind them should recognize that reclining may be a permitted and ordinary use of the seat. A passenger who needs to stretch should be able to do so without being treated as a public nuisance simply for moving their body.

The goal is not to eliminate every inconvenience. That is impossible. The goal is to minimize unnecessary inconvenience while recognizing that some discomfort is an unavoidable part of sharing space with other human beings. And sometimes, the kindest thing we can do is assume that another passenger may have a reason for doing something we wouldn't do ourselves. Maybe their feet hurt. Maybe they are exhausted. Maybe they have a medical need we cannot see. Maybe they simply have different preferences. We don't need to approve of every choice to treat the person making it with basic respect.

I think the real problem with airplane etiquette debates is not that people have preferences. Preferences are normal. We all have things we like, things we dislike, and behaviors we consider courteous. The problem begins when we assume that our preferences are so obvious, so reasonable, and so universally shared that anyone who disagrees must be inconsiderate, disgusting, selfish, or poorly raised.

Sometimes people really are inconsiderate. Sometimes they disregard reasonable boundaries or behave in ways that affect everyone around them. But sometimes a person is simply doing something we wouldn't do. Those situations deserve different judgments. So, by all means, advocate for reasonable airplane etiquette. Share the armrests. Be mindful when reclining. Respect personal space. Keep your belongings and your body out of other people's space. Follow the rules. Don't deliberately make a shared environment unpleasant.

But perhaps we can stop treating every personal preference as a public emergency. Not every bare foot is a hygiene crisis. Not every reclined seat is an act of aggression. Not every crying baby has negligent parents. Not every middle-seat passenger needs to submit a formal claim for two armrests. And not every person who behaves differently from you has forgotten how to function in society.

Sometimes, the other passenger is inconsiderate. Sometimes, the airline has designed a space that makes everybody uncomfortable. And sometimes, you just don't like seeing somebody's feet. All three things can be true without requiring a 47-comment argument and a petition to Congress.

The objective of airplane etiquette should be to help people share space respectfully, not to ensure that every passenger follows our personal preferences to the letter. Because the next time you board a plane, you will be sharing a cabin with dozens or hundreds of strangers, all carrying their own expectations about what constitutes good manners. You can spend six hours trying to enforce every one of those expectations. Or you can exercise reasonable consideration, respect actual rules, adapt when necessary, and save your energy for the destination.

Personally, I recommend the second option. And if you see me sitting in my seat with my shoes off, wearing socks, and quietly trying to stretch my legs, please know that I am not attempting to dismantle civilized society. My feet might just hurt.

Thank you for flying with Common Sense Airlines. We hope you enjoy your stay at your destination. Please collect your belongings, check your seat pocket for forgotten personal preferences, and leave your unsolicited universal etiquette laws in the overhead bin. They will not be needed on this flight.

Texas Politics, But Let’s Bring the Receipts

The 2026 Texas general election is a reminder that a ballot is much bigger than the presidential or U.S. Senate race at the top. On November 3, Texans will vote on members of Congress, statewide executive offices, judges, legislators, county officials, school officials and local governmental boards. According to the Texas Secretary of State, Election Day is November 3, with early voting running from October 19 through October 30.

I went through my ballot by office rather than simply voting straight down the ticket. That matters because these jobs are fundamentally different. A senator makes federal law. A comptroller produces revenue estimates and administers state tax functions. A judge interprets and applies the law. A county clerk administers records and elections. A school-board member helps oversee public education.

So instead of starting with the question, “Who do I like?” I started with a more concrete one: What experience, record and stated priorities does each candidate bring to the job they are seeking?

That approach led me to the following candidates.

U.S. House, Texas District 2: Shaun Finnie

Shaun Finnie's professional background is concentrated in economics, law and energy-sector finance. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics, a law degree and an MBA in finance and accounting from Northwestern University. Before running for Congress, he worked as an oil-and-gas lawyer and then spent roughly three decades in investment banking, primarily working on energy-sector mergers and acquisitions.

That experience is particularly relevant in a congressional district and a state where energy, economic development, financial markets and household affordability are closely connected. But Finnie's background isn't limited to the private sector. He has served on the John Cooper School Board of Trustees, created an investment club for high-school students and taught personal finance to young Texans for seven years.

His campaign has identified affordability, health care, Social Security and Medicare, education and student debt as major priorities. Taken together, his professional and community record gives voters a fairly direct way to evaluate how his experience could translate into federal policymaking, particularly on economic and energy-related issues.

U.S. Senate: James Talarico

James Talarico comes to the U.S. Senate race after four terms in the Texas House and an earlier career as a public-school teacher. His two years teaching sixth-grade language arts at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio became an important influence on his legislative work, and education has remained one of the central subjects of his time in the Legislature.

According to the Texas Tribune, Talarico introduced nearly 200 bills during his four House terms, with 16 becoming law. Eight of those involved education, child care or workforce development for young people. His legislative record has included measures addressing pre-K class sizes and legislation making Narcan available on school campuses. His earlier Whole Student Agenda also addressed school mental-health services, suicide prevention, financial literacy, civics and sex education.

More recently, Talarico has turned attention toward another issue with statewide implications: the rapid expansion of data centers. In 2026, he proposed additional regulation of data-center development, arguing that communities should have a greater role in determining how that growth affects electricity, water and local infrastructure.

Whatever voters ultimately make of those positions, his record provides something concrete to examine. His public career has been built around education, youth policy and, increasingly, the effects of economic development on communities.

Governor: Gina Hinojosa

Gina Hinojosa brings experience as a Texas House member, attorney and civil-rights and legal-services attorney to the governor's race. Her professional background includes work with AFSCME, Kator Parks & Weiser, Catholic Charities' Office of Immigrant Concerns, Texas Rural Legal Aid and the Equal Justice Center.

In the Texas House, public education has been one of her major policy areas, along with health-care funding, corporate reform and public safety. During the 2026 campaign, she has also put affordability and state economic policy at the center of her platform.

One of her most specific proposals is a $1,500 one-time payment to every Texas household, funded through the state's Economic Stabilization Fund. Her campaign estimated that the proposal would cost approximately $17 billion. The fund stood at approximately $24.8 billion in November 2025, according to the Texas Tribune, meaning the proposal would have drawn down roughly two-thirds of the balance at that point. The proposal would require legislative approval.

Hinojosa has also called for a moratorium on new data centers until lawmakers establish additional community protections and has criticized tax incentives connected to data-center development.

Those proposals are ultimately questions for voters to evaluate. What makes them relevant here is that they are specific enough to examine in terms of cost, funding source, implementation and potential effects rather than simply being broad campaign themes.

Lieutenant Governor: Vikki Goodwin

Vikki Goodwin is a state representative from Austin who won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor in the May 2026 runoff.

The lieutenant governor's responsibilities make legislative experience particularly relevant to this race. The lieutenant governor presides over the Texas Senate and has substantial influence over the chamber's agenda and committee structure. Goodwin therefore would be moving from one legislative chamber to a statewide office with significant authority over the other.

Her existing House record, her positions on state policy and her description of how she would use the lieutenant governor's authority over the Senate provide voters with a record to examine rather than evaluating the office solely through its partisan label.

Attorney General: Nathan Johnson

Nathan Johnson is a third-term state senator from Dallas County and an attorney and mediator with Thompson Coburn. He has served in the Texas Senate since 2019.

The legal component of his background is especially relevant to the Attorney General's Office, which serves as the state's chief legal representative. Johnson has described his campaign as an effort to restore public confidence in the office and has emphasized an anti-corruption platform.

His candidacy has also received support from two former Republican Texas Supreme Court justices appointed by Republican governors. Those former justices have argued that the attorney general's responsibilities should be considered primarily through the legal functions of the office rather than partisan identity. Their endorsement is evidence of their support for Johnson, not an independent determination of his qualifications.

The most concrete part of Johnson's background is the combination of professional legal practice and legislative experience he would bring to an office whose responsibilities are heavily legal in nature.

Commissioner of Agriculture: Clayton Tucker

Clayton Tucker grew up working on his family's ranch in Lampasas and has worked in trade and agricultural policy advocacy. His campaign has emphasized preserving family farms, reducing food costs, addressing chemicals and microplastics, regulating PFAS and examining the growth of data centers.

The Agriculture Commissioner's responsibilities extend considerably beyond the traditional image of farming. The Texas Department of Agriculture administers programs involving food, agriculture, rural economic development and consumer protection. Tucker's agricultural background and policy advocacy therefore correspond directly with several areas overseen by the office.

There is also a legal issue surrounding the race that voters should distinguish from the candidate's policy positions. Texas law requires an Agriculture Commissioner candidate to have been engaged in “the business of agriculture” for five of the previous ten years. Tucker's attorneys have argued that his Republican opponent does not meet that requirement. That is a contested eligibility claim rather than an established fact about the opponent, and it is important to keep that distinction clear when evaluating the race.

Comptroller of Public Accounts: Sarah Eckhardt

Sarah Eckhardt brings experience from both state and county government to the comptroller's race. She has served in the Texas Senate since 2020 and previously served five years as Travis County Judge. Before entering elected office, she worked as a prosecutor.

The comptroller's responsibilities make that combination of experience particularly relevant. The office collects state taxes, manages hundreds of state contracts and produces the revenue estimates that help lawmakers determine how much money is available when writing the state budget.

In other words, the position requires more than familiarity with state politics. It involves public finance, government administration and forecasting. Eckhardt's legislative, county executive and legal experience gives voters several concrete areas from which to assess her preparation for those responsibilities.

Railroad Commissioner: Jon Rosenthal

The Texas Railroad Commission has not regulated railroads since 2005. Its principal responsibility today is regulating the state's oil and gas industry.

Jon Rosenthal is a mechanical engineer, longtime oil-field professional and four-term member of the Texas House. His campaign has focused on issues including oil-field pollution, wastewater disposal and regulation of emerging energy-related infrastructure.

That background gives voters a direct connection between his professional experience and the industry overseen by the commission. His engineering and oil-field experience can be evaluated alongside his legislative record and his stated positions on energy regulation.

General Land Office: Benjamin Flores

Benjamin Flores brings a somewhat different professional background to the General Land Office race. He has approximately 30 years of experience in cybersecurity and compliance, including work focused on protecting county government from fraud and systemic errors.

After moving to Bay City in 2016, he established a 10-acre family business raising heritage-breed pigs. He was elected to the Bay City City Council in 2023 and has served on the Bay City Development Corporation and represented Bay City on the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

That gives voters several different pieces of experience to consider: government compliance, local government, agriculture and regional planning. The relevance of each depends on which responsibilities of the General Land Office a voter considers most important.

Texas Supreme Court

Judicial races require a different kind of examination than executive or legislative races. Judges do not campaign on the same kinds of legislative agendas as lawmakers. Their professional histories, judicial experience, legal specialties and records therefore become especially important.

Chief Justice: Maggie Ellis

Maggie Ellis currently serves on the Texas Third Court of Appeals after being elected in 2024. Her legal background includes private practice, prosecution with the Travis County District Attorney's Office and service as an Administrative Law Judge.

She is board-certified in juvenile law and a certified specialist in child-welfare law. Her courtroom experience has included family law, contracts, federal education law, violent-felony cases and parental-rights proceedings.

That breadth of legal experience gives voters several concrete aspects of her background to examine when considering her candidacy for the state's highest civil appellate court.

Place 2: Chari Kelly

Chari Kelly has served on the Third Court of Appeals since January 2019. Before joining the appellate bench, she worked as a felony prosecutor in Travis and Comal counties and as an assistant attorney general in the Texas Attorney General's Civil Medicaid Fraud Division, where her work included pharmaceutical litigation.

Her combination of appellate judicial experience, prosecution and state-level civil litigation provides a professional record directly connected to the work of an appellate judge.

Place 7: Kristen Hawkins

Kristen Hawkins is the Democratic nominee for Texas Supreme Court Place 7. The certified state ballot lists her against incumbent Justice Kyle Hawkins.

Because this is an appellate judicial race, her legal experience, professional record and publicly available judicial qualifications are more useful measures to examine than broad political rhetoric alone.

Place 8: Gisela D. Triana

Gisela Triana is the Democratic nominee for Texas Supreme Court Place 8. She previously spent more than 23 years as a trial judge across Texas courts, including 14 years as judge of the 200th District Court, and later served on the Third Court of Appeals.

Her experience includes both civil and criminal matters. That combination of lengthy trial-court experience and appellate experience is particularly relevant to the work of the Supreme Court.

One ballot clarification is worth making: Triana belongs in this Supreme Court section. The Texas Secretary of State's certified ballot lists her for Supreme Court Place 8, not for Harris Central Appraisal District.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the state's highest court for criminal matters, which makes criminal-law experience particularly relevant when evaluating candidates for the court.

Okey Anyiam has been licensed to practice law in Texas since 1997 and practices criminal defense in Dallas. His campaign says he has represented thousands of individuals in proceedings involving trials, dismissals, plea bargains, rehabilitation and diversion programs. That gives voters a substantial criminal-defense background to examine in relation to the court's jurisdiction.

Audra Riley currently presides over Dallas County Criminal District Court No. 3. She was first elected to that position in 2020 and previously worked as both a prosecutor and criminal-defense attorney. Her experience therefore spans both sides of the criminal courtroom as well as judicial service.

Holly Taylor has spent more than 17 years as a prosecutor and has worked in criminal appeals, public integrity, complex crimes and conviction-integrity matters. She previously served as a staff attorney and rules attorney for the Court of Criminal Appeals, is board-certified in criminal appellate law and has taught advanced legal writing at the University of Texas School of Law.

The certified ballot lists Anyiam for Place 3, Riley for Place 4 and Taylor for Place 9. Those candidates bring different forms of criminal-law experience to the same court, which makes their individual records more useful to examine than treating the three races as interchangeable.

Texas Courts of Appeals

The same principle applies to the Texas Courts of Appeals. Appellate judges work from the records created in lower courts and determine how Texas law applies to those cases. Legal experience, appellate experience, written opinions, trial experience and professional standing therefore provide useful information for voters.

My selections include Jerry Zimmerer for Chief Justice of the 15th Court of Appeals, along with Thomas Baker for Place 2 and Marc Meyer for Place 3.

For the First Court of Appeals, my selections include Veronica Rivas-Molloy for Place 3, Julie Countiss for Place 4 and Amparo Guerra for Place 5.

For the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, they include Sarah Beth Landau for Chief Justice and William Demond for Place 7.

The Texas judicial-race information I reviewed identifies these candidates as Democratic nominees in their respective races. But party identification tells only part of the story in judicial elections. For these positions, I would pay particular attention to actual appellate experience, years practicing law, trial experience, written opinions, judicial records where applicable, State Bar standing and any publicly documented disciplinary history.

Harris County Courts and Government

The farther down the ballot you go, the easier it becomes to overlook races that can have very direct effects on everyday government.

My ballot includes candidates for Harris County Attorney, County Clerk, District Clerk, Treasurer and County Judge, along with civil courts at law, criminal courts at law, probate courts, district courts, the Harris County Department of Education, Emergency Services District 9, municipal utility districts, Klein ISD, the North Harris County Regional Water Authority, the Old Town Spring Improvement District and other local offices.

These positions are not interchangeable. A criminal-court judge's professional record should be examined differently from a county clerk's. A school-board candidate should be evaluated through education governance, budgets and oversight. A municipal utility district candidate should be examined through water infrastructure, contracts, finances and district administration.

For example, the Harris County election information identifies Erica Davis as the Democratic nominee for Harris County Department of Education Place 5 and Silky Joshi Malik as the Democratic nominee for Place 7. It also identifies Teneshia Hudspeth as the Democratic nominee for County Clerk.

The county judicial candidates on my list include Abbie Kamin, Sonia Lopez, Ebony Williams, LaShawn Williams and Manpreet Singh for Civil Courts at Law.

For Criminal Courts at Law, my list includes Alex Salgado, Juanita Jackson, Sedrick Walker II, Ashley Guice, Raul Rodriguez, Yahaira Quezada, Tonya Jones, Matthew Perez, Carlos Aguayo, Shannon Baldwin, David Fleischer, Kelley Andrews, Andrew Wright, Erika Ramirez and Toria Finch.

For Probate Courts, the candidates are Jessica Phillip, Jerry Simoneaux, Pamela Medina and Jason Cox.

The District Court candidates on my list are Anne Morrow, Rabeea Collier, Tanya Garrison, Stephanie Morales, Julia Maldonado, Katherine Thomas, Andrea Beall, Tamika Craft, Beau Miller, Beverly Armstrong, Brian Warren, Alyson Almaguer, Chris Morton, Josh Hill, Lauren Reeder, Angela Lancelin, Angela Graves-Harrington, Janice Berg, Hilary Unger, Sandra Peake, Lori Chambers Gray, Cory Sepolio, Dedra Davis, Damiane Curvey, Christine Weems, Donna Roth, Gloria Lopez, Linda Marie Dunson, Sonya Heath, Germaine Tanner, Teresa Waldrop, Samantha Davis, Michelle Moore, Leah Shapiro, Veronica Nelson, Tiffany Hill, Ramona Franklin, Breanna Schwartz and the other candidates listed on the certified ballot for the applicable districts.

The sheer number of judicial and local-government races is exactly why I think a candidate-by-candidate review is more useful than relying on assumptions about an entire ticket. These offices have different legal responsibilities, different budgets and different forms of authority. The relevant experience for one position may have little bearing on another.

What I Am Actually Looking For

Taken together, the candidates on my list reflect a particular way of approaching a long ballot. I am not trying to reduce every race to Democrat versus Republican, and I am not treating incumbent versus challenger as a shortcut for deciding who belongs in office.

I am looking for documented evidence that is relevant to the actual job.

For executive offices, that means looking at management experience, policy proposals, budgets, regulatory knowledge and previous government service. For legislative offices, it means examining bills introduced and passed, committee work, votes and stated policy priorities. For judges, it means looking at legal education, years licensed, trial and appellate experience, opinions, courtroom experience, judicial administration and professional conduct. For county and local offices, it means looking at the particular responsibilities of that position, whether those involve elections, public records, finances, infrastructure, courts or education.

It also means separating three things that are often blended together during elections: what is documented, what a candidate promises and what voters think those facts mean.

The first can be researched. The second can be compared with the candidate's actual record and with the legal and financial realities surrounding a proposal. The third belongs to each voter.

That is what makes a long ballot manageable for me. I don't have to know everything about every candidate before I begin. I can start with the office, understand what the job actually does, examine the evidence about the person seeking it and then decide whether that experience and those stated priorities align with what I want that particular office to accomplish.

For me, that is a more useful way to approach a Texas ballot than treating every race as a referendum on the person at the top.

And with early voting beginning October 19 and Election Day on November 3, there is still time to do the same kind of research for the races farther down the ballot.

Sources and verification

The Texas Secretary of State's election calendar is the primary source for the 2026 election dates and deadlines. The Texas Tribune provides additional reporting on candidates and campaigns, while Texas Courts and the State Bar provide primary-source information for judicial and attorney credentials. For local races, county election authorities and the applicable governmental entities provide the most direct information about candidates, districts and office responsibilities.

When Small Numbers Become Big Politics

There is something deceptively powerful about a large number presented without context. When someone tells us that 550,000 people have done something, experienced something, or belong to a particular category, our instinct is to understand 550,000 as a measure of scale. It sounds substantial because, in absolute terms, it is. Five hundred fifty thousand people could fill a large city, and the number is large enough to make almost any issue feel consequential when it appears in a headline or political speech. What is missing from that number, however, is the denominator. Five hundred fifty thousand people is not simply 550,000 people; it is 550,000 people out of some larger population, and that larger population can dramatically change how we understand what the number actually represents.

That distinction is at the heart of a question I have been thinking about while watching the Trump administration's policies and political messaging: What happens when an administration repeatedly places relatively small populations, or relatively specific phenomena, at the center of national political attention? The question is not whether those populations matter. They do. A group does not have to represent a large percentage of the country to deserve equal rights, protection from discrimination, access to government services, or thoughtful public policy. Nor does a small population mean that a problem affecting its members is insignificant. The question is instead one of proportion and political communication. How large is the population being discussed? How common is the behavior or problem being described? How much federal attention is being devoted to it? How much media attention does it receive? How important is the issue to the administration's voters? And, perhaps most importantly, is there evidence that the emphasis is connected to an electoral strategy?

Those questions require separating what the data demonstrates from what the data merely makes possible as a hypothesis.

Transgender Americans provide one of the clearest examples of why this distinction matters. The Williams Institute estimates that approximately 2.8 million Americans age 13 and older identify as transgender, representing roughly 1% of the population in that age range. That estimate includes approximately 2.1 million adults and 724,000 adolescents between the ages of 13 and 17. The percentages differ considerably by age: transgender adults account for approximately 0.8% of adults, while transgender adolescents account for approximately 3.3% of adolescents.

Those numbers become particularly important when the discussion shifts from transgender identity to gender-affirming medical care. "Transgender Americans," "transgender minors," "minors with gender dysphoria," and "minors receiving a particular form of medical treatment" are not interchangeable categories, even though political rhetoric can sometimes move between them quickly. Research examining insurance claims has found that the number of minors receiving puberty blockers or gender-affirming hormones is considerably smaller than the total number of transgender minors, while surgeries among minors have been rare.

That distinction does not tell us whether gender-affirming care is medically appropriate, whether restrictions on it are justified, or what the government should do. Those are questions involving medicine, law, ethics and individual rights. What the numbers do tell us is that the population being discussed changes depending upon which question is being asked. If the subject is transgender Americans, one denominator is appropriate. If the subject is transgender adolescents, another is appropriate. If the subject is adolescents receiving a particular medical intervention, the denominator becomes smaller still. A number can remain technically accurate while the absence of its denominator creates a substantially different impression.

The Trump administration has nevertheless devoted substantial federal attention to transgender policy. On January 20, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing federal agencies to recognize sex according to definitions established in the order and to eliminate federal policies based on what the administration described as "gender ideology." Another executive order issued the same day targeted gender-transition-related medical interventions for minors and directed federal agencies to take steps to restrict federal support for such care.

The fact that the administration has devoted significant attention to a population representing approximately 1% of Americans age 13 and older is therefore not in dispute. The more interesting question is why. One possible explanation is simply that the administration considers transgender policy an important matter of principle and is implementing policies it promised voters it would pursue. Another is that the issue has become highly salient among Republican voters and therefore has electoral value. Those explanations are not mutually exclusive. An administration can sincerely believe an issue is important and also recognize that the issue resonates strongly with its political coalition.

Polling provides evidence that transgender policy is indeed politically salient. Pew Research Center found in February 2025 that 66% of Americans supported requiring transgender athletes to compete on teams corresponding to their sex assigned at birth, while 56% supported banning health-care professionals from providing transition-related care to minors. At the same time, 56% supported laws protecting transgender people from discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. The public therefore does not simply divide into people who care about transgender issues and people who do not. Americans hold distinct opinions about specific policies, and those opinions are politically consequential.

Immigration complicates the idea that the administration's strategy can simply be described as focusing on small populations. Immigrants are not a small share of the American population. Pew Research Center estimated that approximately 51.9 million immigrants lived in the United States in June 2025, representing 15.4% of the country's population. The unauthorized immigrant population is substantially smaller, but Pew estimated that it nevertheless reached approximately 14 million people in 2023, or about 4.1% of the total U.S. population. Neither figure supports the characterization of immigration as an issue involving an exceptionally small population.

What immigration does demonstrate particularly well is the importance of political salience. Before the 2024 election, Pew found that 82% of Trump supporters considered immigration very important to their vote, compared with 39% of Harris supporters. Among Trump supporters, immigration ranked behind only the economy among the issues Pew examined.

Those numbers provide a plausible explanation for why immigration occupies so much political space without requiring us to assume that the administration invented the concern. Its voters already cared deeply about the issue. The administration campaigned on it, and after taking office it pursued policies consistent with those campaign promises. The relationship between voter demand and political messaging is therefore considerably more complicated than a simple top-down model in which politicians manufacture an issue and persuade an otherwise indifferent electorate to care about it.

Geography adds another dimension to the question. Pew's analysis of validated voters found that 69% of rural voters who participated in the 2024 election voted for Trump, compared with 29% who voted for Harris. That does not demonstrate that Trump's immigration or transgender messaging was specifically designed to persuade small-town voters. It does, however, establish that rural voters were an important part of his electoral coalition and that several of the issues emphasized by the administration were particularly salient among his supporters. That overlap is worth investigating, but it should not be mistaken for proof of intent.

Crime presents a similar problem because political rhetoric often begins with individual incidents while public policy requires us to understand broader patterns. A particularly horrifying crime can be completely real and still tell us very little about the overall prevalence of crime in the country. Conversely, a declining national crime rate does not mean that an individual community has no crime problem. Both statements can be true at the same time.

The FBI reported that estimated violent crime in the United States declined 4.5% in 2024, including a 14.9% decline in murder and an 8.9% decline in robbery. The estimates were based on data from agencies representing 95.6% of the U.S. population. Yet crime remains one of the most emotionally powerful subjects in political communication, particularly when individual crimes are connected to immigration.

The important analytical question is not whether crimes committed by immigrants should be ignored. It is whether individual examples are being used to communicate something about the broader prevalence of crime, and whether the underlying data supports that broader implication. If someone says that a particular number of crimes were committed by a particular group, the appropriate response is not to dismiss the number. It is to ask how that number compares with the total number of crimes, the population of the group, and the relevant crime rate. Once again, the denominator determines what the number actually tells us.

Fraud creates a similar problem, although the relevant denominator may be dollars rather than people. The Trump administration has made fraud, waste and government spending a major part of its political messaging and has created a White House "Fraud Ledger" documenting cases and dollar amounts that it says have been identified since January 2025. The administration has highlighted alleged fraud involving Medicaid, hospice care, immigration-related programs, student loans and other areas of government spending.

Here the question becomes whether political communication is emphasizing the number of people involved, the amount of money involved, the percentage of a program's spending involved, or the number of cases identified. A "$500 million fraud case" sounds enormous because $500 million is an enormous amount of money. But if the purpose is to understand how widespread fraud is within a particular program, the relevant calculation may be the amount of suspected fraud relative to the program's total expenditures. The dollar amount matters, but so does the denominator.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Is a Different Kind of Case

Diversity, equity, and inclusion presents a different challenge because it is not a population at all. There is no meaningful number of Americans who can be classified as "DEI people." The term describes a collection of programs, policies and institutional practices intended to address diversity, representation, equal opportunity, discrimination and inclusion.

The Trump administration nevertheless made eliminating federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs a significant policy priority. On January 20, 2025, Trump directed federal agencies to terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility programs and activities to the maximum extent permitted by law and instructed agencies to identify positions, programs, budgets, contracts and grants associated with them. The administration subsequently issued additional directives concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in federal contracting and other areas.

For these policies, therefore, the denominator has to change again. Instead of asking how many people "are DEI," we can ask how much federal spending was associated with these programs, how many federal employees worked in them, how many agencies had dedicated offices, how many contracts or grants were affected, and how many people were directly affected by their elimination.

The distinction matters because political rhetoric can turn an institutional practice into an apparently identifiable political constituency. A diversity initiative at a federal agency, an admissions policy at a university, a corporate training program and a federal contracting requirement may all be described under the same umbrella even though they affect different populations and operate under different legal frameworks. Treating all of them as one phenomenon can make the subject appear more uniform than it actually is.

At the same time, the administration's decision to make diversity, equity, and inclusion a prominent target is itself measurable. We can examine the number of executive actions, agency directives, lawsuits, funding changes and other policy decisions devoted to these programs. We can also examine public opinion about affirmative action, racial discrimination, workplace diversity programs and related policies rather than assuming that all Americans view the issue in the same way.

That makes diversity, equity, and inclusion another useful test of the broader hypothesis. If the administration is devoting significant political attention to institutional practices that affect a relatively limited portion of federal spending or employment, that may tell us something about the symbolic importance of the issue. But it would not, by itself, tell us why the administration chose to emphasize it.

What the Pattern Actually Shows

Looking across these issues makes the original hypothesis more complicated, but also more interesting. The evidence does not support the simple claim that the Trump administration focuses primarily on populations representing less than 1% of Americans. Transgender Americans fit that description reasonably well. Immigration does not. Diversity, equity, and inclusion is not a population at all. Crime and fraud are phenomena that require entirely different denominators.

What these examples do suggest is something broader: political attention does not necessarily correspond to population size. An issue can become politically important because of its symbolic value, emotional resonance, connection to children, relationship to questions of identity or public safety, geographic concentration, or ability to distinguish one political coalition from another.

That brings us to the most difficult part of the investigation: electoral strategy.

It is tempting to look at the concentration of Trump's support among rural voters, the importance of immigration to Trump voters, the salience of transgender issues among Republicans, and the administration's subsequent policies and conclude that these issues were deliberately selected to influence small-town voters. But that conclusion would require evidence we have not established simply by comparing polling numbers.

To demonstrate intentional electoral targeting, we would want to see evidence such as campaign strategy documents, targeted advertising, geographic message testing, statements from campaign strategists, internal polling, fundraising appeals or other contemporaneous evidence showing that the campaign identified particular populations or issues because they were expected to mobilize specific voters.

That distinction matters because political strategy and political conviction can coexist. A politician can genuinely believe a policy is important while also recognizing that the policy is popular with the people who elected them. A campaign can respond to voters' concerns while simultaneously using those concerns to motivate turnout. And voters can genuinely care about an issue while also responding to the way politicians frame it.

The most defensible conclusion, then, is not that the Trump administration has been proven to deliberately manipulate small populations for the purpose of swaying small-town America. The evidence presented here does not establish that motive.

What the evidence does establish is that several issues receiving extraordinary political attention involve populations or phenomena whose numerical scale is easy to misunderstand when absolute numbers are presented without denominators. The transgender population represents approximately 1% of Americans age 13 and older. Unauthorized immigrants represent approximately 4% of the total population according to the most recent comprehensive estimate. Immigrants overall represent more than 15%. National violent crime declined in 2024 even as individual crimes continued to generate legitimate fear and political attention. Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs represent institutional practices rather than a discrete population. And immigration and cultural issues are demonstrably important to Trump's electoral coalition.

Those facts point toward a more nuanced hypothesis than the one with which we started. Perhaps the political power of an issue has less to do with how many people directly belong to the affected population than with what that population or issue represents to everyone else. A relatively small group can become a powerful political symbol precisely because people outside that group have strong opinions about what it means for society, children, public safety, fairness, identity or the future of the country. In that sense, the political importance of a group can be much larger than its demographic size.

That possibility is important because it changes the question from "Why is the administration focusing on such a small number of people?" to something more revealing: "Why does this particular issue generate so much political attention relative to the number of people directly affected, and what evidence is there about the political incentives behind that attention?"

Answering that question requires more than counting people. It requires examining the relationship between population size, policy action, media attention, public opinion and electoral geography. It requires being willing to find evidence that contradicts the original hypothesis. And it requires resisting the temptation to use a denominator merely because it makes a statistic look more or less significant.

Numbers do not tell us what politicians intend. They can, however, tell us when the scale of a political claim deserves closer examination.

So when the next political speech gives us a number that sounds enormous, the most useful question may also be the simplest one:

Out of how many?

That question does not tell us what to think about the issue. It gives us the information we need to think about it for ourselves.

How I Accidentally Ended Up With a Rewilding Theme

I have to laugh at how things sometimes come together without you realizing they’re coming together at all.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to feel like yourself again. That thought eventually turned into the idea for my Re-Wild Challenge invitation, and I made a Reel inviting people to join me. At the time, I was mostly thinking about all the little ways we can reconnect with ourselves through movement, curiosity, adventure, play, and simply giving ourselves permission to enjoy things again.

The Reel ended up being a collection of completely random pieces of my life: travel clips from Las Vegas and Armenia, me standing on cliffs, animals I’ve encountered along the way, and all the other little moments that make up the life I’m actually living. Looking at all of those clips together made me realize that maybe that’s what I mean when I talk about being wild. It isn't necessarily about doing something outrageous. Sometimes it’s just about being engaged enough with your own life to notice what’s happening around you and follow your curiosity.

Then Kirsten Potenza shared her letter about rewilding.

I’ll link her letter here because I don’t want to retell her story when she already told it so beautifully. What caught my attention was the idea of rewilding as something that happens when we allow what was already there to return. In conservation, that can mean removing some of the things that have restricted a landscape and allowing nature to find its way again.

That idea gave me another way to think about what I had already been trying to articulate.

And then, because apparently my brain was not finished with this subject, I watched Hoppers on the plane.

I wasn't sitting there thinking, Ah yes, this perfectly explains my Re-Wild Challenge. 😂 It was much less deliberate than that. I was just watching the movie, and somewhere along the way I started noticing the same thread again: the relationship between humans and the natural world, what happens when we interfere with it, and the difference between controlling something and allowing it to exist as it is.

By this point, I had to laugh because rewilding seemed to be following me around.

Maybe that’s what happens when an idea gets into your head. You start noticing it everywhere. The concept was in Kirsten’s letter. It was in the movie I happened to watch on an airplane. It was in the animals I kept photographing during my travels. It was even sitting underneath the whole reason I wanted to create this challenge in the first place.

And the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea that rewilding doesn't have to be some dramatic return to a former version of yourself. I don't think any of us can go backward, and I'm not sure we should want to. Life changes us. The things we experience change us. We grow, we learn, we lose things, we gain things, and sometimes we become so focused on getting through whatever is in front of us that certain parts of us simply don't get as much attention anymore.

That doesn't necessarily mean those parts disappeared.

Maybe they’re more like an overgrown path that hasn't been walked in a while.

And maybe reconnecting with ourselves isn't about building an entirely new path. Maybe sometimes it's about clearing enough of the weeds away to see where the path was all along.

That is what I’m hoping to explore over these ten days.

The challenge itself is intentionally simple. There will be movement, reflection and opportunities to connect with other people, but I don't want it to become another thing you have to perform correctly. I don't want “rewilding” to become another version of self-improvement where we end up measuring whether we're doing it right.

I’d much rather we approach it with curiosity.

What happens when you make a little more room for the things that make you feel like yourself? What happens when you follow an interest that doesn't have an obvious purpose? What happens when you move because it feels good, take the long way somewhere, laugh at something ridiculous, spend time outside, try something you've never tried before, or simply give yourself permission to be interested in your own life again?

I don't know exactly where those questions will lead, and I think that's part of the fun.

So, yes, the Re-Wild Challenge starts September 21, and you're invited.

I'll link the original Reel, Kirsten's letter, Hoppers, and the challenge details below so you can follow all the little pieces that somehow ended up connected in my head.

Because apparently my brain has decided that this is the season of rewilding.

And honestly, I'm pretty curious to see where it goes.

🐺🥁

From the Party of Lincoln to the Modern GOP: How the Republican Party’s Relationship With Black Americans Changed

There are few contradictions in American political history as striking as the evolution of the Republican Party’s relationship with Black Americans. The party founded in the 1850s became the political vehicle for emancipation, Reconstruction and the expansion of Black political rights. Republicans controlled the federal government during Reconstruction, passed the constitutional amendments that abolished slavery and established citizenship and voting protections, and created the political environment in which thousands of Black Americans entered public office. By contrast, Black Americans today overwhelmingly identify with and vote for Democrats. In 2024, Pew Research Center found that 83% of Black voters identified with or leaned Democratic, compared with just 12% who identified with or leaned Republican.

How did a party that once depended on Black voters in the South become a party that receives only a small share of the Black vote? The answer cannot be reduced to the claim that Republicans were always hostile to Black Americans, nor to the equally misleading idea that today's Republican Party is simply the continuation of the party of Abraham Lincoln. The Republican Party changed, the Democratic Party changed, and the racial coalitions supporting both parties changed with them. The transformation took place over more than a century, through the collapse of Reconstruction, the emergence of Jim Crow, the civil-rights movement, the Southern realignment and the rise of modern conservatism.

To understand where the Republican Party is today, it is therefore necessary to begin with where it started.

The Republican Party's original relationship with Black Americans was fundamentally different from the one we see today. Republicans were the driving force behind the Union victory over slavery and, after the Civil War, the congressional movement to redefine citizenship and protect the rights of formerly enslaved people. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the 14th established national citizenship and equal protection, and the 15th prohibited denying the right to vote based on race. During Reconstruction, Republicans also supported federal efforts to protect Black citizens from violence and to establish political and educational institutions for formerly enslaved people.

Black Americans responded by participating in the Republican political coalition on an unprecedented scale. Hiram Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, became the first Black member of Congress in 1870, followed by Joseph Rainey, a Republican from South Carolina, who became the first Black member of the House. During the 1870s, every Black member of Congress was a Republican. Thousands more Black men served in state and local government across the South. The Republican Party of Reconstruction therefore wasn't merely a party that happened to have Black supporters. It was the primary political vehicle through which Black Americans exercised newly acquired citizenship.

But Reconstruction contained the seeds of the political transformation that would eventually separate Black Americans from the Republican Party. White Southern Democrats fiercely resisted Black political participation, using violence, intimidation and political repression to regain control. As federal commitment to Reconstruction weakened, Southern Democrats gradually reestablished political dominance, while Black voting and representation collapsed. By the end of the 19th century, the South had become a one-party Democratic region in which Black citizens were systematically disenfranchised.

This is an important point because it complicates the simplistic modern argument that Republicans and Democrats have always occupied their current ideological positions. They did not. The Democrats who dominated the Jim Crow South were not the same coalition that would later become the party of the modern civil-rights movement, just as the Republicans who fought for Reconstruction were not the same coalition that would eventually become the modern conservative Republican Party. The parties did not merely change their policies; their geographic bases, ideological factions and voter coalitions changed dramatically.

For much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Republican Party increasingly became associated with industrial capitalism, business interests and a more limited conception of the federal government's role in the economy. At the same time, Black Americans in the South were trapped under segregation and disenfranchisement, while the Republican Party's willingness to use federal power to protect Black political rights diminished. This did not mean Republicans suddenly became the architects of Jim Crow. Southern Democrats were overwhelmingly responsible for constructing and maintaining the legal system of segregation and disenfranchisement. But the Republican Party's retreat from Reconstruction meant that the party that had once been the primary protector of Black political rights was no longer providing the same level of political protection.

That history set the stage for the enormous realignment that began during the 20th century. As the civil-rights movement gained strength, the Democratic Party increasingly became the national home of civil-rights legislation. President Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces in 1948, and President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Yet the story is not one in which Democrats simply supported civil rights while Republicans opposed them. Republicans played a crucial role in passing both landmark laws. In the Senate, the 1964 Civil Rights Act faced a lengthy filibuster led by its opponents, and 27 Republicans joined 44 Democrats to invoke cloture, allowing the legislation to proceed. The final Senate vote was 73–27. The Voting Rights Act similarly received substantial bipartisan support, passing the Senate 77–19 after cloture was invoked 70–30.

The significance of the civil-rights era, therefore, was not simply that one party became pro-civil-rights and the other became anti-civil-rights. It was that civil rights increasingly divided the existing political coalitions along new ideological and geographic lines. Southern Democrats who had defended segregation found themselves increasingly at odds with the national Democratic Party, while Republicans themselves became divided between moderates who supported civil-rights legislation and conservatives who opposed expanding federal power.

The 1964 presidential election illustrated this transformation. Republican nominee Barry Goldwater opposed the Civil Rights Act on constitutional and federalism grounds, even though many Republicans supported the legislation. Goldwater carried several Deep South states that had been reliably Democratic for generations. His campaign demonstrated that conservative Republicans could begin making electoral gains among white Southern voters, even though the Republican Party had historically been weak in the region.

Richard Nixon's campaigns later built upon this emerging realignment. Nixon did not campaign as an openly segregationist candidate, but he placed considerable emphasis on "law and order," social stability and opposition to disorder at a moment when the country was experiencing urban unrest, protests and rising crime. Historians have debated the extent to which Nixon's rhetoric represented deliberate racial "coding," but there is substantial evidence that racial backlash was part of the political environment surrounding the Republican realignment. The strategy allowed racial anxieties to be incorporated into a broader conservative message without relying on the explicit segregationist language that had characterized earlier Southern politics.

This distinction is important because law-and-order politics became about more than crime. It helped establish a broader conservative framework for understanding social problems. Rather than emphasizing racial inequality primarily through the lens of structural discrimination and government responsibility, conservatives increasingly emphasized individual responsibility, family stability, personal behavior and equal treatment under formally race-neutral laws. Those ideas appealed to many Americans for reasons that had nothing to do with race, but they also became intertwined with debates over urban unrest, welfare, drugs and crime that disproportionately affected Black communities.

The War on Drugs illustrates both the reality of this transformation and the danger of reducing it to a single Republican president. Richard Nixon did help establish the modern political framework of the War on Drugs, but the dramatic expansion of punitive drug enforcement and incarceration occurred over several administrations and included substantial Democratic support. The Reagan administration expanded the federal government's drug-enforcement efforts, and later Democratic and Republican administrations continued many of the same policies. Research has consistently documented significant racial disparities in drug arrests and incarceration, even though Black and white Americans have reported relatively similar rates of illicit drug use.

That doesn't mean every law-and-order voter was motivated by racism, nor does it mean Republicans invented mass incarceration. It does mean that criminal-justice policy became an important component of a political coalition whose relationship with Black America was increasingly adversarial. Policies could be described in race-neutral language while producing consequences that were anything but racially neutral. At the same time, conservatives offered an alternative explanation for racial inequality: rather than focusing primarily on systemic barriers, they increasingly emphasized individual choices, cultural conditions and personal responsibility.

That philosophical divide remains visible in the Republican and Democratic coalitions today. Pew Research Center found that Black Republicans are substantially more likely than Black Democrats to emphasize individual racist acts rather than systemic racism when explaining racial inequality. Among Black Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, 59% said individual racist acts were the bigger problem, compared with 41% of Black Democrats and Democratic leaners. That doesn't mean Black Republicans believe racism does not exist. Rather, it illustrates a fundamental disagreement over what produces racial inequality and what role government should play in addressing it.

The Southern realignment ultimately transformed the Republican Party's electorate. White Southern voters who had once overwhelmingly supported Democrats increasingly moved toward Republicans, while Black voters moved in the opposite direction. This transformation was gradual rather than instantaneous, unfolding across several decades and reflecting a combination of civil-rights politics, racial attitudes, religion, economic interests and conservative ideology. By the end of the 20th century, the old partisan geography of the South had essentially been reversed.

The result was a remarkable historical inversion. The party of Lincoln, Reconstruction and the first generation of Black members of Congress became increasingly dependent on a coalition dominated by white conservatives, while the Democratic Party became the dominant political home for Black voters. Neither party simply swapped identities overnight. Instead, both underwent a long process of ideological and demographic realignment.

The Republican Party's relationship with Black Americans therefore cannot be understood as a simple story of a party that was once good and became bad, or a party that was always secretly the same. The historical record is more complicated—and ultimately more revealing.

The Republican Party of Reconstruction genuinely transformed American citizenship. Republicans abolished slavery, established constitutional protections for Black Americans and helped create the conditions for unprecedented Black political participation. Black Americans had very real reasons to view the Republican Party as the party of freedom and political citizenship.

But Reconstruction collapsed, and the Republican Party's commitment to protecting Black political power weakened. For decades, the South became dominated by segregationist Democrats, while Republicans increasingly developed into a party centered on business interests, limited government and eventually modern conservatism.

The civil-rights revolution then shattered the old political alignments. Democrats increasingly embraced federal civil-rights enforcement, while Republicans became divided over the appropriate role of federal power. As white Southern voters moved toward Republicans and Black voters moved toward Democrats, the racial coalitions of the two parties were transformed.

Law-and-order politics and the War on Drugs contributed to that transformation, but they were pieces of a much larger ideological shift rather than a single Republican conspiracy to target Black Americans. Similarly, the Democratic Party's eventual role as the dominant party among Black voters does not erase its history of segregationist Southern Democrats.

The most important lesson is that political parties are coalitions, not immutable identities. The Republican Party that fought the Civil War and passed the Reconstruction Amendments is not the Republican Party that emerged from the Southern realignment. The Democratic Party that defended segregation in the Jim Crow South is not the Democratic Party that emerged from the civil-rights movement.

The modern partisan racial divide is therefore not a contradiction that can be resolved by choosing which party was "always" the good one. It is the product of more than a century of political evolution.

The better question isn't, "Which party has always been on the right side of history?"

It is: How did the coalitions change, why did they change, and what did those changes mean for the people whose political power was at stake?

Once the history is viewed that way, the journey from the Republican Party of Reconstruction to today's Republican coalition—and from the segregationist Democratic South to today's Democratic coalition—becomes much easier to understand.