Watching politics evolve (or devolve) over the past few decades has been an out of body experience. Of course, social media has been made a lot of this easier to see than before, but it isn’t the cause of any of this. The seeds have always been there.

Two things on social media brought this to a head this week for me. One was a church sign that said that faith trumps facts. I’m paraphrasing there, but that was the basic message. We’ve been in a fact free environment for quite awhile, but the difference is pretty clear. It’s not that we can’t agree on policy. That’s as old as time itself. It’s not even that we can’t agree on facts. That’s more recent, but it has been going on for awhile. It’s that we can’t even seem to discuss issues that most people would agree are real issues.

The state of Texas has been ground zero for this phenomenon longer than most of the country. We’ve passed looser gun laws seemingly every term. We’ve protected girls in bathrooms. We’ve banned transgender kids from playing sports. We’ve passed stiffer and stiffer abortion laws. It isn’t so much that these policies are wrong (which they are). It’s that they don’t have any impact on 99 percent of the people. Bad policy is bad policy. These policies are a waste of everyone’s time.

It is disheartening to not only lose a debate over a key issue, but to fail to have the issue addressed at all. Three years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes. Since then I’ve spent time with six different doctors to manage the impacts of that disease. I’m not sure if single payer really is better than a private/public mixture of insurance. I certainly think after dealing with my own stuff that I’d prefer single payer. I don’t mind opposition. I mind not even having the conversation.

The same is true for the infrastructure in the state. Is is better to have highways that stretch across 20 lanes or is it better to have a robust public transportation system that includes buses, commuter trains, light rail, and other options? Again, it isn’t that some have differing opinions. It is that we can’t seem to have the conversation.

Another couple of memes brought this home. One had someone question the CDC and asked why we don’t do our own research. Another seemed to indicate that progressives were somehow ushering in the beginning of fascism. We could be having a robust debate about how to properly implement the CDC’s recommendations. Instead, we have Earle doing a Google search and declaring himself smarter than the people that have studied disease and its spread patterns for their entire lives.

I’ve spent time here on education and matters of faith. It’s frustrating for some, but at least there are conversations. We can’t fix the problems of the 21st century without conversations. We can’t debate the environment, education, safety protocols, infrastructure, or anything else if we can’t even acknowledge that they are issues. When did this all happen because I don’t remember it always being this way?