Author: citybaseblog

Evictions in Texas: The Last Off-Ramp Before Homelessness — and Why Communities Must Treat as Risk Management

.Reading time 7 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

Evictions are often discussed as housing disputes. In reality, they are something far more consequential: the final off-ramp before homelessness. Once a household reaches the point of eviction, nearly every stabilizing force—savings, credit, social ties, school continuity, employment flexibility—has already been weakened. If eviction prevention fails, the system shifts from prevention to crisis response, where costs rise sharply and outcomes worsen.

Across Texas, eviction filings have climbed above pre-pandemic levels, even in economically strong regions such as Houston, Dallas, and Austin. This is not a localized failure. It is a warning sign that many households are living one missed paycheck away from displacement—and that communities are reacting too late.

The central lesson is simple but uncomfortable: by the time homelessness appears, the policy failure has already occurred.

Eviction as the Final Preventable Step

Homelessness is expensive, visible, and politically urgent. Evictions are quieter—and therefore easier to ignore. Yet eviction is where intervention is most effective.

Once an eviction is filed:

  • Housing options narrow dramatically
  • Credit and rental histories are damaged
  • Families often double up or move into unstable situations
  • Children experience school disruption
  • Stress and health risks spike

After displacement, public systems step in—shelters, emergency healthcare, school mobility services, law enforcement responses—but by then, costs have multiplied and choices have shrunk.

Eviction prevention is not housing charity; it is risk management.

Why Staying Ahead Matters: The Cost Curve Is Not Linear

One of the most important reasons to stay ahead of eviction pressure is that costs rise exponentially once eviction occurs.

  • A few hundred or thousand dollars in short-term rental assistance can stabilize a household
  • A court filing creates long-term barriers to housing
  • Shelter placement costs far exceed prevention costs
  • Rehousing displaced families takes months, not days

Communities that intervene early are not “spending more on housing.” They are avoiding far larger downstream obligations in homelessness response systems.

The Texas Eviction Environment: Speed Without Cushion

Texas’s eviction process moves quickly. Notices are issued within days of nonpayment, and cases proceed rapidly through Justice of the Peace Courts. Most tenants are unrepresented. Many landlords file automatically.

Speed itself is not the problem. Speed without cushioning is.

When households lack savings, when rents rise faster than wages, and when communication breaks down, the legal system becomes a blunt instrument—efficient, but destabilizing.

Who Can Intervene — and Why Early Action Is Everything

Because eviction is a process, there are multiple chances to change the outcome. But those chances disappear quickly.

Renters: The Earliest Warning Point

Renters are the first to know when trouble begins—but often the last to seek help. Fear, shame, or confusion delays action until the problem has hardened into a legal case.

Staying ahead means:

  • Making help visible before notices are posted
  • Using trusted institutions (schools, churches, utilities, employers) to flag assistance early
  • Replacing fragmented systems with simple, centralized intake

Early renter engagement is the highest-return intervention in the entire system.

Landlords: The Fork in the Road

Landlords control whether eviction becomes a first response or a last resort.

  • Small landlords often want resolution but lack liquidity
  • Large operators rely on standardized and often automated filing practices

Staying ahead requires giving landlords credible alternatives:

  • Mediation that protects their rights
  • Payment plans with court recognition
  • Rapid, reliable rental assistance

When eviction is the only structured option, it will be used—even when everyone loses.

Nonprofits: Most Effective Before Court, Not After

Nonprofits are prevention specialists, not emergency responders. Their greatest impact occurs before eviction filings, when problems are still solvable.

Local governments that stay ahead:

  • Fund nonprofits predictably, not episodically
  • Narrow focus to pre-filing intervention
  • Prevent intake overload

Once cases reach judgment, nonprofits are forced into damage control rather than stabilization.

Courts: Process Can Prevent Displacement

Courts are not housing agencies—but they shape outcomes through process design.

Staying ahead does not require changing the law. It requires:

  • Clear, plain-language notices
  • Automatic referrals to mediation or assistance
  • Short continuances tied to payment plans
  • On-site navigators to prevent default judgments

A fair, navigable process reduces unnecessary displacement without favoring either side.

Legal Aid: Small Interventions, Big Effects

Even brief legal advice can:

  • Prevent improper filings
  • Formalize payment agreements
  • Avoid default judgments

Because capacity is limited, the most effective approach is early triage, not universal representation.

Schools, Employers, and Utilities: The Early Sensors

Housing instability often appears here first:

  • Attendance issues
  • Payroll advances
  • Utility arrears

Communities that stay ahead build referral pathways, not enforcement mechanisms, turning early warning signs into early help.

Why Local Governments Must Lead — Even Without New Authority

Local governments often hesitate, citing limits under state law. But eviction prevention does not require sweeping new powers. It requires coordination, timing, and discipline.

Cities and counties already pay for eviction outcomes:

  • Homelessness services
  • School mobility costs
  • Emergency medical care
  • Public safety responses

Staying ahead is not mission creep. It is cost avoidance and system stewardship.

Practical Ideals for Staying Ahead of the Challenge

  1. Treat eviction filings as an early warning metric, not a background statistic
  2. Shift resources upstream, before court filings occur
  3. Design systems for speed, matching the speed of eviction timelines
  4. Preserve market function through mediation, not moratoria
  5. Expand housing supply intentionally, avoiding policies that tighten markets further

Conclusion: The Window Is Narrow—but It Exists

Eviction is the last moment when homelessness is still optional.

Once a household is displaced, policy choices narrow and costs explode. Staying ahead is not about preventing every eviction; it is about ensuring that temporary hardship does not become permanent instability.

The choice for Texas communities is not whether to pay for housing instability.
They already do.

The real choice is whether to pay early, quietly, and effectively—or later, loudly, and at far greater cost.

The Wonder of a Child They Did Not Yet Know

.Reading time 6 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI
Dedicated to my Brothers in Tuesday Morning Bible Study

There is something almost unbearable in the beauty of a newborn. A child arrives small, warm, breathing, and entirely dependent—yet greeted with celebration, wonder, and hope far larger than the tiny chest that rises and falls. Every birth carries this paradox: fragility wrapped in promise. We celebrate not because we know what this child will become, but because the child is. The miracle is not prediction; it is presence.

Now imagine that wonder multiplied beyond comprehension.

A baby is born in obscurity—no palace, no procession, no formal announcement to kings or scholars. He arrives to ordinary parents, in borrowed space, welcomed first by shepherds whose lives were defined by long nights and watchful waiting. The scene is quiet, almost hidden. And yet heaven leans in. Angels sing not because the world understands, but because the world is about to be changed.

Those who held Him did not know His sermons. They could not imagine His parables, His compassion for the broken, His confrontations with power, or His unflinching march toward sacrifice. Mary could not yet hear the cadence of the Beatitudes in His voice. Joseph could not see Him overturning tables or calming storms. The shepherds returned to their fields unaware they had looked upon the One who would redefine greatness itself.

That is part of the awe.

We are accustomed to celebrating greatness after it proves itself—after the victories, the titles, the legacy. But this child was celebrated before any of that. Loved before achievement. Revered before recognition. Worshiped before a single public word was spoken. The joy surrounding His birth was not rooted in résumé but in revelation: that God had chosen to come near not as thunder or fire, but as a child who needed to be fed, carried, and protected.

In those first thirty years—mostly silent in Scripture—He lived an ordinary life. He learned to walk, to speak, to work with His hands. He knew scraped knees and long days. He waited. And in that waiting, He dignified the hidden years of human life—the years when nothing seems remarkable, when faithfulness is quiet and obedience goes unseen.

Then, suddenly, everything changes.

The child becomes the teacher. The baby becomes the healer. The One once cradled in arms stretches those same arms toward the sick, the sinner, the forgotten. And finally, the child celebrated at birth becomes the Man rejected at death—only to rise again and redefine life itself.

Looking back, the nativity takes on a breathtaking depth. The joy of that night was not naïve; it was prophetic. They celebrated without full understanding, and yet their celebration was entirely justified. The baby they adored would become the axis of history, the answer to longing, the bridge between God and humanity.

Perhaps that is why the birth still moves us.

Every Christmas, we stand where they stood—marveling at a child whose future we now know, yet whose humility still surprises us. And in doing so, we are reminded that God often does His greatest work in small beginnings. That redemption may arrive quietly. That hope can be wrapped in swaddling cloths. And that the most world-altering life ever lived began the same way all of ours do: as a baby, celebrated in love, before the fullness of His purpose was revealed.

That is the awesomeness of the birth—not merely that a child was born, but that eternity entered time without fanfare, trusting humanity enough to begin in our arms.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving

Gracious and loving God,
We thank You for the gift of Your Son—
for the miracle of His birth,
when heaven touched earth in the quiet cry of a newborn child.

Thank You that You did not come to us in power alone,
but in humility;
not in distance, but in closeness;
not in fear, but in love.
You entrusted Yourself to human hands,
to a mother’s care,
to a father’s protection,
to the slow, ordinary years of growing and waiting.

We thank You for Jesus—
for His life that showed us how to love,
for His words that still our storms,
for His mercy that welcomes the broken,
and for His obedience that carried Him all the way to the cross.

Thank You that the child once celebrated in wonder
became the Savior who carried our sin, our sorrow, and our hope.
Thank You for the resurrection that assures us
that love is stronger than death
and light overcomes the darkness.

Help us to receive Him anew—
not only with the joy of celebration,
but with lives shaped by gratitude, humility, and faith.
May we cherish the small beginnings You place before us,
trust Your purposes even when we do not yet understand,
and walk each day in the light of Your grace.

We offer this prayer with thankful hearts,
in the holy and precious name of Jesus Christ,
Your Son, our Savior.

Amen.

Silent Night: The Meaning of a Song the World Keeps Singing

.Reading time 6 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

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“Silent Night” — Lyrics

Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
’Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child.
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight,
Glories stream from heaven afar,
Heavenly hosts sing: Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born,
Christ the Savior is born.

Silent night, holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth,
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth.

Silent Night: The Meaning of a Song the World Keeps Singing

When Silent Night was first sung on Christmas Eve in 1818, it arrived without fanfare. There was no great choir, no organ swelling beneath vaulted ceilings. The instrument most associated with the moment—a simple guitar—stood in for a broken organ in a small Austrian village church. A young priest’s poem and a schoolteacher’s melody met necessity, not ambition.

Nothing about that night suggested permanence. And yet the song endured.

It endured because Silent Night never tried to do too much. It did not explain Christmas. It did not argue doctrine. It simply named the moment at the heart of the Christian story: stillness, vulnerability, and peace entering the world quietly.

A Song Born of Quiet Necessity

Joseph Mohr, the priest who wrote the lyrics, had lived close to hardship. Franz Xaver Gruber, who composed the melody, was a village schoolteacher accustomed to making do. Their collaboration was practical and pastoral rather than artistic in the modern sense. The result was a hymn that ordinary people could sing without strain, remember without effort, and carry with them without instruction.

That simplicity is not accidental. The song mirrors its subject. The birth it describes is not dramatic. The setting is modest. The revelation unfolds without spectacle. Heaven does not interrupt the world—it enters it.

A Brief Turn Through History

Nearly a century later, during World War I, Silent Night surfaced unexpectedly in a very different setting. Letters written by soldiers in December of 1914 document a brief, unofficial pause in fighting on parts of the Western Front, during which familiar carols—including Stille Nacht—were sung across opposing trenches.

The moment was limited and fragile. It changed nothing strategically. The war continued.

It is remembered not because it altered history, but because it confirmed something already true about the hymn: Silent Night does not command events. It accompanies them.

With that, the story rightly returns to the song itself.

What the Hymn Is Really Saying

At its core, Silent Night makes a quiet but radical claim: that the decisive moment in human history did not arrive with noise, power, or force.

God enters the world as a child who sleeps.

The hymn lingers not on the politics of the time or the dangers beyond the stable, but on calm—heavenly peace—as something present even when circumstances remain uncertain. The peace the song names is not the absence of threat; it is the presence of God within it.

That distinction explains why the hymn has never felt outdated. Every generation understands unrest. Every generation recognizes the longing for a peace that does not depend on control.

The Power of Restraint

What Silent Night refuses to do is as important as what it does.

  • It does not rush toward resolution.
  • It does not elevate volume or tempo to stir emotion.
  • It does not insist that the listener feel anything at all.

Instead, it creates space.

In that space, listeners are invited—not coerced—to consider a different measure of significance. Greatness arrives quietly. Light does not overwhelm darkness; it appears within it. The world does not stop, but it is momentarily reoriented.

Why the Song Endures

For more than two centuries, Silent Night has survived translation, adaptation, and cultural change because it rests on something deeper than style. Its endurance is rooted in recognition. People hear it and know, instinctively, that it is telling the truth about something essential.

It belongs equally in grand cathedrals and modest living rooms. It can be sung by choirs or whispered by a single voice. It does not demand perfection. It welcomes presence.

A Song for Every Age

Each year, when candles are lit and the final hymn begins, Silent Night does what it has always done. It slows the room. It lowers the temperature of the world just enough for reflection to occur.

Not because everything is calm.
Not because the night is truly silent.

But because, for a moment, we are willing to believe that peace does not need to be manufactured or enforced—only received.

And that belief, carried quietly from one generation to the next, is why the world keeps singing.

The Little Drummer Boy: A Story of Gift, Humility, and Belonging

.Reading time 12 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

The story of The Little Drummer Boy endures because it speaks to something quietly universal: the fear of having nothing worthy to give—and the surprising discovery that what we already carry may be enough.

At its heart, the tale is simple. A poor boy is summoned to see the newborn King. He arrives empty-handed, surrounded by gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh—treasures far beyond his reach. Overwhelmed by the gap between what others bring and what he has, the boy does the only thing he can think to do. He plays his drum.

The Anxiety of the Small Gift

The boy’s first emotion is not joy but anxiety. “I have no gift to bring that’s fit to give our King.” In that moment, he represents anyone who has stood on the edge of a holy or meaningful moment and felt unqualified—too poor, too ordinary, too late. The story does not rush past this feeling. It lingers there, honoring the reality that comparison often steals wonder before it can begin.

This is one of the story’s quiet strengths: it does not pretend that humility comes easily. The boy must first face the ache of insufficiency.

Permission to Be Himself

What changes everything is not the boy’s ingenuity, but permission. Mary looks at him and invites him to play. The invitation matters. The story suggests that grace often begins when someone allows us to offer what we already are, rather than what we think we should be.

The drum is not refined. It is not valuable. It is noisy, simple, and unmistakably the boy’s. Yet once it is welcomed, it becomes an offering. Not because it is impressive, but because it is honest.

The Gift of Presence

When the boy plays, the story tells us he plays his best. That phrase is crucial. He is not trying to match the Magi; he is not apologizing anymore. He is fully present. In that sense, the gift is not the music alone—it is attention, effort, and love given without pretense.

The child Jesus smiles. The King receives the gift.

The story quietly overturns the idea that worth is measured by cost. What matters is alignment: a gift that comes from who we truly are, offered sincerely, without disguise.

A Theology Without Sermons

Though the story is not Scripture, it echoes a deeply biblical idea: God’s regard for the lowly and overlooked. Shepherds, fishermen, widows’ mites, mustard seeds—the pattern is familiar. The Little Drummer Boy simply retells it in a form that feels personal and immediate.

It suggests that the divine does not merely tolerate small gifts; it delights in them when they are real.

Why the Story Endures

The Little Drummer Boy persists across generations because it reassures us at precisely the point where modern life often pressures us most. In a world obsessed with scale, achievement, and comparison, the story whispers another truth: you do not have to become someone else to belong.

You do not need gold if you have faithfulness.
You do not need eloquence if you have sincerity.
You do not need perfection if you have love.

The Quiet Ending

The story does not end with applause or acclaim. The boy does not become famous. He simply plays, and that is enough. The moment passes, but it is complete.

And perhaps that is the final gift the story offers us: the reminder that the most meaningful offerings are often small, brief, and unseen—yet fully received.

In the end, pa rum pum pum pum is not a rhythm of poverty.
It is the sound of a heart saying, This is who I am. This is what I have. I give it gladly.

Good. The story behind the writer?

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The Story Behind the Writer of The Little Drummer Boy

The enduring power of The Little Drummer Boy is inseparable from the quiet, disciplined life of the woman who wrote it: Katherine Kennicott Davis. Her story is not one of sudden fame or public acclaim, but of long obedience in an often-overlooked calling—teaching, composing, and serving faithfully far from the spotlight.

A Scholar First, Not a Celebrity

Katherine Davis was born in 1892 in Missouri and trained seriously in music at a time when professional composition was still a difficult path for women. She studied at Wellesley College and later at the New England Conservatory of Music, grounding herself in classical technique, theory, and pedagogy. Her formation mattered. Davis did not write sentimentally or casually; she wrote with intention, structure, and restraint.

Her career unfolded primarily in education. For decades she taught music at Concord Academy in Massachusetts, shaping young musicians rather than performing for large audiences. She was, by temperament and vocation, a teacher—someone accustomed to encouraging small, imperfect offerings and helping students give their best.

That posture would later define her most famous work.

A Carol Born in the Shadow of War

Davis composed the song in 1941, originally titling it “Carol of the Drum.” The year matters. Europe was already engulfed in World War II, and the United States would enter the conflict before the year ended. The world was loud with power, violence, and grand displays of might.

Against that backdrop, Davis wrote a carol centered not on kings or armies, but on a poor child with nothing but a simple rhythm.

The contrast is striking. While nations were measuring strength in weapons and wealth, Davis imagined holiness revealed through humility and attention.

Why a Drummer Boy?

The drummer boy was not a traditional biblical figure. Davis drew inspiration from legends and French carol traditions that emphasized folk characters at the Nativity—ordinary people who came not because they were summoned by status, but because they were nearby.

A drum is especially revealing as an instrument choice. It is not melodic or refined. It keeps time. It supports others. It is often played by those who march behind, not those who lead. In choosing a drum, Davis made a theological and artistic statement: service itself can be music.

This fits seamlessly with her life as an educator—someone whose work structured and supported others rather than drawing attention to herself.

Slow Recognition, Lasting Impact

For years, Carol of the Drum remained relatively obscure. It was not until the 1950s, when it was recorded by popular artists and retitled The Little Drummer Boy, that it entered the wider cultural consciousness. The irony is unmistakable: Davis became famous for a song about a boy who never seeks fame.

Despite the carol’s growing popularity, Davis did not chase public recognition. She continued teaching, composing children’s music, and writing choral works. When royalties eventually arrived, she quietly directed much of that income back into education—supporting scholarships and music programs.

Her response to success mirrored the message of her song: receive the gift, then pass it on.

A Life That Matches the Message

There is no evidence that Davis intended her carol to become a Christmas staple sung around the world. That, too, aligns with its spirit. The song does not argue or announce; it offers.

Katherine Kennicott Davis lived a life marked by discipline, humility, and service—qualities often hidden behind louder achievements. In writing The Little Drummer Boy, she gave the world not a performance, but a permission: to come as we are, to give what we can, and to trust that sincerity is enough.

The Quiet Legacy

Davis died in 1980, long after her song had circled the globe. Yet her legacy remains remarkably consistent. She is remembered not as a celebrity composer, but as a faithful teacher whose single, gentle carol continues to invite millions into a moment of honest offering.

In the end, Katherine Kennicott Davis did what her drummer boy did:
She played what she had.
She played it sincerely.
And she trusted that it would be received.

Lyrics and a link to a grand orchestra rendition, please.

Here are the lyrics to The Little Drummer Boy† — the classic Christmas song originally published as Carol of the Drum written by Katherine K. Davis (with later arrangement and popularization by Harry Simeone and Henry Onorati):

🎵 The Little Drummer Boy — Lyrics

Verse 1
Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A newborn King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum
When we come. YouTube

Verse 2
Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum
I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That’s fit to give a King, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum
On my drum? YouTube

Bridge
Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum… me and my drum

The Day the Sun Stands Still

.Reading time 7 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

The winter solstice arrives quietly.
No fireworks. No countdown. No resolution list.
Just a long night—and then, almost imperceptibly, a turning.

The word solstice means the sun stands still. For a brief moment, the arc halts. The shortening days stop shortening. The light does not yet surge forward, but it no longer retreats. Civilizations across time noticed this pause and marked it—not because everything changed, but because nothing changed yet.

That detail matters.

We are accustomed to beginnings that announce themselves loudly. The solstice does not. It asks something rarer: attention.

The Gift of Limits

The shortest day of the year teaches a truth modern life resists: limits are not a malfunction. They are a design feature.

There is a boundary to daylight. A boundary to growth. A boundary to effort. Nature does not apologize for this. Winter does not rush to justify itself. It simply arrives and says, This is enough for now.

In economic life, we speak endlessly of expansion. In personal life, of optimization. In civic life, of acceleration. The solstice offers a counter-lesson: what makes renewal possible is not infinite motion, but a pause within a cycle.

Scarcity is not the enemy of meaning. Properly understood, it creates it.

Why Humanity Always Marked This Day

Long before electric light erased the night, people watched the sky closely. They aligned stones, carved calendars, rang bells, and lit fires—not out of superstition alone, but out of wisdom.

They understood that if the darkness kept deepening forever, it would mean the end. The solstice was proof that the world was still ordered, still held, still governed by rhythms larger than fear.

Marking the solstice was not about conquering winter. It was about surviving it together.

Modern life, insulated from seasons, rarely pauses. Production cycles ignore daylight. Notifications arrive at midnight. Yet anxiety rises—not falls—when we erase limits. We were not made for endless summer.

The Long Night Before the Turn

The solstice is not the return of light. It is the end of its retreat.

That distinction mirrors much of human experience. Often the most difficult moment is not when things are visibly worsening—but when nothing appears to be improving yet. The long night lingers. The cold remains. The evidence of change is microscopic.

Faith, endurance, and patience are forged here—not in visible victory, but in holding steady at the lowest point.

Many give up precisely when the arc has already turned.

Darkness Is Not the Enemy

We speak of darkness as if it were synonymous with evil or emptiness. Yet biologically, psychologically, and spiritually, darkness is where formation happens.

Seeds germinate underground. Muscles rebuild at rest. Insight arrives in silence. Grief, properly endured, deepens compassion. Winter does not kill life—it stores it.

The problem is not darkness itself, but the fear that it will never end.

The solstice addresses that fear directly: this darkness is real, but it is not final.

The Courage to Stand Still

To stand still is harder than it sounds.

Stillness exposes unanswered questions. It removes distraction. It asks us to take inventory—of work, of habits, of relationships, of motives. That is why we prefer motion. Motion feels like progress, even when it isn’t.

The solstice models a different discipline: intentional pause.

Not resignation. Not retreat. But attentiveness.

Before movement resumes, direction must be clarified.

Light Returns Slowly—And That Is the Point

After the solstice, daylight increases by seconds. Then minutes. You cannot feel it day to day. Only over time does the difference become undeniable.

This is how real change happens—personally, institutionally, culturally. Quietly. Incrementally. Without applause.

We live in an age impatient with slow improvement. But the solstice reminds us that enduring change does not announce itself; it accumulates.

The arc does not need encouragement. It only needs time.

Why a Candle Is Enough

On the longest night, humanity did not wait for dawn. It lit candles.

A single flame does not defeat darkness. But it testifies that darkness has not defeated us.

This is the moral heart of the solstice: small faithfulness matters. Modest goodness counts. One steady light—kept, protected, passed along—outlasts vast darkness that burns itself out.

Leadership, parenting, citizenship, belief: none require blinding brilliance. They require presence.

Solstice vs. Resolutions

The modern New Year demands reinvention on command. The solstice invites preparation instead.

One says, Change now.
The other says, Pay attention first.

One relies on willpower.
The other on wisdom.

The solstice does not ask what you will become tomorrow. It asks what you will carry through winter so that growth, when it comes, is sustainable.

The Day That Teaches Us How to Wait

The sun stands still only briefly. Soon, motion resumes. But the pause matters because it reminds us that movement without meaning is drift, and growth without rest is collapse.

The winter solstice is not a celebration of darkness. It is an affirmation of order. Of rhythm. Of trust that light returns—not because we force it, but because it is woven into the design of things.

The longest night is survivable.
The turning has already begun.
And sometimes, standing still is the bravest thing we can do.

And we give thanks to God, author of the universe, marvelous designer. More than just one more rotation of this planet around the sun upon which we stand in awe.

The Census, the Journey and the Conversations

.Reading time 8 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

According to Luke 2:1–5, the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus ordered a census of the empire. Each person had to register in his ancestral town.

  • Joseph, a descendant of King David, was required to go to Bethlehem, the city of David.
  • He traveled from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea.
  • Mary, who was betrothed to Joseph and pregnant, went with him.

This was not a leisure trip—it was likely a difficult journey of roughly 70–90 miles, taken on foot or with a donkey, while Mary was late in her pregnancy.

Their Social and Personal Circumstances

At this time:

  • Mary had already received the angel Gabriel’s announcement that she would bear the Son of God (Luke 1).
  • Joseph had accepted Mary as his wife after an angel reassured him that the child was from the Holy Spirit (Matthew 1).
  • They were obedient but socially vulnerable—a young couple under suspicion, traveling under imperial command, with limited resources.

What They Were Not Doing

They were not:

  • Looking for a place for the baby to be born
  • Expecting a royal reception
  • Fully aware of how world-changing the moment was

They were simply complying with the law, trusting God one step at a time.

Theological Significance

Their journey fulfilled prophecy:

  • Micah 5:2 foretold that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem.
  • God used a pagan emperor’s decree to move two faithful people exactly where they needed to be—at exactly the right time.

In Short

Before Jesus was born:

  • Joseph and Mary were traveling under compulsion
  • Trusting God without knowing the outcome
  • Living ordinary, obedient lives—while history quietly turned

On the Road to Bethlehem

A reflective imagining rooted in Scripture

The road south was older than either of them—packed earth, stone, and dust pressed flat by generations who had walked before. Joseph knew the way by memory, by instinct, by the way the hills leaned and the stars corrected him at night. Mary followed at his side, sometimes on the animal, sometimes walking, her hand resting where the child moved.

They did not speak much at first.

Silence had become familiar since the angelic visitations—first hers, then his. Silence was safer. Words had a way of tumbling out and sounding either too small or too large for what God had done.

Joseph broke it eventually.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, not looking at her, already knowing the answer and asking anyway.

Mary smiled. “I am. And He is restless tonight.”

Joseph nodded. He had learned to listen for that—her pauses, her breath, the way she said He now, not the child. Each time it startled him anew.

Joseph’s Thoughts

Joseph walked slightly ahead, as if the road were something he could shield her from. His mind moved constantly between duty and mystery.

He thought about the census—how Rome could compel a carpenter from Nazareth to walk days simply to be counted. He resented it, then caught himself. The angel had said David’s son. Bethlehem was David’s city. God had not needed Rome, but He had used it.

That troubled Joseph in a quiet way.

If God could use Caesar without Caesar knowing it, what else was God using? The dust? The fatigue? The whispers back home?

Joseph wondered if obedience always felt this fragile—like doing the next right thing while the ground shifted beneath your feet.

He also worried. About Mary. About finding shelter. About whether he would fail at the very moment history would remember forever.

Mostly, he wondered what kind of father he could possibly be to a child who did not truly belong to him—and yet had been entrusted to him.

Mary’s Thoughts

Mary, for her part, thought often of Elizabeth, and of the words she had spoken months earlier: “Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill His promises to her.”

Belief, Mary had learned, was not a feeling. It was a posture.

She remembered Gabriel’s voice—not loud, not theatrical, but firm, like something that had always been true and had finally been spoken aloud. “The Lord is with you.”

She held that sentence like a stone in her pocket.

Mary felt the weight of the child and the weight of what no one could see. She wondered how the Holy One could be so near, pressing against her ribs, interrupting her sleep, making ordinary hunger and discomfort part of salvation.

She wondered if Joseph ever feared her silence meant doubt.

It did not.

Her silence meant awe.

What They Spoke About

When they did speak, it was ordinary.

“How much farther?”
“Not far now.”
“We’ll need water by morning.”
“I’ll find some.”

And then, sometimes, unexpectedly:

“Joseph,” Mary said once, as they rested under a sky scattered with stars, “do you think He knows where we are going?”

Joseph answered slowly. “I think He chose it.”

They sat with that.

Another night, Joseph said, almost to himself, “The prophets spoke of kings and deliverers. They never mentioned tired feet.”

Mary laughed softly. “Maybe they didn’t know how God likes to arrive.”

Fear, Faith, and the Unknown

They both feared the same thing but named it differently.

Joseph feared not being enough.
Mary feared being misunderstood.

Yet both trusted the same God.

They trusted Him with each step that did not yet explain itself. They trusted Him with a future that had been announced but not described. They trusted Him with a birth that would happen wherever the road ended.

Neither of them imagined angels filling the sky. Neither imagined shepherds. Neither imagined a story retold for centuries.

They imagined shelter. Warmth. A safe delivery.

God imagined redemption.

When Bethlehem Appeared

When the outline of Bethlehem finally rose ahead of them—small, unimpressive, crowded—Joseph felt relief and dread at once.

Mary felt peace.

This, she sensed, was the last stretch of walking. After this, something irrevocable would happen.

History had been moving toward this town without anyone noticing.

Rome thought it was counting citizens.
Joseph thought he was fulfilling an obligation.
Mary knew—somehow—that heaven was about to touch earth quietly.

And so they entered Bethlehem as they had traveled:

Tired. Obedient. Faithful.

Unaware that the road behind them would soon be remembered as the path by which God kept His promise—one careful step at a time.

What Question Are We Actually Answering?

.Reading time 10 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

Why Good Analysis Begins Long Before Data — and Why Asking Better Questions Is a Skill That Must Be Practiced

I. The Invisible Starting Line

Every serious analysis begins with a question.
Almost every serious failure begins with the wrong one.

This is uncomfortable because it means that many errors are not technical. They are not caused by bad data, weak models, insufficient funding, or lack of expertise. They occur before any of that—at the moment a question is framed, accepted, and allowed to go unchallenged.

Questions are often inherited rather than chosen. They arrive embedded in headlines, legislation, grant applications, consulting scopes, software templates, or political urgency. By the time anyone pauses to ask whether the question itself is sound, the machinery is already moving.

Once that happens, better data does not fix the problem.
It accelerates it.

Precision is not clarity. A precisely answered wrong question produces results that feel authoritative while being fundamentally misleading. This is why analysis so often fails quietly and confidently.

II. The Four Types of Questions (And Why Only One Sustains Analysis)

Not all questions do the same kind of work. Most confusion in public debate and institutional decision-making comes from treating very different questions as if they were interchangeable.

1. Descriptive Questions

What is happening?

These establish facts, counts, and trends. They are necessary, but inert. Description alone does not explain change, causation, or constraint. Mistaking description for understanding is one of the most common analytical errors.

2. Attributional Questions

Who is responsible?

These arrive early and loudly. They satisfy emotional and political needs, but they tend to collapse complex systems into villains and heroes. Attribution feels like insight, but it usually precedes understanding.

3. Prescriptive Questions

What should we do?

These feel decisive and productive. They are also dangerous when asked prematurely. Prescriptions lock systems into action paths that may be impossible to reverse, even if the diagnosis was wrong.

4. Analytical Questions

What changed, relative to what, over what time horizon, and under which constraints?

These are the least intuitive and least rewarded questions, yet they are the only ones that scale. They slow the conversation down, resist moral shortcuts, and force structure onto complexity.

Most debates skip directly from description to prescription. Analysis happens, if at all, in the margins.

III. Time Horizons: The Quiet Distorter

Every question implies a time frame, whether stated or not. When it goes unstated, it is almost always too short.

Systems behave differently over one year than over five, and differently again over a generation. Short horizons hide maturation effects, suppress lagged consequences, and reward surface solutions. Long horizons expose tradeoffs, reveal inevitabilities, and demand humility.

When someone asks, “Why is this happening now?” without clarifying whether “now” means this quarter, this decade, or this lifecycle stage, the answer will be confident and wrong.

A reliable analytical rule is simple:
If the time horizon is unstated, it is probably distorting the conclusion.

IV. Baselines: The Question Nobody Wants to Ask

“Compared to what?” is the most expensive sentence in analysis.

Baselines are almost always chosen quietly and defended rarely. Yet they determine whether something appears as growth or stagnation, crisis or normal variation, success or failure.

Common baseline errors include:

  • Comparing growing systems to static ones
  • Comparing interventions to “doing nothing,” which never exists
  • Comparing today to yesterday instead of to trend or lifecycle stage

Without a baseline, change has no meaning. Without an agreed-upon baseline, debate becomes endless recalibration rather than understanding.

The refusal—or failure—to ask baseline questions is not a technical oversight. It is often a psychological one. Baselines make certain narratives harder to maintain.

V. The Substitution Problem

Systems do not eliminate pressure. They redirect it.

Every policy, reform, or intervention substitutes one cost, risk, or burden for another. The analytical failure is not unintended consequences; it is unacknowledged substitution.

When analysis celebrates a solution without tracing where pressure moved, it is incomplete by definition. The question “What problem did we solve?” must be followed immediately by “Where did the pressure go?”

Ignoring substitution allows success to be declared in one domain while strain accumulates invisibly in another.

VI. Metrics Are Mirrors, Not Truth

Metrics are indispensable—and dangerous.

They capture what is easy to measure, not necessarily what matters most. They reward visibility, not durability. They improve responsiveness but often degrade resilience.

Measurement should provoke questions, not end them. When metrics become substitutes for judgment, they stop illuminating reality and begin reflecting institutional incentives back at themselves.

What improves on paper may be decaying in practice. The analyst’s task is not to reject metrics, but to interrogate them relentlessly.

VII. The Discipline of the Second Question

Most people ask one good question. Then they stop.

The first question usually reveals curiosity. The second reveals discipline.

  • First question: What happened?
  • Second question: Relative to what expectation?
  • Third question: Why now and not earlier?
  • Fourth question: At whose expense did this improve?
  • Fifth question: What constraint was binding?

Most analytical errors occur between questions one and two. The pause required to ask the second question feels unproductive, even obstructive. In reality, it is where understanding begins.

VIII. Asking Good Questions Is a Skill — and It Must Be Practiced

The ability to ask good questions is not innate. It is trained.

It requires resisting the urge to sound smart quickly. It requires tolerating ambiguity longer than is comfortable. It requires being willing to appear slow, cautious, or even naïve in environments that reward speed and certainty.

Like any discipline, it improves through repetition:

  • Reviewing past analyses and identifying where the wrong question was asked
  • Practicing reframing problems in multiple ways before selecting one
  • Studying failures not for answers, but for misframed questions
  • Learning to sit with incomplete understanding without rushing to closure

Good questioners are not passive. They are rigorous. They know that the hardest work happens before the first chart, model, or recommendation.

IX. What Your Questions Reveal About You

Questions are diagnostic. They reveal far more about the questioner than about the subject being questioned.

They reveal:

  • Whether someone is seeking understanding or validation
  • Whether they tolerate uncertainty or rush to control
  • Whether they think in systems or in narratives
  • Whether they are curious about limits or allergic to them

A person who habitually asks attributional questions before analytical ones is revealing impatience with complexity. A person who never asks baseline or time-horizon questions is revealing comfort with surface explanations.

In this sense, questions are a form of moral autobiography. Over time, they expose whether a person is oriented toward truth, persuasion, blame, or reassurance.

X. Analysis as Responsibility

Analysis is not neutral. It shapes how resources are allocated, how authority is exercised, and how force—legal, financial, or moral—is applied.

Bad questions do not merely mislead; they coerce. They narrow the range of permissible answers and foreclose alternatives before they are considered.

The responsibility of the analyst is not certainty. It is honesty about limits, tradeoffs, and unknowns. Asking better questions is not intellectual vanity; it is an ethical act.

Conclusion

The most dangerous answers are not the wrong ones.
They are the ones that emerge from unexamined questions.

Before asking what the data says, before debating solutions, before declaring success or failure, the analyst owes one discipline above all others:

Stop.
Name the question.
Interrogate it.
And be willing to change it.

That pause—unrewarded, uncomfortable, and often invisible—is where real thinking begins.

How Could the Minnesota Fraud Happen — and Why Texas Didn’t See the Same Outcome

.Reading time 8 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

The recent revelation that federal prosecutors believe up to half of roughly $18 billion in federal funds administered through Minnesota programs may have been fraudulently claimed has raised a deeper and more troubling question than simple criminal wrongdoing. The central issue is not whether fraud occurred — it clearly did — but how such a vast scheme could persist for years without decisive intervention, and why similar failures did not reach the same scale in other states, particularly Texas.

Answering that question requires stepping away from partisan framing and examining program design, administrative architecture, timing of awareness, and institutional decision-making.

I. The Nature of the Programs Involved

Most of the funds at issue flowed through federally funded, state-administered social service programs, including:

  • Child nutrition programs
  • Medicaid-related services (including autism therapy and home-based supports)
  • Housing and disability assistance

These programs share several structural features:

  1. Claim-based reimbursement
    Providers self-report services and are reimbursed automatically.
  2. Pay-first, audit-later design
    Verification occurs months or years after funds are disbursed.
  3. Private delivery model
    States administer eligibility and payment, but do not deliver services directly.

This structure prioritizes speed, access, and continuity of care, particularly for vulnerable populations. It also creates an inherent vulnerability: fraud can scale faster than oversight.

II. What Was the Same Across States

Minnesota’s experience was not unique in its basic mechanics. Similar fraud dynamics appeared in California, New York, Illinois, and federal pandemic programs.

Across all jurisdictions:

  • Emergency COVID waivers loosened documentation and oversight
  • Provider enrollment was expedited
  • Site visits and in-person verification were suspended
  • Payment systems remained automated

Fraud exploited time gaps, not policy intent. These systems were designed to avoid denying care — not to stop sophisticated abuse in real time.

III. Where Minnesota Was Different

Minnesota’s case diverged from other states in three critical ways.

1. Scale and concentration

Other states experienced:

  • Thousands of small or mid-sized fraud cases
  • Losses spread across geography and programs

Minnesota experienced:

  • Highly organized networks
  • Multi-program overlap
  • Extraordinary dollar concentration per scheme

Federal prosecutors described the activity as “industrial-scale fraud”, not opportunistic abuse.

2. Early warnings before peak losses

Unlike many states where fraud was discovered after funds were gone, Minnesota agencies:

  • Flagged suspicious activity as early as 2019–2020
  • Documented implausible service volumes
  • Raised concerns internally and to federal partners

In the Feeding Our Future case — the catalyst for the broader investigation — state officials attempted to halt funding, triggering litigation that slowed enforcement. Payments continued while warning signs mounted.

This is a critical distinction: Minnesota saw the smoke before the fire peaked.

3. Fragmented authority

Minnesota’s human-services system is highly decentralized:

  • Provider approval, payment, audit, and enforcement are split across agencies
  • Counties and nonprofits operate with significant autonomy
  • Courts can limit administrative action during disputes

No single entity had both the authority and speed to stop payments decisively once fraud was suspected.

IV. When the Administration Became Aware — and How

The timeline matters.

  • 2019–early 2020: Program staff note irregular claims
  • Summer 2020: State agencies formally report concerns to federal partners
  • Late 2020: State attempts to terminate funding; litigation intervenes
  • February 2021: Referral to the FBI; federal criminal investigation begins
  • January 2022: FBI raids and indictments become public
  • 2022–2025: Investigation expands across multiple programs, revealing the larger scope

Senior state leadership was aware of suspected fraud well before public disclosure, but precise documentation of when the governor’s office was formally briefed remains unclear in the public record.

What is clear is that awareness preceded full intervention, and intervention lagged the growth of the schemes.

V. Why This Did Not Dominate the 2024 Election

Despite early knowledge within agencies, the issue did not meaningfully shape the 2024 election for several reasons:

  1. The full scale was not publicly known
    The $18 billion figure emerged only in late 2025.
  2. Early cases appeared isolated
    Feeding Our Future (~$300 million) looked large but contained.
  3. Complexity discouraged amplification
    The story lacked a simple narrative during a crowded election cycle.
  4. Investigations were ongoing
    Media and campaigns avoid claims not yet fully adjudicated.

By the time the magnitude became undeniable, the election had passed.

VI. Comparison to Texas: Same Programs, Different Outcomes

Texas administers the same federal programs — yet did not experience Minnesota-scale losses. The difference lies in governance design, not moral superiority.

1. Centralized authority

Texas operates through a strongly centralized Health and Human Services Commission. Provider enrollment, payment, and termination authority are consolidated.

Result: Payments can be halted quickly.

2. Provider enrollment rigor

Texas imposes:

  • Lengthy onboarding
  • Fingerprinting and ownership scrutiny
  • Financial viability checks

This slows access — and blocks shell entities.

3. Willingness to disrupt services

Texas is institutionally willing to:

  • Suspend providers first
  • Litigate later
  • Accept short-term service disruption

Minnesota showed greater hesitation, prioritizing continuity and legal caution.

4. Enforcement posture

Texas uses:

  • An aggressive Medicaid Fraud Control Unit
  • Early Attorney General involvement
  • Parallel civil and criminal actions

Fraud is treated as law enforcement first, not program management.

5. Blunt controls over elegant analytics

Texas relies on:

  • Hard caps
  • Billing thresholds
  • Manual overrides

The system is crude — but constraining. Minnesota relied more on trust and review.

VII. The Tradeoff at the Core

The contrast reveals a fundamental governance choice:

  • Minnesota prioritized access, trust, and decentralization
  • Texas prioritized control, authority, and risk tolerance

Neither model is clean. Both have costs. Only one prevented runaway scale.

VIII. What This Case Ultimately Reveals

This was not a failure of compassion, nor evidence of coordinated state wrongdoing. It was a failure of system architecture.

Modern aid systems that optimize for:

  • Speed
  • Equity
  • Access

must also invest in:

  • Real-time anomaly detection
  • Unified authority
  • Rapid payment suspension powers

Without those, fraud will always scale faster than oversight.

Conclusion

Minnesota did not invent fraud, and Texas did not eliminate it. The difference lies in how quickly each system can say “stop” when something goes wrong.

Minnesota saw the warning signs — but lacked the integrated authority to act decisively. Texas acts decisively — sometimes harshly — and accepts the consequences.

That is the real lesson of the Minnesota case: not who failed morally, but which systems are structurally capable of stopping abuse once it begins.

Texas Local Government: Sovereignty, Delegation, Fragmentation, and the State’s Return to Planning

.Reading time 11 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

Only Two Sovereigns

Any serious discussion of Texas local government must begin with a foundational constitutional fact:

In the United States, there are only two levels of sovereign government:
the federal government and the states.

That is the full list.

Counties, cities, school districts, special districts, authorities, councils, boards, and commissions are not sovereign. They possess no inherent authority. They exist only because a state legislature has chosen to delegate specific powers to them, and those powers may be expanded, limited, preempted, reorganized, or withdrawn entirely.

Texas local government is therefore not a story of decentralization.
It is a story of delegated administration, followed—inevitably—by state-directed coordination when delegation produced excessive fragmentation.

The State of Texas as Sovereign and System Designer

The State of Texas is sovereign within its constitutional sphere. That sovereignty includes the authority to:

  • Create local governments
  • Define and limit their powers
  • Redraw or freeze their boundaries
  • Preempt their ordinances
  • Reorganize or abolish them

Local governments are not junior partners in sovereignty. They are instruments through which the state governs a vast and diverse territory.

From the beginning, Texas made a defining structural choice:
rather than consolidate government as complexity increased, it would delegate narrowly, preserve local identity, and retain sovereignty at the state level. That choice explains the layered system that followed.

Counties: The First Subdivision of State Power

Counties were Texas’s original subdivision of state authority, adopted after independence and statehood from Anglo-American legal traditions.

They were designed for a frontier world:

  • Sparse population
  • Horseback travel
  • Local courts
  • Recordkeeping
  • Elections
  • Law enforcement

During the 19th century, Texas rapidly carved itself into counties so residents could reach a county seat in roughly a day’s travel. By the early 20th century, the county map had largely frozen at 254 counties, a number that remains unchanged today.

Counties are constitutional entities, but they are governed strictly by Dillon’s Rule. They have no inherent powers, no residual authority, and little flexibility to adapt structurally. Once the county map was locked in place, counties became increasingly mismatched to Texas’s urbanizing reality—too small in some areas, too weak in others, and too rigid everywhere.

Rather than consolidate counties, Texas chose to work around them.

Dillon’s Rule: The Legal Engine of Delegation

The doctrine that made this system possible is Dillon’s Rule, named after John Forrest Dillon (1831–1914), Chief Justice of the Iowa Supreme Court and later a professor at Columbia Law School. His 1872 treatise, Commentaries on the Law of Municipal Corporations, emerged during a period of explosive city growth and widespread municipal corruption.

Dillon rejected the notion that local governments possessed inherent authority. He articulated a rule designed to preserve state supremacy:

A local government may exercise only
(1) powers expressly granted by the legislature,
(2) powers necessarily implied from those grants, and
(3) powers essential to its declared purpose—not merely convenient, but indispensable.
Any reasonable doubt is resolved against the local government.

Texas did not merely adopt Dillon’s Rule; it embedded it structurally. Counties, special districts, ISDs, and authorities operate squarely under Dillon’s Rule. Even cities escape it only partially through home-rule charters, and only to the extent the Legislature allows.

Dillon’s Rule explains why Texas governance favors many narrow entities over few powerful ones.

Cities: Delegated Urban Management, Not Local Sovereignty

As towns grew denser, counties proved incapable of providing urban services. The state responded by authorizing cities to manage:

  • Police and fire protection
  • Streets and utilities
  • Zoning and land use
  • Local infrastructure

Cities are therefore delegated urban managers, not sovereign governments.

Texas later adopted home-rule charters to give larger cities greater flexibility, but home rule is widely misunderstood. It does not reverse Dillon’s Rule. It merely allows cities to act unless prohibited—while preserving the Legislature’s power to preempt, override, or limit local authority at any time.

Recent state preemption is not a breakdown of the system. It is the system operating as designed.

Independent School Districts: Function Over Geography

Education exposed the limits of place-based governance earlier than any other function.

Counties were too uneven.
Cities were too political.
Education required stability, long planning horizons, and uniform oversight.

Texas responded by removing education from both counties and cities and creating Independent School Districts.

ISDs are:

  • Single-purpose governments
  • Granted independent taxing authority
  • Authorized to issue bonds
  • Subject to state curriculum and accountability mandates

ISDs do not answer to cities or counties. They answer directly to the state. This was one of Texas’s earliest and clearest moves toward functional specialization over territorial governance.

Special Districts: Precision Instead of Consolidation

As Texas industrialized and urbanized in the 20th century, the Legislature faced increasingly specific problems:

  • Flood control
  • Water supply
  • Drainage
  • Fire protection
  • Hospitals
  • Ports and navigation

Rather than expand general-purpose governments, Texas created special districts—single-mission entities with narrow authority and dedicated funding streams.

Special districts are not accidental inefficiencies. They reflect a deliberate state preference:

Solve problems with precision, not with consolidation.

The result was effectiveness and speed, at the cost of growing fragmentation.

MUDs and Authorities: Growth and Risk as State Policy

Municipal Utility Districts and authorities are often mistaken for private or quasi-private entities. Legally, they are governments.

MUDs:

  • Are created under state law
  • Levy taxes
  • Issue bonds
  • Are governed by elected boards
  • Provide essential infrastructure

They allow the state to:

  • Enable development before cities arrive
  • Finance infrastructure without municipal debt
  • Shift costs to future residents
  • Avoid restructuring counties

Similarly, transit authorities, toll authorities, housing authorities, and local government corporations exist to isolate risk, bypass constitutional debt limits, and accelerate projects. These are not loopholes. They are state-designed instruments.

The Consequence: Functional Fragmentation

By the mid-20th century, Texas governance had become highly functional—and deeply fragmented:

  • Fixed counties
  • Expanding cities
  • Independent ISDs
  • Thousands of special districts
  • Authorities operating alongside cities
  • Infrastructure crossing every boundary

The system worked locally, but failed regionally.

No entity could plan coherently across jurisdictions. Funding decisions conflicted. Infrastructure systems overlapped. Federal requirements could not be met cleanly. At this point, Texas made another defining choice.

It did not consolidate governments.
It pulled planning and coordination back upward, closer to the state.

Councils of Governments: State-Authorized Coordination

Beginning in the 1960s, Texas authorized Councils of Governments (COGs) to address fragmentation.

Today:

  • 24 COGs cover the entire state
  • Each spans multiple counties
  • Membership includes cities, counties, ISDs, and districts

COGs:

  • Have no taxing authority
  • Have no regulatory power
  • Have no police power

They exist to coordinate, not to govern—to reconnect what delegation had scattered. Their weakness is intentional. They sit conceptually just beneath the state, not beneath local governments.

MPOs: Transportation Planning Pulled Upward

Transportation forced an even clearer pull-back.

Texas has 25 Metropolitan Planning Organizations, designated by the state to comply with federal law. MPOs plan, prioritize, and allocate federal transportation funding. They do not build roads, levy taxes, or override governments.

MPOs act as planning membranes between federal mandates and Texas’s fragmented local structure.

Water: Where Texas Explicitly Rejected Fragmentation

Water planning most clearly demonstrates the limits of local delegation.

Texas spans 15 major river basins, with annual rainfall ranging from under 10 inches in the west to over 50 inches in the east. Water ignores counties, cities, ISDs, and districts entirely.

Texas responded by creating:

  • Approximately 23 river authorities, organized by watershed
  • 16 Regional Water Planning Areas, overseen by the Texas Water Development Board
  • A unified State Water Plan, adopted by the Legislature

Regional Water Planning Groups govern planning, not operations. Funding eligibility flows from compliance. This is state-directed regional planning with local execution.

Texas also created 95+ Groundwater Conservation Districts, organized by aquifer rather than politics—another instance of function overriding geography.

Public Health and Other Quiet Pull-Backs

Public health produced the same result. Disease ignores jurisdictional lines. Texas authorized county, city-county, and multi-county health districts to exercise delegated state police powers regionally.

The same pattern appears elsewhere:

  • Emergency management regions
  • Workforce development boards
  • Judicial administrative regions
  • 20 Education Service Centers
  • Air-quality nonattainment regions

Each represents the same logic:

  1. Delegation fragments
  2. Fragmentation impairs system performance
  3. The state restores coordination without transferring sovereignty

Final Synthesis

Texas local government did not evolve haphazardly. It followed a consistent philosophy:

  • Preserve sovereignty at the state level
  • Delegate functions narrowly
  • Avoid consolidation
  • Specialize relentlessly
  • Pull planning back upward when fragmentation becomes unmanageable

What appears complex or chaotic is actually layered intent.

Services are delegated downward.
Planning is pulled back upward.
Sovereignty never moves.

That tension—between delegation and coordination—is not a flaw in Texas government.
It is its defining structural feature.

When the Enemy Wants You to Hate Your Neighbor

.Reading time 14 minutes.

A collaboration between Lewis McLain & AI

Editor’s Note / What Prompted This Essay

In a recent Free Press article, Nikki Haley argues that China is not waiting for a future war with the United States but is already engaged in a long-term, strategic campaign designed to weaken America without firing a shot. Rather than tanks or missiles, the tools are economic leverage, technological dependence, information manipulation, and political pressure—applied patiently over time to erode American confidence, unity, and resolve. The article’s most provocative insight is that Americans tend to think of war only as something declared and visible, while adversaries like China think in terms of psychological advantage, influence, and internal fracture.

That framing raised a deeper question to me: if the most effective way to weaken a democracy is to turn its citizens against one another, how vulnerable is the United States to hatred, distrust, and internal division—and what responsibility do citizens themselves bear in resisting it? Lastly, does this provide insight into events happening in our own back yard?

When the Enemy Wants You to Hate Your Neighbor

How Foreign Adversaries Exploit Division to Weaken American Institutions

Introduction: The War That Doesn’t Look Like a War

For most of American history, threats to national security arrived in visible forms: armies, missiles, uniforms, borders crossed. Today, the most dangerous threats often arrive silently—through phones, feeds, narratives, and emotions. Even through blogs like mine.

China, along with other foreign adversaries, does not need to defeat the United States on the battlefield to weaken it. A far cheaper and safer strategy exists: encourage Americans to distrust one another, despise their institutions, and lose faith in the idea that shared rules and shared facts can still bind a diverse society together.

This is not a conspiracy theory, nor is it uniquely Chinese. It is a well-documented form of modern statecraft often called information warfare, influence operations, or gray-zone conflict—competition deliberately kept below the threshold of open war.

The danger is not that Americans will suddenly become loyal to a foreign power. The danger is that Americans will begin to see each other as enemies, and their own institutions as illegitimate. When that happens, a society weakens itself from the inside.

The Strategic Objective: Fracture, Don’t Conquer

Foreign adversaries pursuing this strategy are not trying to persuade Americans of a single ideology. Their objective is simpler and more corrosive:

  • Reduce trust in elections
  • Reduce trust in courts and law enforcement
  • Reduce trust in journalism and expertise
  • Reduce trust in fellow citizens’ good faith

A divided society expends enormous energy fighting itself. It becomes harder to govern, slower to respond to crises, and more vulnerable to paralysis or authoritarian temptation.

Importantly, this strategy does not require creating new grievances. It relies on identifying existing ones—racial tensions, economic inequality, cultural change, immigration, crime, public health, religion—and amplifying them until compromise feels immoral and disagreement feels existential.

How Influence Operations Actually Work

Amplification, Not Invention

Foreign actors rarely invent American problems. They amplify real ones.

If a topic already produces anger, resentment, or fear, it is useful. If it already divides Americans into camps, it is valuable. The operation succeeds when people believe:

“My opponents are not merely wrong — they are dangerous.”

“Both-Sides” Escalation

One of the most misunderstood aspects of modern influence operations is that opposing sides are often targeted simultaneously.

One group is fed content that reinforces grievance, victimhood, or moral urgency.
The opposing group is fed content that reinforces fear, resentment, or betrayal.

Each side becomes proof of the other side’s worst assumptions.

The goal is not ideological victory. The goal is maximum polarization.

Emotional Manipulation Over Persuasion

Facts matter less than feelings.

Content that spreads fastest tends to trigger anger, fear, humiliation, and moral outrage. Foreign influence campaigns exploit this reality. They do not aim to win debates; they aim to trigger reactions. Once emotion dominates, people share and escalate on behalf of the adversary—often unknowingly.

Erosion of the Referees

A healthy democracy depends on referees: election administrators, courts, professional journalism, and scientific expertise.

Foreign adversaries benefit when Americans believe all referees are corrupt or illegitimate. Once people conclude that elections are rigged, courts are political weapons, media lies by definition, and experts are propagandists, no outcome is accepted as fair. Only power remains.

Digital Architecture as a Force Multiplier

Modern platforms unintentionally reward the very behaviors foreign adversaries exploit. Outrage spreads faster than explanation. Certainty spreads faster than humility. Identity signaling spreads faster than evidence.

Foreign actors do not need to control these systems. They study them, learn what triggers Americans, and inject content accordingly.

Why the United States Is Especially Vulnerable

America’s greatest strengths—free expression, pluralism, open debate—also create vulnerability. Democracies must tolerate disagreement without letting it metastasize into hatred.

Foreign influence operations succeed only where fractures already exist. This leads to an uncomfortable truth: foreign adversaries do not create American divisions; they accelerate them.

As shared reality erodes, persuasion collapses. Only mobilization remains.

What “Success” Looks Like for the Adversary

Foreign influence is succeeding when:

  • Bad faith becomes the default assumption
  • Moderates withdraw from public discourse
  • Institutions lose legitimacy permanently
  • Violence begins to feel understandable

None of this requires a single decisive moment. It unfolds gradually through normalization.

What Actually Works as Defense

Broad censorship does not work. Government-decided “truth” does not work. Suppressing dissent backfires.

What works is resilience.

At the citizen level: pause before sharing, question emotional manipulation, distinguish outrage from importance, and practice restating opposing arguments fairly.

At the community level: real relationships, churches, civic groups, and local institutions reduce radicalization.

At the institutional level: transparency, humility, and consistent rule-following rebuild trust.

At the government level: exposing foreign operations, protecting elections, improving transparency, and investing in civic education—without policing viewpoints.

The Hard Truth

Foreign adversaries can encourage Americans to hate one another. They cannot force it.

They succeed only when Americans abandon restraint, humility, and shared rules.

A society capable of disagreement without dehumanization is extraordinarily difficult to destabilize.

Conclusion: The Strongest Defense Is Civic Character

The greatest threat to the United States today is not a foreign army crossing a border. It is the slow erosion of trust that makes self-government impossible.

China and other adversaries understand this. They study American psychology and culture not to convert Americans, but to divide them.

A republic survives not because it agrees, but because it argues without hatred.

Appendix A

A Christian Perspective on Division, Hatred, and the Subtle Work of the Enemy

Why a Christian Appendix Belongs Here

For Christians, the idea that an “enemy” seeks to divide people against one another is not metaphorical. It is foundational theology.

Scripture does not portray evil primarily as chaos or madness, but as order bent just enough to destroy love, trust, and truth. The Christian understanding of spiritual opposition is not that it invents sin from nothing, but that it twists what already exists—fear into hatred, conviction into self-righteousness, disagreement into contempt.

This appendix is not an attempt to spiritualize geopolitics. It is an acknowledgment that moral and spiritual realities operate alongside political ones, and that Christians, in particular, are warned repeatedly about becoming instruments of division while believing themselves righteous. Spiritual Warfare is as real to the Christian as military war games are to field commanders.

The Enemy’s Oldest Strategy: Divide and Accuse

In the Christian tradition, Satan is not merely a tempter but an accuser.

He accuses God to humanity.
He accuses humanity to God.
He accuses neighbor to neighbor.

Division is not collateral damage; it is the goal.

Jesus himself names this dynamic:

“Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.”
(Matthew 12:25)

The warning is not about foreign invasion. It is about internal fracture.

Screwtape’s Lesson: Evil Prefers Gradual Corrosion

C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters reveals that evil is most effective when it is subtle.

The senior devil does not urge spectacular sin. He urges irritation, distraction, self-justification, and contempt disguised as clarity.

Scripture warns:

“If I have all knowledge, but have not love, I am nothing.”
(1 Corinthians 13:2)

Conviction without love multiplies evil rather than defeating it.

The Weekend That Gave Birth to Screwtape

In July 1940, Lewis listened to Adolf Hitler speak on the radio. He later admitted how unsettlingly persuasive the speech felt—not because he believed it, but because he sensed how easily emotion could be moved even against reason.

The next day, sitting in church, Lewis conceived the idea of a book: letters from a senior devil to a junior devil advising how to misguide a Christian. He first called it As One Devil to Another.

That book became The Screwtape Letters.

Lewis understood that evil rarely presents itself as evil. It presents itself as reasonable, urgent, and justified. It borrows the language of virtue while hollowing it out.

The Enemy does not need believers to abandon truth. He only needs them to abandon love while wielding truth as a weapon.

When Moral Certainty Becomes a Spiritual Trap

Christians are especially vulnerable to confusing righteousness with being right.

Jesus’ harshest rebukes were aimed not at pagans but at the religiously certain:

“You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”
(Matthew 23)

When disagreement feels like an attack on the soul, hatred begins to feel holy.

The Subtle Corruption of Truth

Christian theology teaches that Satan distorts truth rather than simply lying:

“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”
(2 Corinthians 11:14)

True facts can be arranged to deceive. Real injustices can be framed to inflame. Truth without love becomes a tool of destruction.

Loving One’s Neighbor as National Security

If foreign adversaries benefit when Americans hate each other, then love of neighbor is not merely spiritual virtue—it is civic resilience.

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
(Matthew 22:39)

A society that refuses to dehumanize opponents is extraordinarily hard to fracture.

The Christian’s Temptation

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”
(Mark 8:36)

Winning political battles by adopting the Enemy’s methods means the Enemy has already won.

A Rule of Discernment

Does this message move me toward love of neighbor—or toward contempt disguised as righteousness?

If the latter, it should be resisted.

“The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
(James 1:20)

Final Christian Reflection

Foreign adversaries may exploit division, but they are not the deepest threat.

The deeper threat is that believers, convinced they are fighting evil, may unknowingly serve it.

The Enemy does not require Christians to abandon their faith.
He only needs them to forget its hardest commands.

Go love your neighbor!