> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mikebakerhq.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The Middle Has To Move
- URL: https://www.mikebakerhq.com/podcast/the-middle-has-to-move-episode/
- Published: 2026-05-20T09:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-23T09:59:43.000Z
- Description: What Kind of Community Do We Want to Be? Episode 50 of Still Here, Still Trying is about what happens when good people get tired of the noise, step back from public life, and leave the room to the loudest voices.
- Author: Mike Baker
- Tags: Podcast

Season 2 · Episode 5 · May 20, 2026 · 61 min

[Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6t6tSPKBdA) [Listen on Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/1iE5t5Nrbs0MyLORJpfiYu) [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-middle-has-to-move/id1826938874?i=1000787952087&uo=4) 

Just an Ordinary Tuesday

New episodes and essays land in my Tuesday letter, along with the Resource Library. Free, and leaving is easy.

Email address Send me the next one 

You’re in. Check your inbox to confirm.

## Show notes

What Kind of Community Do We Want to Be?

Episode 50 of Still Here, Still Trying is about what happens when good people get tired of the noise, step back from public life, and leave the room to the loudest voices.

Mike Baker reflects on leadership, local politics, healthcare, Idaho women’s health, and the cost of staying silent when the edges keep pulling communities toward fear and division. This episode is not a partisan rant. It is a call for grounded people to wake up, speak clearly, and stop letting cult-like thinking on both sides replace honesty, character, and real service.

Mike also shares what it felt like to run for office, why the ugliness of politics can break good people down, and why he still believes decent leaders are worth supporting. From corruption and loyalty tests to healthcare access and women’s health laws in Idaho, this conversation asks a bigger question: what kind of community are we becoming?

If you are tired of outrage, tired of cruelty being treated like courage, tired of corruption getting excused when it benefits the “right” side, and tired of watching good people whisper common sense in private, this episode is for you.

The middle has to move. Not with fear. Not with hate. With courage, honesty, humility, and enough hope to keep showing up.

Episode 50 closes with Mike’s song “Human First,” a fitting reminder that policy lands in real lives, leadership should serve something bigger than ego, and staying human still matters.

Listen, share, and leave a comment: What kind of community do you want to help build?

Thanks for listening to Still Here, Still Trying.

If this episode gave you something to think about, please like, follow, subscribe, and share it with three people who could use it in their lives.

You can find more of my work — music, writing, art, and reflections — at:

🌐 [mikebakerhq.com](http://mikebakerhq.com/)

Grab a copy of my book, The Optimist’s Way:

📚 https://a.co/d/4RqPS6g

Thanks for being here.

Still here. Still trying.

Support the Podcast Here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2516381/support

## Transcript

Read the full transcript 

Auto-generated from the audio, lightly corrected. It may contain errors.

Okay, settle in because this one matters. This is episode 50 of Still Here, Still Trying. 50 episodes. 50 times Mike sat down with a microphone and turned leadership pressure, dad feelings, healthcare, chaos, original music, civic responsibility, hope, grief, and a suspicious number of hockey references into one very human podcast. Honestly, that is either commitment, therapy, or a cry for help. Maybe all three. But 50 episodes means something. It means he kept showing up.

And because this is Mike, episode 50 is not a cute little victory lap with confetti in a commemorative mug. Nope. He’s going straight into the deep end because apparently rest remains illegal. This one is called The Middle Has to Move. It’s about the people who are tired of the extremes, tired of cruelty being treated like courage, tired of corruption getting excused because it wears the right jersey, and tired of good people whispering common sense in private while the loudest voices run the room.

So take a breath, hydrate, unclenched your jaw. Maybe stretch whatever tightened when I said politics. This is episode 50\. Mike is still here, still trying. And somehow, despite the internet, the meetings, the outrageous gene, and those goalie knees, he still believes people are worth fighting for. Here’s Mike Baker with the middle has to move. Hello again, welcome back to Still Here, Still Trying. I’m your host, Mike Baker, and I am so glad that you’re here.

Tonight, especially this week, especially, this is episode 50\. We made it. So I just want to pause there for just a second and celebrate. Hey, 50 episodes. And that feels so wild to say out loud. I actually listened to some of the first podcasts the other day just to, I don’t, just cuz. And it’s so fascinating to see how this thing’s evolved over 50 episodes. But when I started this podcast, look, I knew that I had things that I needed or wanted to say, and I knew that music was becoming a way for me to process parts of life that regular conversation just couldn’t always hold.

And I knew that leadership and grief and optimism and healthcare and family and creativity and all the strange little corners of being a human were starting to run together in my head and my heart. And so, look, I just grabbed a microphone, built out the studio, I started talking, and I trusted that maybe somebody out there needed a voice that didn’t have everything figured out, because I clearly don’t. But they were at least willing to listen and be part of telling the truth.

And so 50 episodes later, I’m still here, I’m still trying. And that really means something to me. This show has become a place where I process life out loud, and I think we do that together. It is become a place where I try to talk about hope without making it sound fake, because real hope has dirt under its fingernails. And it’s just kind of become a place where songs and stories and hard weeks and leadership and frustration and just kind of a stubborn belief in people all end up sitting at the same table.

So if you have listened to one episode, thank you. If you’re that rock star that’s listened to all the episodes, thank you so much. And if you have shared this show, sent me a note, told me something landed, or just sat with one of these episodes during a drive, a quiet morning or a walk or a workout, thank you. I appreciate it because we all know that we have those nights where your brain just kind of refuses to shut the hell up. And sometimes it just takes a podcast, it takes something else to kind of snap us out of it.

And I don’t take that lightly that this is landing with people. So thank you so much. Episode 50 feels like the right time to ask a bigger question. And that’s what we’re gonna get into today. What does it mean to just keep showing up? Because that question has been underneath this whole podcast from the beginning. The name says it’s still here, still trying. That doesn’t mean that life is easy and it doesn’t mean that we always feel brave. It doesn’t mean that we have clean answers or perfect leadership or perfect mental health, perfect families or perfect timing.

It means that we keep coming back to the work. And this week, the work feels very public. I want to talk about the middle. I’ve talked about this before, but when I say the middle, I’m not talking about people with no beliefs. Sometimes that’s kind of what people think. I’m not talking about people who avoid every hard conversation. I’m talking about the human middle, the grounded middle, the people who still believe that character matters, the people who think public service should require maturity, imagine that.

The people who believe a person can hold strong convictions without losing their humanity, the people who care about policy and also care about what happens when policy lands in somebody’s body, family, paycheck, a clinic visit, or even grief. And guess what? That middle, which I am a part of, has been way too quiet. And I get why. Politics feels ugly right now. It has for the last several years. It feels loud, it feels performative. It feels like the worst behavior gets rewarded and the most serious people get worn down.

Every single issue turns into a loyalty test. People get pressured to choose a tribe, repeat the approved lines, hate the approved enemies, and stop asking too many questions. A lot of good people have backed away from that. They have families to raise, jobs to do, bills to pay, parents to care for, kids to drive everywhere, and enough real life stress without inviting political insanity into their kitchen at 9:30 at night. I understand that completely.

Some days I feel the same pull. But I keep coming back to this hard truth. When decent people step back, the room does not become calm. And I think we’re seeing that right now. The room fills with whoever wants power the most. The room fills with whoever knows how to use fear. The room fills with whoever is willing to turn frustration into loyalty, resentment into turnout, and confusion into control. Silence hands the pen and the power to somebody else.

And so that is why this episode is called The Middle Has to Move. Look, the middle has to vote, the middle has to speak, the middle has to run for things, the middle has to support decent people who are willing to serve. The middle has to stop treating politics like something that only the loudest and angriest people get to own. And yes, I know that is hard. I know it costs something. I know people get attacked. I know that families feel it. I know that reputations get dragged through the mud.

I know the comments section has become a place where nuance goes to die wearing a fake profile picture and a Punisher logo. I have felt that. When I ran last time, I hated parts of it, but like all of it. I thought I was tough enough to handle a lot. And I get grief online all the time for stuff that I do. And I I still think that I’m tough. I can handle a lot of that stuff. I’ve led through pressure. I’ve sat in rooms where the stakes were high and the easy answer was gone.

But the sheer ugliness of politics hit me differently. It got under my skin, it got in my head, it hurt my family. It made me question whether good people can step forward without getting chewed up by a machine that rewards the worst instincts in everybody. I don’t know if you remember, but I went and had coffee with the person I was running against. And we took a picture, we both had our signs up, and both of us got beat up by our collective groups that we were running for.

There was this comment about this isn’t time for kumbaya. Sure, yeah, we need to fight and we need to, we need to battle and you know get through the through to the people in our our areas, but not at the cost of losing our souls. So that experience changed me. Like it did not make me want to quit caring, but it made me realize that caring has to become more disciplined. So on episode 50, I want to talk about what it means for the middle to move. I want to talk about cult-like thinking on both sides.

Hear me, I’m saying it on both sides. Don’t hate me. I’m in the middle, both sides are messed up. Corruption, no matter whose team benefits. Healthcare, Idaho, women’s health, and why extreme politics makes it harder for people to do their jobs and care for people. And just because is what I always do, I’m gonna close with hope. So hang in there till the end. I’m gonna, it’s gonna be worth your while. Because I still believe that hope matters when it is honest enough to do some work.

So before we get into it, quick housekeeping. I’d have to do this every time. We’re still grown, we’re 50 episodes. Let’s get those likes and shares and follows and all the stuff rolling. If this podcast means something to you, please follow it on Spotify or YouTube. You might think you’re following, but you probably aren’t. Click that bell, hit the button, do something there, take an action. Leave a comment. That’s a beautiful thing. Share it with someone who still wants a human conversation in the middle of all of this noise.

Please leave a review if you’re listening somewhere that allows it. That helps so much more than you people realize. I think I’ve talked about it for 50 episodes. There is no giant media machine behind this show. It’s just me, this goofy little microphone in studio, a head full of thoughts, and a heart that keeps trying to stay open. And guess what? Even the occasional moment where I say something out loud and think, well, that one’s staying because at least it was honest.

So thank you for getting me to episode 50\. Thank you for listening. Thank you for caring. Thank you for still being here with me. Let’s talk about the middle. Let’s talk about leadership. Let’s talk about what kind of community we want to be. Okay, well, one of the dangerous myths in public life is that good intentions protect a community by themselves. Think about that for a minute. A lot of decent people assume that kindness wins because kindness is better.

Makes sense, right? They believe that because most people they know are not extreme, the community will naturally stay grounded. Well, guess what? They also believe that because most people they work with, worship with, coach with, and sit next to at ball games are decent, that decency will somehow carry the day. And goodness, I wish that were true. Communities are shaped by the people who show up. The people at the edges understand this. The people with strong agendas understand this.

The people who want to pull a community toward fear, resentment, or control understand that public life belongs to the people willing to enter it. A small organized group moves a lot of weight when the larger group is distracted, discouraged, or silent. That is how normal people wake up one day and wonder how the whole conversation drifted so far from common sense. Guess what? It didn’t drift by accident. We all know this. Somebody pushed it. If the grounded middle wants something better, it has to push too.

And I don’t mean with hate. I don’t mean with panic, although maybe we should be panicking. I don’t mean by becoming a mere image of the loudest voices that we say we’re tired of. The middle has to move with seriousness, clarity, and courage. And that means paying attention before the crisis. It means learning who is running. It means asking who funds the message, who benefits from the fear, who tells the truth when truth has a cost, and who treats leadership like service, oh, imagine that, like service rather than personal validation.

And that last part matters to me. Leadership is not supposed to be about you. If you step into public service, nonprofit leadership, business leadership, church leadership, healthcare leadership, school leadership, or any role where your decisions touch other people’s lives, the work cannot revolve around your ego. It cannot become a way to punish people who questioned you. It cannot become a little kingdom where loyalty matters more than truth. Leadership should make you more accountable.

Power should make you way more careful. But public culture often rewards the opposite. Just look out there, you’ll see it. It rewards the spectacle. It rewards people who act like being challenged is persecution. It rewards people who confuse criticism with betrayal. And it rewards people who collect followers instead of building trust. And that is where cult-like thinking starts to creep in. And yes, I mean on both sides. People hear that phrase and they immediately picture the side that they already dislike.

And that reaction is part of the problem. Cult-like thinking happens whenever loyalty becomes more important than truth. It happens whenever a leader can do no wrong because they are our leader. And it happens when people excuse corruption because the outcome benefits their side. It happens whenever people stop asking whether something is right and they start asking whether admitting it is wrong, and how that might help the enemy. That is so dangerous.

Corruption is corruption. Cruelty is cruelty. Lying is lying. Abuse of power is abuse of power. None of it becomes acceptable because the person doing it uses language that you like or claims to be fighting people that you dislike. Listen to this next. If we only recognize corruption when it belongs to the other side, we are not serious people. Think about that for a minute. That is one of the things that I am begging, begging people to see. Open your eyes on both sides.

Look honestly at the people that you support. Look honestly at the people that you oppose. Stop treating every criticism of your team as an attack and every criticism of the other team as proof that you were right all along. That kind of thinking makes people easy to manipulate. And yes, we are all being manipulated. You know this. And I know this is uncomfortable. It feels better to live inside a clean story where your side is wise and brave and the other side is dangerous and stupid.

That story gives you certainty, it gives you belonging, and it gives you permission to ignore anything that is inconvenient. But hey, guess what? Welcome to life. Life is not clean. People are not clean. Movements are not clean. Parties are not that clean. Every side has people of integrity. Every side has opportunists. Every side has sincere believers. And every side has people who discovered that fear is a useful business model. And guess what? Every side has people trying to serve.

Every side has people trying to be served by the position. The middle has to be awake enough to tell the difference. And that is why I’m interested in character. I want to know whether a leader tells the truth when a lie would be easier. I want to know whether they treat people with less power as human beings. I want to know whether they handle criticism without turning it into a victim or a bully. I want to know whether they make the work better or make every room revolve around their need for control.

And those questions matter way more to me than the team jersey. A lot of people know this privately. They see things that bother them, they hear something from someone on their side and think that’s not right. And then they get quiet because they don’t want the backlash. They don’t want to get accused of betrayal. They don’t want to lose friends, donors, followers, influencer, whatever fragile sense of belonging keeps the group together. And I understand that fear.

I also know that silence has a cost. When people stay quiet around bad behavior, bad behavior learns that it has permission. When reasonable people excuse unreasonable things because they like the outcome, the culture gets worse. When leaders learn that loyalty protects them from accountability, leadership becomes so dangerous. And that is why the middle has to move. You with me there? All right. Well, think about your actual life for just a minute.

And I don’t mean the online version. I don’t mean the version filtered through headlines, campaign mailers, comment sections, and somebody’s cousin posting in all caps under a news story at 11:47 at night. I mean the real version. Think about the last kids’ game that you went to soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, whatever, sport, owned your weekend and drained your bank account one tournament fee at a time. You sit next to other parents. You may not know how they vote.

You may not agree with them on every issue. One of them might have a bumper sticker that makes your eye twitch a little. Most of the time, you’re not screaming at each other. You’re cheering for your kids. You’re laughing about the weather. You might complain about the refs. But you’re wondering why the snack shack nachos still somehow taste amazing, even though everyone knows that that cheese came from a pump and might survive the fall of civilization.

Because that is real life. Think about church. Think about work. Think about the grocery store. Think about the person who helped your mom, who fixed your car, who taught your kid, who filled your prescription, checked you in at the clinic, served your coffee, coached the team, watched your dog, or waved when you pulled into the neighborhood. Most people are not walking around like cable news guests. Most people are trying to live. They’re trying to pay their bills, stay healthy, raise decent kids, care for aging parents, keep their marriage together, and make it through the week with some dignity.

And maybe one evening where nobody needs anything from them for just 15 damn minutes, right? That is the real community. The comment section is loud and it’s brutal and it’s ugly, but it does not get to define the whole community. And when we forget that, we start believing the worst version of people is the truest version. We see a post, a sign, a vote, a phrase, or a headline, and we decide that we know everything about someone. I’ve made this mistake before.

Question their motives, their intelligence, their faith, their morality, their heart, their worth. And that is a dangerous, lazy shortcut. And I understand why we take it. I get it. Labels are so easy. Complexity is work. And once we turn someone into a label, we don’t have to stay curious. We don’t have to listen. We don’t have to wonder what shaped them. And we don’t have to sit with a discomfort that a person might be wrong about something and still be a full human being.

Real community requires that discomfort. And that does not give every idea a free pass. Some ideas hurt people, some policies cause real damage. And some leaders fear feed division on purpose. Those things deserve direct challenge. But I want to challenge harmful things without losing myself in the process, and that’s what we have to work on. There’s a difference between calling out harm and becoming addicted to contempt. There’s a difference between defending people and needing an enemy.

There’s a difference between speaking clearly and speaking cruelly because cruelty gets attention. Social media has made us a little sick in this way. And I say that as someone who uses it all of the time. I use it for music and art and advocacy and leadership and podcasting and the occasional posts that makes me think, well, Mike, that was either meaningful meaningful or you need a nap. I know the poll. Social media rewards reaction, it rewards anger, certainty, and speed.

It rewards the takedown. It rewards the worst interpretation of the other person. And it rewards us for becoming less patient and more convinced. Politics takes That sickness and gives it a microphone. And then we wonder why public life feels so ugly. Part of the answer is that we keep feeding the ugly parts. We share the worst claim because it helps our side. We laugh at the cruel joke because it targets someone we already dislike. We excuse behavior from leaders that we support that we would condemn instantly from leaders that we oppose.

We become selective with our outrage, and selective outrage eventually becomes permission. And this is where both sides need to open their eyes. If your side only cares about corruption when the other side does it, your side does not care about corruption. If your side only cares about cruelty when the other side uses it, your side does not care about cruelty. If your side only cares about truth when truth helps your side win, truth has already been demoted.

And that is harsh, but we need to hear it. The cult mentality on both sides, both sides, both sides, both sides, is killing our ability to think clearly. It tells people to protect the group first and deal with the truth later. It tells people to ignore warning signs because the other side is worse. It tells people that accountability is betrayal. And it tells people that the leader, the movement, the party, or the cause matters more than the actual human beings harmed along the way.

And that is how people lose themselves. And I think a lot of folks feel that happening right now. They might not use these words. They might simply feel uneasy. They might see something from their own side and feel a little pinch in their gut. They might know something is off, and then the group pressure kicks in, and then they explain it away. We need to stop doing that. Please stop doing that. The better question is so much easier. It’s simple. What am I feeding?

Before I post, share, argue, text, comment, or repeat something that I heard, what am I feeding? Am I feeding clarity or confusion? Am I feeding courage or fear? Am I feeding trust or suspicion? Am I feeding a serious conversation or am I feeding the machine that keeps us angry enough to stay useful to someone else? Every time we speak, we contribute to the culture that we say that we’re worried about. Every share is a small vote. Every comment is a small vote.

Every private conversation is a small vote. We are constantly voting for the kind of public life that we want more of. The platforms have power, money has power, campaigns have power, media has power, but guess what? We still decide what we reward with our attention. And that matters. Real life is more decent than the comment section. The problem is that the comment section keeps getting invited to run real life. And that has to change. Okay, well, I want to bring this into healthcare because that is the world that I live in every single day.

Healthcare is where politics stops being abstract. People talk about policy in big phrases: coverage, Medicaid, workforce, reimbursement, women’s health, behavioral health, rural access, pharmacy, dental, prevention, cost, and regulation. Look, those words matter. But in a clinic, those words have faces. A coverage decision becomes apparent delaying care because they are afraid of the bill. A workforce shortage becomes someone waiting too long to be seen.

A rural access problem becomes a family driving hours, missing work, burning gas money that they did not have, and hoping that the appointment actually answers the question. A women’s health gap becomes someone living with pain longer than she should have because too many systems still make women prove their pain before they take it seriously. And that is why I get frustrated when healthcare turns into a political weapon. Healthcare is not theoretical for the people that are living inside it.

And I know there are hard policy questions. Money is real, workforce is real, rural geography is real, regulation is real, moral disagreement is real, capacity is real. Healthcare leaders have to make hard decisions inside systems that are often underfunded, overcomplicated, and held together by people who care more than the system deserves. I know that world. I live that world. I also know that extreme politics makes it harder to do the actual job of caring for people.

In Idaho, this is especially clear around women’s health. You can care deeply about life, mothers, babies, families, and still be honest that some of our laws and political fights have created fear and confusion inside healthcare. Doctors should not have to wonder whether using their best medical judgment will place them, their license, their livelihood, or their freedom at risk. Patients should not have to feel like their bodies have become a battleground for people who will never sit in the exam room with them.

Care teams should not have to practice medicine while political extremes shout from the edges and turn complex human moments into slogans. And this is where I need people to open their eyes. This is not a game. This is not content. This is not a fundraiser email. This is not a chance for the fringe on either side to prove who is more pure. These are real women. Real pregnancies, real complications, real families, real clinicians trying to make the right call in moments that are often scary, fast moving, and morally heavy.

Women’s health deserves better than political theater. And I know people hear these issues from deeply different moral places. Some people hear the word abortion and immediately think about unborn life. Some people hear abortion and immediately think about a woman’s life, autonomy, trauma, medical safety, and the fear of having the government in the room during a crisis. Those concerns are not small. They are not fake. They are not talking points to the people carrying them.

But the edges make honest discussion almost impossible. One edge treats people treats anyone concerned about unborn life as hateful, ignorant, or controlling. And that is unfair to many sincere people who carry a deep moral conviction about life. The other edge treats any concern about women’s health, medical judgment, fatal fetal conditions, or pregnancy complications as a sneaky attempt to avoid moral responsibility. And that is cruel to women and families facing devastating realities.

The real work is so much harder than both edges want to admit. It asks us to protect life with more humility. It asks us to protect women with more seriousness. It asks us to build laws that doctors are able to practice under. And it asks us to listen to clinicians who know the difference between a political phrase and a medical emergency. It asks us to care about the mother, the baby, the family, and the care team without turning any of them into props.

And that is the kind of middle that I am talking about. The middle does not have to abandon conviction. It has to bring enough honesty to deal with reality. Reality says Idaho needs doctors. Reality says rural communities need access. And reality says physicians and advanced practice providers need enough legal clarity to practice medicine without fear. Reality says families facing heartbreaking situations deserve care, not slogans. And reality says if we make healthcare feel dangerous for clinicians, some will leave.

Some will avoid practicing here, and patients will pay the price. That is not a partisan talking point to me. That is a care issue. When the edges take over, healthcare gets harder, staff get scared, patients get confused. Good clinicians burn out or leave. And leaders spend time managing political damage instead of building better systems. Communities lose trust. The people who need care the most get caught in the middle. And this goes beyond women’s health.

It shows up in Medicaid fights, it shows up in behavioral health, it shows up in rural access, shows up in pharmacy, and it shows up in prevention, and it shows up every time someone turns a complicated human problem into a slogan that fits on a sign but falls apart in real life. Healthcare needs serious people, it needs leaders who are able to hold complexity. And it needs lawmakers who listen to clinicians, patients, and families before writing rules that reshape care.

It needs communities that understand access does not magically appear because we value it. Access has to be built, staffed, funded, protected, and trusted. And that work is not glamorous. It requires boring meetings, hard budgets, patient listening, workforce planning, and a lot of people doing uncelebrated work because somebody needs help. And that’s the work that I believe in. And when I say human first, that is part of what I mean. Human first asks more of me than outrage does.

Outrage lets me react. Human first asks me to think. Outrage gives me someone to blame. Human first asks who is hurting. Outrage makes me feel powerful for a minute. Human first asks whether my response helps anyone after that minute passes. And that is harder, but that is better. Okay. Get worked up in some of these sections that we’re working on, but listen, I want to talk about leadership for a minute. Because I think that we have allowed the word to get too cheap.

Leadership is not attention. It’s not volume. It’s not the ability to dominate a room, own a comment thread, punish enemies, or make people afraid to question you. Leadership is service with responsibility attached. It is supposed to make you more accountable. It is supposed to make you more careful with your words, power, influence, and decisions. And when you lead, the work is not supposed to revolve around you. That’s true in politics. It’s true in healthcare.

It’s true in business. It’s true in churches and schools and nonprofits and families and teams. Leadership asks you to carry something that belongs to more people than yourself. And that is why ego is so dangerous in leadership. An ego-driven leader can turn every criticism into betrayal. They can turn every disagreement into disloyalty. And they can surround themselves with people who protect them from the truth. And they can confuse personal victory with public good.

They can start believing that the rules are different for them because their intentions are good, that their enemies are worse or their supporters still cheer. And that is how corruption begins to justify itself. And again, corruption is corruption regardless of what side you’re on. If a leader lies, abuses power, hides the truth, uses people, enriches themselves, punishes critics, or treats the public trust like a personal weapon, the label next to their name does not cleanse it.

We have to stop acting like character only matters when the other side lacks it. That is one of the ways that cult-like politics damages us. It trains people to protect the leader before protecting the truth. It trains people to excuse what they would condemn if someone else did it. And it trains people to believe that admitting fault helps the enemy so they stop admitting fault at all. That is not strength. That is fear wearing team colors. I want leaders who tolerate challenge.

I want leaders who apologize without acting like it killed them. I want leaders who say, I got that wrong, and then do their work to repair it. I want leaders who remember that public service is not a personal brand exercise. I want leaders who treat the people who disagree with them as constituents, neighbors, patients, parents, workers, and just human beings. That does not mean weak leadership. I don’t want leaders who drift or dodge or hide behind vague language because they are afraid to make a call.

Strong leadership matters. Clear decisions matter, accountability matters. There are moments when a leader has to stand firm and take the heat. But strength without humility becomes dangerous, and humility without courage becomes avoidance. The kind of leadership that we need holds both. It tells the truth and keeps listening. It makes hard decisions and stays accountable for the consequences. It stands for something and remembers who gets affected by that stance.

That is the leadership standard that I want for myself too. I don’t always hit it. I’ve made mistakes. That whole list of things that I’ve done, I’ve done it. Nobody hits it 100% of the time. But I know that the standard matters. I have led through change, I have led through pressure, I have led through situations where there was no perfect answer, and every option came with a cost. I know how easy it is for leaders to get protective, defensive, impatient, or tired of explaining.

I know how tempting it is to think if people only knew what I know, they would understand. Sometimes that might even be true. But leadership does not give us permission to dismiss people because we carry information that they don’t have. It gives us a responsibility to communicate better. And that is where politics often fails. Too many leaders speak to their base instead of serving the whole. Too many leaders perform strength for the people that they are that are already clapping.

And too many leaders treat complexity like a threat to their message. Too many leaders want the title without the burden. And then good people look at the mess and think, why would I ever step into that? I understand that too. Look, I want to take a second. I want to thank the people who do step up to run, even when I disagree with them. Running is hard, serving is hard. Putting your name on a ballot means inviting judgment from people who may never ask one honest question about who you are.

It means that your family hears things. It means that your motives get questioned. It means that strangers decide that they know your heart because they saw one post, one mailer, one endorsement, or one rumor. I’ve been close enough to that ugliness to know what it costs. And it I hated it. So I want to say thank you to the people who run for the right reasons. Thank you to the people who step forward because they care about schools and safety and healthcare and roads and families, access, fairness, faith, business, children, seniors in the future.

Thank you to the people who try to serve without losing themselves. I have made some incredible friends that I may not have met because I was willing to just sit down and talk and meet someone new. So grateful for that. Thank you to the people who keep showing up even when public life gets mean. And I want to ask something of the rest of us. Stop making it unbearable for decent people to serve. Look, hold leaders accountable, ask hard questions, demand transparency, pay attention to conflicts of interest, expect honesty, call out corruption, challenge bad policy, all of that matters.

But we can do those things without turning every public servant into a target and every disagreement into a public execution. If every mistake becomes proof of evil, leaders will hide mistakes. If every hard decision becomes a personal attack, thoughtful people will stop serving. If every campaign becomes a test of who can survive the most ugliness, we should not be surprised when only the most shameless people keep raising their hands. We create the conditions that people serve inside.

Now that does not absolve leaders of responsibility. It raises the standard for everybody. Public life should have room for accountability and humanity. It should have room for disagreement and decency. And it should have room for strong positions and honest correction. It should have room for people who are serious enough to lead without needing to become cruel. And that is the kind of leadership that I want to see. That’s the kind of leadership that I want to practice, and that is the kind of leadership that the middle should demand from every side.

Okay, well, so what do we do with all of this, besides maybe me venting here a little bit and you either agreeing or disagreeing? What should we do with all of this? I don’t want episode 50 to become one more nice thought that disappears the second that the next outrage cycle starts. Feelings matter, but behavior is where this becomes real. So the first thing that we do is pay attention without being consumed. Some people check out completely because politics feels toxic.

Other people drown in it until every conversation, every meal, every friendship, every post, and every quiet moment gets filtered through the next fight. Neither path is healthy. Paying attention means learning enough to participate responsibly. It means knowing who is running, what they actually control, what they have done, what they believe, how they behave, and who benefits if they win. It means reading beyond the headline. It means asking whether a claim is true before sharing it because it made you mad.

It means refusing to be lazy, yeah, lazy with your influence. The second thing that we do is talk to real people. Not as a trap, not as a debate, where you’re waiting to just like reload. I mean a real conversation. Ask someone what they are worried about. Ask what they care about. Ask what they wish leaders understood. Ask what they think that your side misses. Then, this is the trick, listen long enough to hear the story underneath the opinion. That doesn’t require agreement.

Sometimes understanding lowers the temperature. Sometimes it helps you argue better because you are responding to the real concern instead of the cartoon version of it. The third thing we do is pick one local issue and learn it better. I have a bias, but I’d say, hey, pick healthcare access. Or pick schools or women’s health or growth or housing or mental health, public safety, taxes, rural services, or whatever keeps showing up in your life. Learn who makes decisions.

Learn where the money comes from. Learn what the constraints are. Learn which claims are true and which claims are exaggerated, and which claims are campaign glitter glued onto a cardboard promise. Because that kind of learning changes how you vote. It also changes how you talk. When you understand an issue more deeply, you become less useful to people who rely on your fear and ignorance. The fourth thing we do is stop excusing bad behavior from people on our side.

Oh my gosh, just stop it. I’m gonna say that one more time. The fourth thing that we do is stop excusing bad behavior from people on our side. Doesn’t matter who they are. Just stop it. This one is hard, and it might be the most important part of it. If someone you support lies, call it a lie. If If someone you support is corrupt, call it corruption. If someone you support uses cruelty to gain power, stop pretending that cruelty becomes wisdom. Because the target is someone that you dislike.

If someone you support treats leadership like a personal throne, stop pretending that the problem is everyone else’s attitude. This right here is where the middle proves whether it is serious. Because it is easy to criticize the people that we already oppose. So much easier. It is harder to tell the truth when the truth makes our own team uncomfortable. And that kind of honesty costs something, but without it, every side becomes a cult of excuses.

The fifth thing we do is decide what kind of voice we want to be. This is where you can have a real impact. You have a voice in your family. You have a voice at work. You have a voice at church. You have a voice with your friends. You have a voice online. You have a voice voice in the voting booth. You have a voice in the way that you talk about people who are not in the room. Use it with care. Use it with courage. Use it like the world is already harsh enough without you adding cheap cruelty to the pile.

That does not mean silence. The world does not need more quiet decency hiding in private while loud dysfunction runs the meeting. Please speak clearly. Speak honestly. Speak with enough backbone to be useful. But speak like you remember the goal. Because the goal is to build a community where people can live, grow, receive care, raise families, solve problems, and trust that leaders are there to serve something bigger than themselves. That takes participation.

A community is shaped by participants. And I want to talk directly to the people who feel politically homeless. Because there are so many more of you than you think. You may feel too conservative for some rooms and too progressive for others. You may have faith and still worry about how faith is being used politically. You may care about individual liberty and still believe that we owe each other something. You may want to lower costs and still know that cutting support without a plan hurts real families.

And you may believe in protecting life and still believe that women need better care, more honesty, and less fear in the exam room. That mix can absolutely make you feel alone. But guess what? You beautiful person out there, you are not alone. A lot of people are more complicated than the political categories allow. And maybe just maybe part of the middle moving means complicated people stop pretending that they fit neatly where they don’t fit. You are allowed to ask better questions.

You are allowed to expect more from your side, and you are allowed to vote based on your conscience rather than pressure, or that card you got in the mail that has that only lets you vote for your team. You are allowed to reject chaos while holding on to conviction. Caring deeply is one reason that some of us are done with chaos. Chaos wastes the energy needed for real work. It turns neighbors into enemies, it turns public service into performance, it turns vulnerable people into props.

And it turns every issue into a loyalty test. It makes good people tired, quiet, and easier to ignore. And that is why the middle has to move. Let’s get moving. The edges are already moving. They are organized, they are motivated, they are loud, and they know how to use fear. They know how to turn every issue into a fight for survival. And they know how to make reasonable people feel like speaking up is not worth the cost. The middle cannot answer that with sleepy disappointment.

It has to become active. Active means awake. It means showing up before the crisis. It means voting before the general election. It means supporting good candidates early while they still need courage around them. It means telling the truth when your side drifts. It means refusing to laugh along when cruelty is aimed at someone else because it happens to help your preferred outcome. That is the work. And yes, it costs something. Staying human usually does.

But I still believe that it’s worth it. Well, as I’m recording episode 50, I keep thinking about my kids. I think about the kind of community that they are going to inherit. And I think about what they see when adults disagree. I think about whether they will believe that public life is worth entering, or whether they will look at all of this and think the only people who run things are the ones who enjoy conflict the most. That would be a tragedy, and we should all be worried about that.

We need good people to serve. We need good people on boards, in schools, in clinics, in nonprofits, in churches, in local government, in small businesses, and in every place where decisions touch human lives. We need people who step forward for the right reasons. And we need people who remember that leadership is not supposed to be about them. We need people who handle disagreement without turning it into a personal war. And we need to stop making it unbearable for decent people to just raise their hands.

Again, I want to thank the people who step up to run. I mean that sincerely. Even the people that I disagree with. Even the people that I would challenge hard on policy. Running takes courage. Serving takes courage. Letting your name become something that people can judge, twist, mock, support, attack, and misunderstand takes more out of a person than most people know. I hated most parts of it when I ran. I thought I could handle the heat in a lot of ways.

I could. But the ugliness just hit differently. The personal nature, the way that people flatten you, the way that they act like one position, one post, one rumor, or one disagreement gives them the full measure of your character. The way that families feel the spillover, the way that good people start wondering whether public service is worth the cost. That kind of ugliness does damage. So yes, thank you to the people who still step forward. Thank you to the people who serve without making it all about themselves.

Thank you to the people who lose and still care. Thank you to the people who win and still remember humanity. And thank you to the people who stay engaged after the signs come down and the applause fades. Because that is the work that a community needs. And for the rest of us, I am just begging us to open our eyes. Open your eyes on both sides, please. Please, please. Notice when your side drifts. Notice when your side excuses corruption. Notice when your side starts sounding more like a cult than a community.

Notice when leaders demand loyalty but reject accountability. Notice how they treat women or other people in their sphere. Notice when fear becomes the whole message. And notice when cruelty starts getting laughs. Notice when the people being harmed are asked to wait quietly because the political strategy needs them to be inconvenient. We have to get away from division that feeds on us. Think about that. We have to get away from division that feeds on us.

It takes our soul. Honest disagreement is part of a healthy community. But this constant sorting of people into enemies is hollowing us out. It’s making us so much easier to manipulate and harder to love. It is making leadership more toxic, healthcare more difficult, families more tense, churches more divided, and communities less able to solve real problems. I still believe that we can choose something better. This is the hope part. This is the rally rally.

We’ve got this part. I’m going to end on this. I believe that we can build a community where character still matters. I believe that we can talk about healthcare like it involves real people because it does. I believe that we can fight for women’s health with seriousness, moral humility, and enough courage to listen to the people closest to the pain. I believe that we can protect life in ways that do not abandon the person already sitting in front of us asking for care.

And I believe that we can hold leaders accountable without making public service a blood sport. I believe that the middle can move. And I know that starts with me too. I get busy, I get protective of my peace, and I tell myself that I’m already doing enough. I stay quiet because sometimes speaking up feels like inviting nonsense into my day, and I have enough nonsense already. I have email, I have meetings, I have a goalie body held together by stubbornness and questionable stretching habits that my wife likes to make fun of.

But if I believe this stuff, I have to live it. So that’s my challenge this week. Move toward participation. Move toward truth, move toward the kind of community that you want your kids to inherit and move toward people instead of away from them. Move with enough courage to be clear and enough humility to stay human. Because that is the hopeful work. Hope is not pretending that things are fine. Hope is deciding that the ugliness does not get the final word.

Hope is choosing to care when cynicism would be easier. Hope is showing up for the community that you still believe that we can become. So 50 episodes in, I’m still learning that. And I’m still learning how to stay human in a world that keeps making dehumanizing people feel normal. And I’m still grateful that you’re here with me. That’s all I’ve got for this week. I’m Mike Baker. This is still here, still trying. Thank you for 50 episodes. Stay human, stay engaged, and for the love of all things holy, read more than the headline before you start yelling on Facebook.

I’ll see you next week. Okay, well, that was another good one, I hope. Before I go, I want to leave you with a song like we do every week. This one is called Human First, and it feels right for episode 50 because it carries so much of what this podcast has been trying to say from the beginning. This song comes from the part of me that still believes that we have to protect our humanity on purpose. Nobody’s gonna do that work for us. The culture pulls us toward outrage, the platforms pull us toward reaction, politics pulls us toward teams, fear pulls us toward suspicion.

We have to choose something better with intention. And when I say human first, I’m talking about remembering that the person in front of us still matters. We’re talking about remembering that policy lands in real lives, and I’m talking about refusing to let fear make us careless. I’m talking about refusing to applaud cruelty because it helped our side for a minute. That is what this song carries for me. So wherever you are this week, whether you’re hopeful, frustrated, politically homeless, fired up, worn down, or somewhere in the messy middle, I hope that this song gives you a place to land for a few minutes.

I hope it reminds you that staying human is still worth it. And I hope it reminds you that wanting something better does not make you naive. It means that the noise hasn’t taken that part of you yet. Thank you again for 50 episodes. Here’s human first. Have a beautiful, beautiful week. Walking slow down my own street. Strangers smile when our eyes meet, doesn’t matter red or blue. I see the same light shining through. At the store, we stand in line, trading jokes to pass the time.

All the noise things when we speak. Together strong with human free.