> ## 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/writing/the-middle-has-to-move/ - Published: 2026-05-20T09:31:30.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-10T08:39:01.000Z - Description: Fifty episodes in. On public ugliness, women's health, and the work of staying human when the middle is the hardest place left to keep standing. - Author: Mike Baker - Tags: Human First, #Import 2026-08-01 07:39 ## **Episode 50, public ugliness, women’s health, and the work of staying human** Fifty episodes. I keep coming back to that number because it feels bigger than I expected it to feel. When I started *Still Here, Still Trying*, I thought I was making a podcast. I thought I was giving myself a place to talk about music, leadership, family, grief, optimism, healthcare, and whatever else was bouncing around in my head that week. Somewhere along the way, it became something more personal than that. It became a record of me trying to stay human out loud. That sounds dramatic until you think about what life asks of us now. We are all being pulled in a hundred directions. Work wants more. Family needs more. The news moves faster than our nervous systems were built for. Social media turns every thought into a performance. Public life rewards the people who seem most comfortable turning neighbors into enemies. And then there is regular life, which does not pause for any of it. You still have to make dinner. You still have to answer the email. You still have to show up at work. You still have to care for your kids, your parents, your patients, your team, your marriage, your body, your bills, your faith, your fragile little thread of sanity. That is where this podcast has lived for 50 episodes. In the middle of all that. I didn’t build it because I had answers. I built it because I needed a place to tell the truth while I was still figuring things out. And episode 50 feels like the right moment to say something I have felt building for a long time. The middle has to move. ## **I learned something ugly when I ran** I need to start with a story. When I ran for office, I thought I understood pressure. I lead in healthcare. I have sat in hard rooms. I have made difficult decisions. I have had people upset with me. I have carried responsibility when the options were messy and the stakes were real. I thought I had a pretty strong stomach for public criticism. Then politics showed me a different kind of ugly. It was not only disagreement. I can handle disagreement. Honestly, I respect disagreement when it comes from a serious place. The hard part was the flattening. People take a whole human being and reduce him to one position, one rumor, one post, one assumption, one side. They stop seeing the person. They stop seeing the family standing near that person. They stop wondering what the work has cost. They stop asking whether the version of you they are attacking has anything to do with who you actually are. That kind of ugliness gets under your skin. It got under mine. I hated parts of it. I hated what it did to my family. I hated how quickly people could become cruel and still feel righteous. I hated how many good people whispered encouragement privately because saying it publicly felt too risky. That last part stayed with me. A lot of good people are scared to speak in public right now. They are not weak. They are not lazy. They are not checked out because they don’t care. Many of them care deeply. They care about schools, healthcare, families, faith, public safety, housing, local businesses, children, seniors, and the future of this place. They have also watched what happens to people who step forward. So they stay quiet. And I get it. But quiet has a cost. ## **The room still fills** When decent people step back, the public square does not become healthier. The room fills with whoever shows up. It fills with people who know how to use fear. It fills with people who turn resentment into attention. It fills with people who understand that outrage moves faster than careful thought. It fills with people who want leadership for the wrong reasons and know how to sound strong while avoiding the patient work of actually serving. That is how communities drift. Most of us do not wake up one morning and choose something extreme. We drift there because the grounded people got tired, the serious people got quiet, and the loudest people kept showing up. The middle I’m talking about is not some soft, empty place with no conviction. I mean the human middle. The people who believe character matters. The people who think leadership should require maturity. The people who believe you should be able to hold strong moral beliefs without losing your compassion. The people who care about policy and also care about the person who has to live with that policy after the speech ends. That middle has been too quiet. Episode 50 is my way of saying I don’t think we get to stay quiet anymore. ## **The comment section is not real life** The comment section has convinced us that everyone is worse than they are. That is one of the great lies of this moment. Real life is usually more decent. Think about the last kids’ game you went to. You are sitting next to parents you may not fully agree with politically. One of them might have a bumper sticker that makes your eye twitch. One might vote differently than you. One might listen to a podcast that would make you question everything. But you are not screaming at each other. You are watching the kids. You are cheering when somebody finally kicks the ball in the right direction. You are laughing about the weather. You are wondering why snack shack nachos still taste good even though everyone knows that cheese came from a pump and might survive the fall of civilization. That is real life. Real life is the person who fixes your car. The nurse who calls you back. The teacher who stays late. The neighbor who waves. The pharmacist who answers your question. The friend who checks in when your mom dies. The coworker who covers for you when life falls apart. Most people are trying to get through the week with a little dignity. The comment section is loud, but it does not deserve to run the community. The problem is that we keep letting it. We let it shape how we see people. We let it tell us who is dangerous, who is stupid, who is evil, who belongs, who should be mocked, who should be dismissed. We let strangers with bad information and worse impulse control define the tone of public life. That is not leadership. That is emotional pollution. And all of us have to decide whether we are going to keep breathing it in and calling it normal. ## **Cult thinking wears different shirts** One of the things I am begging people to see is that cult-like thinking shows up on both sides. I know that sentence will irritate people. Good. Sit with it. Cult-like thinking happens when loyalty becomes more important than truth. It happens when a leader can do no wrong because they belong to your side. It happens when corruption gets excused because the outcome helped your team. It happens when people stop asking whether something is right and start asking whether admitting it is wrong will help the enemy. That is how people lose themselves. Corruption is corruption. Cruelty is cruelty. Lying is lying. Abuse of power is abuse of power. None of it becomes clean because the person doing it uses language we like. I am tired of watching people excuse behavior from their own side that they would condemn in two seconds from someone else. I am tired of watching people treat accountability like betrayal. I am tired of watching public life become a place where the only real sin is making your team uncomfortable. That is not conviction. That is fear wearing team colors. If a leader demands loyalty but rejects accountability, pay attention. If a movement asks you to ignore your conscience because the other side is worse, pay attention. If your group starts making excuses for cruelty because it feels useful, pay attention. If you feel that little pinch in your gut and then immediately start explaining it away, pay attention. That little pinch might be your integrity trying to survive the group chat. ## **Healthcare is where this stops being theoretical** I work in healthcare, so I don’t get the luxury of keeping politics abstract. Policy walks into clinics. It shows up as a parent delaying care because the bill scares them. It shows up as a woman living with pain because nobody listened early enough. It shows up as a patient waiting months for care because the workforce is thin. It shows up as a family driving across rural roads, missing work, burning gas money, and hoping the appointment actually helps. In healthcare, slogans have consequences. That is why the extremes bother me so much. Idaho’s laws around abortion and women’s health are not only political talking points. They shape how clinicians think, how patients feel, and how care teams navigate some of the most painful moments in a person’s life. The Idaho State Bar has described Idaho’s abortion ban framework as involving criminal penalties, a total ban without a general health exception, and separate limited emergency language under another ban. That kind of legal environment matters because clinicians are left navigating high-stakes medical decisions inside a tense legal and political climate. This is where I need people to open their eyes. You can care deeply about unborn life and still understand that women need doctors who are not afraid to practice medicine. You can care deeply about mothers, babies, and families while also admitting that fear and confusion inside healthcare harm everyone. You can hold a moral conviction and still listen to physicians, nurses, patients, and families who are begging for laws that work in real exam rooms rather than campaign speeches. That is where the edges fail us. One edge acts like anyone concerned about unborn life is automatically hateful or controlling. That is unfair to many sincere people who carry a deep moral conviction about life. The other edge acts like any concern about women’s health, medical judgment, fatal fetal conditions, pregnancy complications, or clinician fear is moral weakness. That is cruel to women and families facing devastating realities. The real work asks more of us. It asks us to protect life with humility. It asks us to protect women with seriousness. It asks us to build laws doctors can actually practice under. It asks us to listen to clinicians who understand the difference between a political phrase and a medical emergency. Idaho needs doctors. Rural communities need access. Women need healthcare that listens before crisis. Families facing heartbreaking situations need care, not slogans. And this is not only theory. Reporting and research have described major concerns about Idaho’s OB-GYN workforce after the state’s abortion bans took effect. A JAMA Network Open study found a large decrease in OB-GYN physicians practicing obstetrics after changes in state abortion law, with Idaho showing a major loss of physicians practicing obstetrics over the study period. When the edges take over, healthcare gets harder. Staff get scared. Patients get confused. Good clinicians burn out or leave. Leaders spend time managing political damage instead of building better systems. Communities lose trust. The people who need care most get caught in the middle. That should bother all of us. ## **Leadership should make you smaller in the right way** Leadership is not supposed to make your ego bigger. It should make you more accountable. The higher the role, the less the work should revolve around your need to be admired. Leadership should sharpen your sense of responsibility. It should make you more careful with your words, your power, your assumptions, and your blind spots. That is true in politics. It is true in healthcare. It is true in business, churches, schools, nonprofits, families, and teams. When leadership becomes self-protection, people get hurt. When leadership becomes performance, problems get ignored. When leadership becomes a loyalty test, truth gets punished. I want leaders who tolerate challenge. I want leaders who apologize without acting like it killed them. I want leaders who can say, “I got that wrong,” and then do the repair work. I want leaders who understand that public service is not a personal brand exercise. 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 leadership we need holds both. I also want to thank the people who run for office or step into public service for the right reasons. Even the people I disagree with. Even the people I would challenge hard on policy. Running takes courage. Serving takes courage. Letting your name become something people can judge, twist, mock, support, attack, and misunderstand takes more out of a person than most people know. I know enough about that ugliness to say this with my whole chest: stop making it unbearable for decent people to serve. Hold leaders accountable. Ask hard questions. Demand transparency. Pay attention to conflicts of interest. Call out corruption. Challenge bad policy. Do all of that. But don’t turn 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 people serve inside. That should make us more careful. ## **What I want from episode 50** I don’t want episode 50 to be a celebration of me. I want it to be an invitation. If this podcast has meant anything to you over the last 50 episodes, I hope it has reminded you that staying human is a choice we keep making. In grief. In leadership. In marriage. In parenting. In healthcare. In public life. In private pain. In the moments where anger would feel easier than honesty. Still here, still trying has to mean more than personal resilience. It has to mean civic resilience too. It has to mean we stay engaged when public life gets ugly. It has to mean we tell the truth when our own side drifts. It has to mean we refuse to excuse corruption because it benefits our preferred outcome. It has to mean we protect women’s health from political theater. It has to mean we thank people who step forward and hold them accountable without destroying their humanity. It has to mean the middle moves. Not with hate. Not with panic. Not with the same ugliness that exhausted us in the first place. With courage. With honesty. With humility. With enough hope to keep showing up. ## **Stay with the show** Episode 50 closes with my song **“Human First.”** That song feels right because it carries the heart of what I have been trying to say since the beginning. The person in front of us still matters. Policy lands in real lives. Fear does not get to make us careless. Cruelty does not deserve applause because it helped our side for a minute. If you have been with me for all 50 episodes, thank you. If you are new here, welcome. This show is for people who are trying to stay human in a world that keeps making that harder than it should be. Listen to the episode. Share it with someone who is tired of the noise but not ready to give up on people. Leave a comment and tell me what kind of community you want to help build. I want to hear from you. Because this conversation only matters if it leaves the microphone and becomes something we live. The middle has to move. So let’s move. **Listen to Episode 50 of Still Here, Still Trying: “The Middle Has to Move.”** **Join the conversation:** What kind of community do you want to help build?