Mike Barvosa
Bio
Texas-based educator. Always listening.
I write about what we ignore, where memory fades, systems fail, and silence shouts louder than truth. My stories don’t comfort. They confront.
Read them if you're ready to stop looking away.
Stories (12)
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Violence and the Poverty of Dialogue
On September 10, 2025, in Utah, a public forum intended for the exchange of ideas was shattered by gunfire. What ought to have been a sanctuary for reason became instead a scene of fear and confusion. This was not simply the misfortune of one individual or one gathering. It was, more profoundly, a violation of the very condition upon which public life depends: the freedom to speak, to listen, and to deliberate without fear of annihilation.
By Mike Barvosa4 months ago in Critique
On Federalist No. 10
The real failure is not only in the politicians who twist the maps but in the citizens who refuse to learn how the game is played. You carry the internet in your pocket, yet too many choose to marinate in echo chambers, waving red or blue flags while ignoring the machinery of power grinding them down. That is how you end up as a pawn in the salamander chess match between donkeys and elephants. It is exactly the environment in which Madison’s warning in Federalist No. 10 has come true.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in The Swamp
The Map, the Myth, and the Math: What Texas’s New District Plan Really Shows
When the public hears racial inequality claims in politics, like Texas Rep. Vince Perez (D, El Paso, District 77) saying “Latino citizens count for one-third, Black citizens for one-fifth, of a white resident,” the words sound urgent and even righteous. But rhetoric without precision is not public service; it is stagecraft. When numbers are presented without the actual mechanics of representation, they do not enlighten anyone. They construct a narrative.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in The Swamp
The Redistricting Scam Nobody Wants to Fix
Everyone’s talking about gerrymandering again, but almost no one is talking about the bigger structural flaw baked into the system. And if you think this is just about Republicans or Democrats, you are already missing the point.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in The Swamp
The Mapmakers and the Elephant in the Chamber
If you have lived in this country longer than it takes to cook a brisket, you already know politics is just the art of dressing up a hog and charging admission to watch it root around. It loves flags, speeches, and pretending to work for you. Strip away the pageantry and you find three levers running the whole machine: who writes the rules, who gets counted and allowed to vote, and who draws the lines. America has been yanking on those levers since it was young enough to be bottle-fed on tea and revolution.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in The Swamp
The Tale of the Gambling Gentleman and the Coward in a Tie
Once upon a time—not long ago, but long enough for folks to forget—a certain breed of man in polished shoes got it in his head that risk was a virtue, and that profit excused everything short of arson. He worked on a street named Wall, though I reckon it should’ve been called Wager Avenue, because gambling was the only honest thing going on there.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in The Swamp
The Report Will Be Archived
August 18, 2077. Just after noon, or what passed for it in the Republic of Texas. I arrived with clearance. Time didn’t tick here; it hung—like suppressed fire, like a mission briefing with no start time. You learned to read the room, not the clock. Stillness, fixed stares, shallow breathing—those were your timepieces.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in Futurism
The Unborn. And I. . Content Warning.
My name is Ezra. I was born in 1992. Exactly 4,015 days later, I found the photo. The air was sterile that day—the kind of stillness that wraps around you in old rooms, where nothing has moved but dust and time. There, inside a taped envelope, two faint orbs floated. Like echoes without sound. Not twins. Just two chances. One taken. One turned away.
By Mike Barvosa5 months ago in Fiction
