Perhaps now more than ever, we need a voice to calm our nation’s jangled nerves. Regardless of politics, the country should be coming together.

The editorial board here at 1 Scaianalysis Esplanade has been urging everyone to stop arguing with strangers on Facebook for years, and yet here we are.

But that voice of reason we needed has now emerged. That voice has emerged in the form of Mattress Mack.

Let me explain.

Houston’s Mattress Mack has been a successful businessman and philanthropist. During Hurricane Harvey in 2017, he opened up his shop to 400 evacuees, giving them a place to stay, food and laundry for two weeks. Then they got to keep the mattresses.

I talked to him after that. He described Hurricane Harvey as the worst of times but also the best of times.

He says times like that bring out the “unity and community” in us. We all were looking out for each other after the hurricane, and he suggested we could try to maintain that sense of community all the time, not just during disasters.

The governor showed up at his shop after Hurricane Beryl. No one seems particularly pleased a quarter million people still didn’t have power Monday, a week after the storm hit.

Mattress Mack got a plug in… saying he didn’t know where the hurricane was going to hit, so he didn’t want to take a chance sleeping on his luxurious Tempur-Pedic and get stuck in flooding, so he slept on a bad mattress at the office so he could become a refuge in case the “proverbial stuff hit the fan.”

He says they wound up with 15,000 people coming to Gallery Furniture, and they served 3,500 people. He addresses “Mr. CenterPoint,” saying he opened his shop because that’s what the community needed.

Mattress Mack says you can’t take your money with you, so whichever god you believe in is not likely to ask your net worth when you die.

He says now that we’re all constantly connected, people want to be able to flip on their cell phone to check on family after a disaster, but without power, no one could charge their phone. Mattress Mack had generators running, saying more than a place to sleep or eat, people were asking for a place to plug in.

After an assassination attempt on a former president, you might be questioning the country’s future or why we’re so divided regardless of your political party. Someone like Mattress Mack [or “Jim McIngvale,” if you will] can show us we still look out for each other in times of crisis.

Press conferences don’t usually feature rounds of applause, but he made everyone in his store feel good… about a hurricane.