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... every time they’ve been able to get one up on Texas, Texas has been so bad that A&M has been the least of our worries.

When I said this, I thought it was an accurate statement but I wanted to be sure so I checked the stats.
Texas and Texas A&M played each other 118 times.  Texas won 76 of those games, which is a 66% winning percentage.  That's about on par with Texas' winning percentage against SMU, UofH and TCU.  
There were two spans in history when A&M was competitive.  The rest of the time Texas pretty much dominated the series.
One of those the spans was 1909 to 1939 which <sarcasm> I'm sure is relevant to all of us.</sarcasm>  [Since 1940, BTW, Texas has won 49 of 73 games, a 68% winning percentage].
The other time A&M was competitive, and even dominant, was 1984 through 1994 - but like I said in my earlier post, Texas was so dreadful then that A&M was hardly our biggest concern.  The Texas teams A&M beat during that time were a combined 60-52-2.  It even included 4 Texas teams with losing records which is significant because in 125 years of playing football, Texas has only had 16 losing seasons.   That was 25% of them right there.  Interestingly, this was also the same span of time when Baylor and UofH racked up most of their all-time wins against Texas as well.
Think back to Charlie Strong's unfortunate tenure at Texas.  Three losing seasons.  Losses to BYU, Cal, Iowa State and even Kansas.  Terrible forgettable years.  But what if somebody had no other frame of reference and their entire experience as a Texas fan was based on those three years.   They might be tempted to look at the losses to TCU and say, "OMG!  I hate TCU!  They're the worst!  They're our biggest rival!"
That's kind of how the whole A&M as our rival strikes me.

This is kind of like listening to people talk religion or politics.  

Somehow we ended up with a culture that demands those two things never be talked about in polite company.  It occurs to me lately there's hardly anything else more worth discussing.  Politics, religion.  How are we gonna live down here, and how are we gonna live up there?  I really can't think of anything that should be more at the forefront of conversation.  
The problem isn't the topics.  The problem is many people lost the ability to have a civil discourse and approach disagreements thoughtfully and rationally, and they ruined it for the rest of us.  

True enough.

It's popular right now to blame soundbite journalism, social media, memes, and other short-format, pithy communication forms, for the problem.  But it started long before any of that.  The political and religious environment of the UT campus I inhabited in the early 90s was really no less divisive and intractable.  Folks just shouted each other down on the West Mall, rather than on the internet.

I hate that Oregon State can have a pedophile on the mound for the CWS, but we've got a cornerback suspended for two years for smoking a joint.  

The LSU player was originally suspended for failing a drug test and then was later arrested for pot possession

Im not sure I disagree with his banishment from the team

The Oregon state pitcher should not have been on the team

We've been saying "Life ain't always fair" for generations, and still managed to live through it with a smile.

Now we raise cain anytime someone has a thought we don't like.  I agree with 320, too much time on our hands.

When I was in 2nd grade, my elementary school had button pins, red one said Nixon, blue one said McGovern.

The school told us to determine who we were for, and we would wear our pins for one week.

I remember most of the kids had Nixon pins, but that's not the point.  The point is, imagine that happening today.  First off, they were PINS.  Argh, danger!

But more importantly, politics!  Imagine the uproar if an elementary school did this.  Yet it was all in the interest of teaching civics and patriotism.

We did the same thing in '80 for Reagan-Carter (elementary school for me), and in '84 for Reagan-Mondale (Jr. High for me).
In junior high we even elected "campaign managers" to organize the campaign on behalf of Reagan or Mondale for about a month before the election, and then a mock election where we all cast our paper ballots (no hanging chads that I recall) for the candidate of our choice.
Now that I think about it, that was all surprisingly civil, especially for a bunch of stupid loud-mouth junior high kids.