So Blue

So Blue

As I write these words, my country stands at the edge of a precipice. Over the last 100 years, our country has teetered back and forth. Somehow on the latest arc of the pendulum, icy barbs of hate were attached; wounding those who dared stand in the way. Now as that mechanism moves back, those wounded soldiers are rearmed with angry scars.

How did we become so polarized? How did we become blue vs red? Liberal vs conservative? Christian vs Secular? Hate on hate? I think it had something to do with the intensity of the last swing. 9/11 acted as a magnifier, our reaction just scorching the whole Earth in its reckless path, creating a whole village of former friends.

I do know this much. The rising tide of Democratic wins across the nation this evening can only serve our democracy well. For far too long, our country has been held hostage by an intolerant regime, heaven-bent on their modern crusade. Now, hopefully, at the very least, there will be strong debate and no one ideological group will be able to hijack America’s good will.

Through all of the national political turmoil, one of the most interesting ballot issues this year for me was the water referendum in Lexington, Kentucky. In Lexington, voters had to decide whether or not to take over the local water company. Strange by Roanoke standards, Lexington water is delivered by a private company based overseas. This foreign owned entity bought the municipal water supply some twenty years ago or so and ran the water business as a money-making enterprise.

Over the last year or so, a movement of progressives rose up to bring the local water system back under local control. I sensed that the people supporting this movement were people who generally leaned more left of center politically. In order to accomplish this, the locality would have to condemn the property and seize it under eminent domain laws. Once those words rang out, a counter movement launched to save the for-profit water company. I got the feeling that the people who supported this movement were mostly conservative. Thus, recent traditional roles have been strangely contorted. The left leaning proponents were actively seeking seizure of properties. The right leaning were cast as protectors of a foreign business' rights against local government.

The battle over local control of water became nasty. Signage littered yards all across town highlighting the sharp divide between the two sides. I was sucked in to this argument by the clever framing of the debate. Those who supported the eminent domain takeover of the water business framed the argument in three simple words, “Yes for Water.” Those opposed to the take-over and the reestablishment of a local water authority boiled their campaign down to four words, “No to Eminent Domain.” For the first day or so on my recent visit to Lexington, I assumed that there were two separate issues being considered by voters, something to do with water and something to do with someone trying to take over some land. The fact that the issues were one in the same took me by complete surprise.

The votes are now in on the water issue and water decisively lost. The voters of Lexington voted “No for water,” only proving that they had a more intense thirst for staying the course than their opposition.

WATER REFERENDUM
250 of 250 Precincts Reporting

Yes or No Votes Yes 30,920 No 47,951

Btw: I really can’t stand the terms “red states and blue states” as well as “Dems” for Democrats and “Pubs” for Republicans. Just sounds stoopid to me.