I caught a quick glimpse of this picture just inside a recent Indy, the issue about Piñon Canyon expansion, and quickly closed the paper. The banners and rebar in front of Toons are falling to disrepair, so I cringed to see what attention they’d drawn.
It turns out we’re seen as “concrete support for the ranchers” against military expansion in the region. Great! But the article was sneakily double edged. It made the case that “Colorado Springs is losing the battle for Piñon Canyon.” Colorado Springs as in big business interests maybe, not Colorado Springs representing the people here. They don’t want military expansion. How can you lose a battle you aren’t trying to win?
Colorado Springs has always been run roughshod by the military and land developers, but leaving out that distinction, the article presumes to be speaking for all of us. And warning us that we are losing. Do I lose the Lotto every time I don’t play it? I do not.
What makes the suggestion more subversive is that the Army and Colorado Springs Inc are not losing. As subsequent news reports have shown, the Army juggernaut continues. The Colorado legislation vote to deny funding to land use studies is a setback, not a defeat. The Army faces its usual foes, a populace who persists against them. But the sides are unequally matched, like corporations versus individuals. People have finite resources, finite energies to mobilize in the effort. The Army knows this, their spokesman all but spells it out at town hall forums, clearly an eerie psych-ops move to demoralize the opposition. Y’all have lives to get back to. [Resistance is futile.]
The ranchers of southeast Colorado have risen to the alarm cry that the Army is about to crush their land with its tanks. Putting out the message that the Army is losing ground is an attempt to send the crowd home. It is military propaganda.
Michael de Yoanna’s commentary that you linked to is incoherent at best. That coincides with the desire of the publisher of the Indy to appear to be making comment and taking positions, while mainly desiring to position himself as a big player in The Process of bringing Fort Carson expansion about. He doesn’t want to alienate any of the other Big-Wig players (military, Salazars, Allard, etc.) at all by stating firmly and unequivocally that the Indy opposes Fort Carson expansion (even if that in fact is the case?). The Indy wants to wheel and deal, and Michael de Yoanna’s coverage of the issue suffers due to the restrictions he has mandated to him by the publisher of the Indy.
All that being said, the public IS actually losing on this one. Not near enough strength has been mobilized to counter anything the Pentagon wants to do with Fort Carson. Real concern about this expansion remains mainly confined to the ranching community of the area effected.