For us visual learners, Elbert County had some great scenes last night. I opened my eyes from an après dîné catnap about 6:00 p.m. when the Cards still had hope from their lead off double against the Giants, and one of those spectacular Colorado sunsets began to carve the sky into a giant jack-o-lantern. It would have been more than enough to just take those pictures and call it an evening but my lovely spouse kicked me out the door. Smart woman.

At 60, the Halloween costumes most people wear no longer frighten me, even the everyday ones. You just see right through all that makeup to the personality. What’s inside is usually a good person, an earnest person, a whole gamut of persons. No one who comes out stays hidden for long. So the gamut pageant came out to do political business under a sharp sunset.

I visited the two Elizabeth political scenes. There was a third one in Kiowa but I rolled it. A fair number of cars on Main Street in Elizabeth reflected highlights from the warm glow escaping the upstairs windows at the Falcon Lounge. Climbing the stairs, I heard the full-throated intensity of a speakeasy just around the corner, and I wondered if the cops knew this place existed and how would I slip out the back door unnoticed when the vice squad came crashing in with nightsticks swinging. I’m not as nimble on the stairs as I once was.

Sliding past the end of the bar, Cathy and Denise’s space transports you into the center of attention. It was loud and the runway is short. I could only sort out words from people right in front of me though the room is small enough, close enough, and warm enough to make eye contact with everyone else. There was a political purpose on the table, but everyone I spoke with was informal.

I suppose some people do business in a bar, or a golf course, using genteel mediums to lubricate their deals. I didn’t see any of that. It was just a decompressing and rich adult time, and who could ask for more.

Moving on over a couple blocks to the Left’s conclave, I should have had my camera ready to capture the looks on many of their faces as I entered that sanctuary of all matters governmental. What a picture! – no mistaking their shocked looks for playful Halloween horror.

Elbert County’s Left, in person, for the most part, treat me with kindness and sometimes even sympathy, kind of like a stray dog I suppose. While I wouldn’t trust a couple of them to walk behind me in a dark alley, most of them aren’t too bad.

Unlike the scene at the Falcon Lounge with its hair letting down and masks coming off, in the brilliantly lit foyer of Frontier High School it was all business. I may have corrupted the sanctuary through the introduction of a politically alien macrobody, may have unavoidably changed the experiment through my observation, but not having been there before I arrived, I’ll never know.

What I heard were people very concerned about things gone wrong in Elbert County. And their certainty that things had gone terribly wrong in Elbert County matched their certainty that they could and should wield governmental power to “rule with kindness” and “bring all citizens to the table” to correct those wrongs. It was a very egalitarian vision, designed to invest voters, though in practice the playground environment of citizen councils seems to turn out more Darwinians than democrats.

I don’t know how one possibly sustains their rose colored impression of governmental power, particularly nowadays with all the internet transparency about things. Moreover, I don’t know how these folks got into such a state of Panacea, ruled by the goddess of universal remedy. When has that ever happened?

But for this room full of Leftists in that foyer, quantum improbabilities presented no bar. A mathematician might infer such an event through a harmonic string vibrating into a parallel universe, but I don’t hold with such fictions. I think this universe is all we have. I’m virtually sure the portal to the Frontier High School foyer is not a worm hole.

And call me an unfaithful conservative, but I don’t dislike most of these Leftists, except for the few haters. I respect their good intentions. How could you not respect utopia? That would be like disrespecting heaven. I respect their intensity, misguided though it may be. And they didn’t eject me from their sanctuary, though if shunning looks from Jerry and Sue Bishop could kill, I’m a rotting corpse today.

But standing out, naked in the harsh fluorescent light, the words of Dorman’s unequivocal promise to immediately reopen the Elbert County Oil & Gas zoning regulation deliberation with an intent to change the law back to something akin to what the current commission rejected two summers ago – kind of a back-to-the-future version of progressivism – captured my attention.

A legal tussle with the State of Colorado over the ownership and control of expensive, income-producing private property in Elbert County would be much more serious than a trip to court with a meadowlark. I know Dorman wasn’t sick that day of zoning denouement two summers ago because I have him on tape. Maybe he doesn’t listen as well as he thinks he does.

Though no one can predict the future with certainty, Dorman’s recent written statement that his election “can change the balance on the Board of County Commissioners,” suggests he’s already worked a new balance out with a partner on the BOCC.

Given the quasi-judicial nature of the job of county commissioner, now that Dorman has promised to form a new majority to pass a law before even seeing a legal zoning proposal, one should reasonably expect him to recuse himself on such future decisions on this subject matter since, you know, he’s already compromised his judicial objectivity.

Nah. That ain’t gonna’ happen in Elbert County.

Well, that was the big impression for me. The Left wrapped it up and I made good my exit before the brawling got started. One more thing about that event. It never had a chance at being a balanced room with people from a spectrum of political opinions looking for real debate. There was only one right answer to every question, and everyone in the room already knew it. I didn’t see any cheat sheets passed around, but my spidey sense was tingling. Conservatives were right to avoid the setup.

I went back to the speakeasy for a drink and a friendly bartender. Politics of a more limited nature still flowed there. And I think that is best. Humility first. Things are complicated enough. And no one sees the future, except those crazy mathematicians.