By now you've been invited to participate in a citywide discussion of the compound question, "How will we protect all that we value while continuing to grow as a community?" If you're new to Lexington, you've no doubt wondered about the meaning of the cryptic expression "protect all that we value." Don't take the bait. Don't allow members of the Lexington Is Special cult to use the first half the compound question to prevent discussion of the "continuing to grow as a community" half.
References to unspecified values and to "all that's special about Lexington" are the secret handshake of the "Lexington Is Special" cult. Members of the cult invoke Lexington's specialness the same way the early Christians used the Ichthus, or "fish symbol," to identify each other. More importantly, they use it as a means of preventing potentially unflattering comparisons of Lexington with other cities of its size. References to "all that's special about Lexington" or to the need to "protect all that we value" are also a kind of Shibboleth that enables members of the "Lexington Is Special" cult to identify non-believers. And yes, if you have to ask the meaning of the cryptic expression "protect all that we value," you have just outed yourself as the kind of outsider from which all that we value needs protection.
Members of the Lexington Is Special cult use expressions of Lexington's specialness as conversation stoppers. When newcomers and other non-believers try to start a discussion about how to bring more jobs and investment to Lexington or how to improve education in Lexington, cult members wield expressions of Lexington's specialness like a vampire slayer brandishes a crucifix, driving a stake through the heart of any productive talk about the future.
Don't be fooled by all the talk of "family-friendliness" and "keeping Lexington the kind of place where it's safe to raise kids." The Lexington Is Special cult practices a form of child sacrifice by failing to educate its children to compete against the 6 billion people on the planet who don't belong to the Lexington Is Special cult and by not providing Lexington's children with enough jobs so that they can stay here when they're grown.
That's how Lexington's children apostatize from the faith. When children born into the Lexington Is Special cult move away to more progressive cities and see better education systems, more jobs and properly timed traffic lights, they lose their Lexington religion.
Lexington is not special. If we allow a city agency to sexually abuse children for decades, we eventually get sued just like any other city, and the taxpayers pick up the tab. If we ignore EPA storm and wastewater regulations, our taxpayers eventually have to pay the fines just like any other city. And if we don't do what it takes to attract investment and new jobs, there are 6 billion unbelievers in Lexington's specialness who will be happy to show us what happens to a city that thinks the rules of competition don't apply to it.
Until now, Lexington's identity - its brand - has been defined, for good and for ill, almost entirely by what surrounds us, not by the kind of "consciously chosen strategy" Destination 2040 wants us to devise. Take the "horse capital of the world" designation, for instance. Because we're lucky enough to be surrounded by counties with picture postcard horse farms, and because those beautiful horse farms are the first thing visitors associate with Lexington when they land at Bluegrass Airport and the last thing motorists associate with Lexington when they drive past us on the highway, Lexington would still be the horse capital of the world if we paved over every horse farm in Fayette County. No, I'm not advocating that we go out of our way to turn Fayette County into border-to-border subdivisions, office parks and shopping malls. Far from it. Nobody's a bigger tree-hugger than I am. I'm simply pointing out that we're lucky contiguous counties don't send us an invoice for unpaid marketing, branding and image consulting services.
A city that lives off the reflected glory of its surroundings is also limited by the reflected failures in those surroundings. I'm talking about the state of Kentucky, which is better known for obesity, tobacco use, bad grammar and "hillbilly heroin" than for beautiful horse farms, and we may have ridden the horses about as far as they can take us. We're going to need more than a new stadium and the 2010 Equestrian Games to pay those EPA fines and Ron Berry-related lawsuits.
To "grow as a community," Lexington must change. The one thing cult members and non-cult members alike agree on is that we all want a more prosperous city. We just disagree on how to do it. The Lexington Is Special cult goes to bed every night praying that when we awake in the morning, it will be 1955 again. Unbelievers go to bed every night knowing that if we keep doing what we've always done, we'll keep getting the results we've always had.
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