“Sometimes by losing a battle you find a new way to win the war.” President-elect Donald Trump

This is a column that I have been dreaming about writing and this year’s election handed it to me. Let me start by stating the choice of presidential candidates seemed to be between equal evils and more than likely in the end proved to be a statement against President Obama’s eight years in office. At this point that doesn’t matter to me but the rest of the election results do. I believe that those who voted for Trump were self-motivated and invisible for the most part to the biased national media. Hillary Clinton was expecting Obama supporters to come to the polls to support her like they did him and they didn’t.

What I find really weird is that the towns in the so-called Lake’s Region voted not only for Donald Trump but for recreational marijuana as well. The overall trend in Maine is fewer and fewer people are smoking cigarettes, which is good. That means less tax revenue collected for the state and federal governments. Now citizens of Maine will be able to smoke marijuana and even grow their own stash. I know that one can consume marijuana in different ways, but I believe most do by smoking it. I wonder if the antismoking campaign will now include marijuana as well.

I did notice that the Windham town councilors should have discussed a marijuana moratorium after their formal meeting on Nov. 15. A moratorium would temporary prohibit anyone from establishing a place to produce or sell recreational marijuana for six months. It’s a little more complicated than that, but I don’t have to room to discuss everything in that moratorium. So I have to wonder if any of the Windham councilors noticed that Question 1 passed in Windham or if even one of them will bring it up? What scares me the most about this is that Windham has a history of copying things from other municipalities, which I imagine would save time and money, but the question then becomes if it is a good fit for Windham.

There is something to worry about here and that’s the track record of Windham’s government officials when it comes to citizens of the town saying no to things like a new Public Works facility or a sewer for the North Windham area. The sewer was turned down by voters by a 3-to-1 margin, and yet another sewer study began immediately and the town even hired an engineer who could assist in that endeavor. I am sure that the town manager and town councilors will have an even more expensive proposal for a new Public Works facility for the June elections. I am betting that they will have it as an agenda item at the town meeting, which means it will be time to flush our local government clean. So it shouldn’t surprise any Windham resident if the town government prevents the sale and distribution of marijuana in Windham although the voters approved it. Is our local government smoking something?

I guess it’s time to discuss the election and those upset that their candidate lost. Although some now think the election was rigged as Donald Trump often stated, what it shows is that something else is wrong in America. Unlike real life, our education system has trended to the point of protecting students from the real world, especially if it’s likely that failure will happen. At the same time I personally believe the national media has its own agenda. I was stationed in Washington, D.C., when President Nixon resigned and then a couple of years or so Jerry Ford lost to Jimmy Carter. No panic, no masses crying in the streets and all was normal.

What could have happened that a normal election could be so poorly predicted and so many young people became emotionally upset at the outcome? It is blatantly obvious that something has changed and I sense that this change was not a good thing. Our future is scary.

Lane Hiltunen of Windham hopes all elected officials begin smoking marijuana since they display a large amount of pipe dreams.