@Wink

bing! Before the military buildup here 25 years ago, just 10 miles down the road, there were two Mickey Dees, a Burger King, KFC and whatever the brand name Fish joint. That was it. Every other restaurant was locally owned. Fifteen years later there was practically Every brand name Fast Food joint you can name. Not all, but certainly most. Plus, of course, Applebees and all those joints. In 15 years! No WAY they remain if the military leaves, this place a ghost town within a decade.

To this truth you speak, I have a response in three perfect words:

Colorado Springs, Colorado.

In the era whence my mother's family arrived there (1930 - 1950), there were periodic cattle drives down the main drag of Nevada Avenue. Cowboys with six-guns on their sides mixed freely with gold miners from Teller County on payday, in town buying necessities unavailable in the hinterlands. Civilian science (Eaglerock Aircraft) mixed with a nascent film industry (Alexander Film Company) to round out the bedrock economic foundations of farming (Venetucci Ranch, world-famous for its sweet corn), cattle ranching and mining depicted on El Paso County's seal to this very day. LGBTQ folks had a vibrant, contributing community. The "churches per capita" was a bit high, but these churches were, for the most part, decent, compassionate entities which taught and believed the "good stuff" in the "Good Book" rather than the hatred and discrimination that later more fundamentalistic cults would disseminate from Colorado Springs in later years. Government officials permitted to run under a political party tended to be progressive Democrats with occasional libertarian streaks (usually regarding private firearms); my patrilineal ancestors, grandfather and great-grandfather alike, ran for public offices and governed according to this very model.

Then, in the 1960s, two things happened: the high-grade gold ore became exhausted in Teller County's mines; and therefore the real-estate barons who infested our local positions of power invited the MIC in. (My relations who had occupied public office were all dead by this time.) What happened thereafter: our gentle, honest churches were supplanted by right-wing Rushdoony Reconstructionists, our politics moved ever further to the right, public common goods galore were privatized for profit (usually the profits of the same real estate barons who were running things by then), our artistic economy became a matter for museums and our LGBTQ population became a despised target for semi-official hatred.

Yes, we have all manner of fast-food joints and some really nice neighborhoods; but it's not worth the price. John Calvin's worst descendants -- the likes of Rushdoony and the Prosperity Badspell preachers whom Calvin himself would have nothing to do with -- are now calling all shots.

In less than one human lifetime (mine).

buildup here 25 years
#1.1.1
ago, just 10 miles down the road, there were two Mickey Dees, a Burger King, KFC and whatever the brand name Fish joint. That was it. Every other restaurant was locally owned. Fifteen years later there was practically Every brand name Fast Food joint you can name. Not all, but certainly most. Plus, of course, Applebees and all those joints. In 15 years! No WAY they remain if the military leaves, this place a ghost town within a decade.