Water Always Flows Downhill

Weeks back before the snow fell I ran along the dry bed of Minnehaha Creek meandering past Lake Nokomis on its way to Minnehaha Falls.

Decades prior, President Lyndon B. Johson had stopped by the site alongside Minnesota Senator Hubert H. Humphrey and Governor John Rolvaag a couple months before the 1964 election where LBJ prevailed with Humphrey as running mate.

Today at the Falls there is a signpost with a photo commemorating the politicians’ visit.

In the photo water gushes over the precipice.

But read the sign.

…the city had to open many fire hydrants, upstream and out of sight, to feed water to the creek.

Why? Because the creek was as dry that day in 1964 as it was on my visit in late October 2022. To a family wondering where the water was I offered that I had found little upstream. (Though the parched earth made for a curious, enjoyable jog; autumn leaves, rocks, small boulders, an oyster shell, a sharpie, and other treasures lay bare where the water once ran.)

In Robert A. Caro’s Working readers will learn how Caro found the man responsible for delivering votes in the 11th hour to help seal LBJ’s 87-vote victory in the 1948 Texas senate election, an election where more than 1 million votes were cast.

As Americans are quickly learning, LBJ was far from the only politician to be seated unfairly in our short history. In fact, given the maneuverability (at scale) of the current electronic system, the majority of so-called elected officials in recent years seem not to be elected but selected. Should they become unpopular, the people looking forward to ejection day are dismayed when “the machine” (which controls the machines) foist the next puppets into position—about which the peasants complain all over again.

Did the people visiting Minnehaha Falls that day in 1964 know the bountiful waterfall was a fraud?

Do the people going to their polling place today know the election system is a fraud, through and through?

More today than yesterday. And more tomorrow still.

That’s how we break the cycle.

This time no fire hydrants need be clandestinely opened.

When we do the honest work humbly, God will surely bring the rain.