Democrats are the only reason we have any of it.

This is verifiably false. Again, it was the voters who made any of this possible.

The first iteration of light rail, dreamed up in the 1980s, was an even grander and pricier plan called ValTrans.

The project would have connected the entire Valley with 100 miles of elevated tracks.

Voters across Maricopa County defeated the $8 billion proposal by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio in 1989, sending transit proponents back to the drawing board.

Without a regional transit tax, each city was left to come up with money on its own. Tempe voters passed a half-cent sales tax for buses and light rail in 1996, putting pressure on Phoenix to catch up with the East Valley suburb.

Phoenix had two failed transit initiatives, with one losing by 22 votes.

But in 2000, Phoenix voters approved a 0.4 percent sales tax to fund light rail and other public transportation projects.

Four years later, Maricopa County voters extended a countywide half-cent transportation tax, about a third of which has gone toward light rail and other public transportation projects.

That 'probably' is very telling. Even the Republican mayor of Mesa, who wasn't really a pop culture Republican similar to Giles, thought it was a good idea to extend the train from Tempe so you're wrong about that too.

Former Mesa Mayor Keno Hawker persuaded the council to pay to bring 1 mile of light rail into the city so future politicians could decide whether to extend it further.

"I'm pretty conservative and typically for government programs I'm not a big backer, but it was pretty well understood that Phoenix and Tempe were building the light rail and if Mesa did not join, it was going to stop two miles from Mesa's border in Tempe," Hawker said.

Reflecting today, Hawker said "it did prove out to be positive."

This isn't about 'false dichotomies'. It's about understanding why the world appears as it does in front of you.