As Seneca waits, many residents on either side of this civil war have simply stopped speaking to each other, which isn’t easy in a town that covers only one-eighth of a mile. When they pass each other in pickup trucks, they do not wave. And when they are among like-minded friends and neighbors, they throw around accusations that would make the most hard-edged D.C. operative squirm.

While in Seneca, I heard people on both sides say the following things about their neighbors: drug addict, drug dealer, welfare queen, verbally abusive, physically abusive, sexually abusive, creep, jerk and much, much worse.

The acrimony fogs everything, making it hard to see what Seneca once had and now what it stands to lose. It makes it hard to see that, even if the community center is sold to someone who gives it back to the local historical society — that’s a potential Plan B if the election isn’t overturned in the courts — and even if Seneca residents figure out how to pay for their own streetlights and plow their own roads, they will still lose something. Maybe they already have.

This town used to be the place that banded together and built something. Now this town is in danger of being the place that butchered off its collective nose to spite its collective face.