WHAT IT DOES TO US

(I wrote something this morning that I couldn't stop thinking about)

WHAT IT DOES TO US

(The people who are on the other side of Maga)

Until a few weeks ago, I thought of Questa as a sleepy little village by the mountains. Ever since Chevron closed the mine, tourism has been about all we had left as an industry. We have our struggles, as rural villages everywhere do, but we were still living our lives in a beautiful place: tending gardens, watching the mountains, listening to the birds, and trying to get by.

Then I learned about the industrial development planned beside us: 

a hydrogen plant and a huge solar project near Questa and Cerro, in an area where water is already becoming a serious problem. 

The Red River has less water than I have ever seen since 2018 come out when I moved here. Wells have gone dry. 

Yet projects that could reshape this area are moving ahead, while many residents are only now trying to understand what is happening and what it may mean for the water, the land, and the future of our community. People in Questa have raised serious concerns about transparency, water scarcity, and whether the village has been given a real voice in decisions of this size. 

For me, it changed something. It is one thing to watch the country being damaged by people in power who seem determined to take apart every protection, every public safeguard, and every public obligation they can reach. It is another thing to realize that the damage has arrived at your own front door.

What is happening in Questa is not separate from what is happening across the country. In different forms, people are watching the protections they depended on, like environmental rules, public services, health care, civil rights, labor protections, and the basic idea that our government should serve ordinary people, come under attack. 

The political program known as Project 2025 became widely associated with a plan to concentrate executive power and weaken or dismantle many federal institutions and protections, which is why many critics see local harms as part of a wider national pattern rather than isolated events. Trump publicly tried to distance himself from it during the campaign, but much of what people fear now follows that same general direction: power moving upward, protections being stripped away, and ordinary people being told to live with the consequences.

This kind of pressure changes people. When daily life is already difficult, and the future feels less secure every month, people can become depleted before they ever reach the point of action. They may turn inward, stop following events, or conclude that speaking up makes no difference. 

That is understandable, but it also creates an advantage for those who benefit when the public is too worn down to demand accountability.

A country whose people are frightened, divided, distracted, and exhausted is easier to control. When people are consumed by worries about health care, food, rent, jobs, water, or the survival of their own communities, they have less energy to organize, vote, protest, or challenge the people making the decisions. 

That is why the psychological damage matters politically. It weakens the very solidarity people need in order to defend themselves.

For people who already live close to the edge, older people, disabled people, poor people, rural people, people with chronic illness, and people who cannot simply sell their homes and move away, the pressure is even greater. There is no cushion. There may be no other affordable place to go, no nearby services, and no easy way to escape the consequences of decisions made in corporate offices and government buildings far away.

I know I am not alone in this. I have seen it in the responses to what I have written. So many people are frightened and discouraged by what is happening in their own communities and across the country. They may not use the same words, and their circumstances may differ, but they know the feeling, the sense that the ground beneath them is becoming less secure, while those responsible do not care how much damage they leave behind.

We need to speak honestly about all of it, not only the damage to the land, water, public institutions, and democratic rights, but also the damage done inside people. Keeping people frightened, isolated, and worn down makes them easier to ignore and easier to manage. Recognizing one another, telling the truth, and refusing to let isolated communities be treated as sacrifice zones is part of resistance.

We may be tired, and we may be afraid, but we are still here!

Note: 

Project 2025 is a policy blueprint organized by the Heritage Foundation and allied conservative organizations. Its main document, Mandate for Leadership, proposes a major restructuring of the federal government and greater presidential control over the executive branch. In July 2024, Trump publicly said that he knew “nothing about Project 2025” and had “nothing to do with it.” 

(Heritage, Project 2025, heritage.org)