Trump Sells Dreams – And the Echo Resounds Through the West

In the boundless expanse of Arizona, where windmills slice the horizon and barbed wire preserves the memory of another century, an old man wrestles with time. Brantley Baird, 88 years old, a man of weathered skin and stories, stands among covered wagons, rusty plow blades, and remnants of a world fading away. He speaks of riding to school, of the rise of cattle barons, and of the rhythm of the land once dictated by the pounding of trains. But today, it is the quiet sound of disappearance that remains. The Cholla Power Plant, once the backbone of the local economy, ceased operations in March. What once promised the future now stands as a solemn monument to a bygone era. Yet as so often in the American West, the past isn’t simply dead. It lies beneath the ground, in conversations over coffee, in voting booths, and in whispered prayers. And it finds its most vivid political representative in the president.

Donald Trump has signed new executive orders. He calls it “beautiful, clean coal.” He wants to reactivate Cholla, to save coal, to preserve the West – and, implicitly, to defend the worldview of those who feel threatened by change. In Joseph City, many hope he will succeed. But hope here is a contradictory thing. It clings to memory and simultaneously defies reality. Because the facts are merciless: more and more coal-fired power plants are being shut down – for economic, regulatory, and environmental reasons. And the utility companies? They speak of the future in terms of solar, gas, hydrogen. Of sustainability. Of market logic. Of responsibility. And yet: in Springerville, progress feels like a threat. The planned construction of wind turbines has stirred anger. People don’t want to share their sky with steel rotors. Tourism is said to be at risk. And with it, the last illusion of autonomy.

The people there are not enemies of reason. They are survivors. Their bond to coal is not ideological – it’s conviction born of experience. Electricity doesn’t come from ideas, but from generators. And those who live in a place where losing a power plant could turn the town into a ghost town feel less betrayed by political promises than by the silencing of real machines. But that too is part of the tragedy: what Trump promises is not in his hands. The utilities decide. And they don’t follow pathos, but profitability. They don’t plan in decades of nostalgia, but in financing cycles and permitting procedures. Trump sells dreams, not real perspectives. What he suggests is a return to a past that is no longer viable – economically, technically, or politically. And yet, because that past feels safer than any reasonable future, it is believed. Not because it’s real, but because it offers comfort. And comfort is often stronger than truth.

What remains is a landscape caught between progress and decay. Solar panels are mounted on cattle pastures, dust settles on old railroad tracks, and Brantley Baird watches the world keep turning. “Hell, who knows?” he says. And he doesn’t just mean the future of energy, but the very nature of America itself: the eternal struggle between progress and remembrance. We believe in what we’re losing. And in the American West, people believe in coal because it’s leaving. Not out of ignorance. But from the knowledge that its time was their own. What remains is the waiting. And the quiet sense that this promised dream, too, will plunge the people of Joseph City into an even deeper void, because the future has finally passed them by. And with it, many hopes.

“And the sunshine of Arizona is like its atmosphere: direct, positive, unadulterated. The clearness of the air permits it to reach man and the earth as divinely intended, and the result is that it brings healing, strength, and power on its wings.” — George Wharton James, Arizona, the Wonderland (1917)