I have emailed and called Utah’s senators and my representative weekly, if not daily, for the past several weeks with an increasing sense of urgency and alarm. I have asked them to provide checks and balances, to serve the Utah public instead of a political party, to vet high-level appointments that will significantly impact the lives of Utahns.
I have pleaded with them to put country over party and policy over culture wars. I have described my alarm over having my personal information exposed, the U.S. Department of Treasury’s payment system taken over, childhood cancer research halted, and international aid for malaria stopped. I have asked and implored for transparency, accountability, or even the barest modicum of integrity.
And what have I been told? That I am overreacting. That this isn’t really happening. That actually, this is a good thing.
I hate many things in life. A snowstorm in April. Litter on the sidewalk. The litany of power cords that aren’t labeled and can’t be plugged directly into an outlet. But the thing I hate most — and you can ask my four-year-old — is being lied to.
I hope I’m overreacting. I hope that I’m raising the alarm and, when they finally do their duty to investigate, they will find that, actually, this small group of twenty-year-old men with no credentials did do a good job when they broke security protocols, violated legislation designed to create safeguards, and fired lifelong civil servants who were just doing their jobs. But the evidence suggests otherwise.
What is happening at the highest levels of our government is a deliberate, cynical strategy to make us doubt reality. We are being told not to believe our own eyes, to ignore our own experiences, to silence our own concerns. And when we refuse, when we demand accountability, we are dismissed as hysterical, partisan, or simply misinformed.
Let’s be clear: this isn’t governance. This is gaslighting.
Utahns deserve better. We deserve elected officials who respond to our concerns with honesty and action, not condescension and deflection. We deserve representatives who will stand up to corruption and incompetence rather than excuse it. We deserve to have our voices heard, not silenced.
Utahns: Don’t stop asking questions. Don’t stop demanding answers. And don’t, for a second, let them convince you that what you are seeing, what you are feeling, what you are fearing — isn’t real.
Utah legislators: Do your damn job.
Patricia Doxey, Salt Lake City
