Cheney dominated the tube the night before, when the Jan. 6 Select Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives held a primetime hearing that demolished any notion that former President Donald Trump hadn’t hoped the insurrection wouldn’t succeed so he could continue to hold power illegally and unconstitutionally.

Cheney has been both the face and the voice of the efforts to hold Trump accountable for his assault on American law, but it has cost her.

Once one of the rising stars in the Republican Party, she now faces a primary challenge here at home. The most recent polls have her trailing Harriet Hageman, a Trump-backed lawyer.

I try to talk with a guy at the bar about Cheney’s lonely struggle, but he shrugs his shoulder and says he hasn’t been paying attention to the hearings.

But he adds that he likes Trump because “he kept his promises.” Then he turns away and reaches for the bowl of peanuts sitting on the bar.

In fact, Trump didn’t keep his promises.

He promised to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and have Mexico pay for it. Never happened.

He promised to provide cheaper and better healthcare coverage to all Americans. Didn’t do it.

He promised to bring back jobs for working-class Americans. Once again, didn’t deliver.

But I’ve had variations of this conversation many times and in many places. It always leads nowhere.

So, I take a sip of my beer and wait for my food to arrive.

A guy settles onto the stool to my left. He’s young—in his middle 20s—and he has an honest-to-God mullet. He orders a beer and then tries to chat up the bartender, a petite young blonde woman maybe a little younger than he is.

After some awkward banter, he asks her if she’s going to an upcoming frontier days festival. I don’t know about this one, but I’ve been to similar such events before. They’re romanticized celebrations, more myth than fact.

The bartender says she will be going—with her boyfriend. (That’s a hint, buddy.

The guy persists, either not realizing she’s telling him she’s not interested or ignoring the message. To deflect him—and maybe to alert friends that she could have a problem on her hands—she pulls a couple of guys from the other end of the bar into the conversation.

Soon, much of the bar is talking about the upcoming festival.

As I munch on my dinner, I eavesdrop.

I learn that this is the first year since COVID hit that the festival will be back. Everyone says they didn’t realize how much they missed it—how much they wished things could go back to the way they were.

The way they should be.

This is what Liz Cheney is facing.

So many people prefer an imagined west to a real one.

An imagined world to a real one.

A Donald Trump who “kept his promises” to one who violated his oath of office and attacked the very country he’d pledged with his hand on the Bible to defend.

After I finish my meal, I settle up and thank the bartender. The guy will the mullet still hangs in there, but two older and much bigger guys at the end of the bar have their eye on him.

If there’s a problem, he’ll be the one having it.

I walk out into the gathering evening and stroll the streets of Rawlins.

As is the case with many, even most, small to mid-sized American communities, there are vacant buildings, remnants of businesses and jobs that have collapsed or fled.

Up on a rise, a train sits stationary on the track, the twilight framing the cars in the otherwise wide-open landscape, a powerful locomotive waiting for someone to drive it.

This is the real west.

The real world.

Frontier days, indeed.