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If you are reading this column, you are not the audience that needs to hear this.
After reading article after article and listening to countless pundits about why Trump won this election, I have come to my own conclusion: those who voted for Trump (Republicans, Independents and, yes, even Democrats) did so because they were constantly fed a diet of unvarnished lies about how bad the Biden/Harris administration was. All the ads focused on the terrible economy, illegal aliens murdering innocent Americans, etc., etc.
People nowadays, even though they have access to all the knowledge in the world at their fingertips, are too lazy to seek out the truth. They willfully believe what is spoon fed to them. The average person doesn't even listen to the news let alone think about what is going on in the world. They don't want to have anything to do with the "dirty business" of politics, as one non-registered person said to me when I asked if he was registered to vote. After all, Trump's not a politician, he's a businessman. They saw him on TV, so he must be good. The Trump name has become synonymous over the years with being a mogul. Bottom line: Biden = bad; Trump = good.
I am not content to sit back and wait to say "I told you so" when it all goes south. I believe we have to start now to educate the general public about what is really going on. People need to start actually looking into the facts and learn how the government and the economy work.
I was lucky to have a teacher at Warrior Run High School who didn't just teach us history and civics, he taught us to think. I didn't say "how to think," but to think for ourselves. He taught us to check out the facts and then see how our lives were impacted by what was going on and by how the policies of the different factions would affect us. That's what everyone should be doing. That's what they should have done before this election. But they didn't! Instead they bought into the misinformation and disinformation and the political commercials (which by the way do not have to be factual).
The policies of the Trump administration will not have a negative effect on everyone. If you are rich or an executive in a big business, they will be great for you. However, for the vast majority of Americans this will not be true. Women and blacks have already had their rights infringed upon. LGBTQ+ people are the next target. Latinos, especially Latino men, voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers despite the fact that he has vowed to have the biggest deportation project in history which will inevitably rip away members of their own families and send them back to countries where they may not even know the language. Economists have predicted that Trump's economic plan could bankrupt Social Security in six years which would decimate the income of the majority of senior citizens. If RFK, Jr. Stops the manufacture of vaccines, will we no longer be able to get our flu shots every year and will children's lives be at risk when they aren't vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, polio, chicken pox, whooping cough, etc.? If all these people had not voted against their own best interests, the outcome of the 2024 election would have been very different.
It's not the fault of the Harris campaign or the Democratic party that they didn't do this or that. The fault lies at the other end of the spectrum - with the voters. They just didn't get it. So those of us who are used to ferreting out the truth need to talk to our friends and neighbors and relatives and help them understand what is really going on. And that, my friends, is a very difficult task.
Verna Caruso is a native of Muncy who now resides in Williamsport. She is a former staff member at Inc. magazine and former Chair of the Lycoming County Democratic Committee.