“Donald Trump won the 2024 election by the people who were not paying attention.” This observation should be taken to heart by all the people who mistakenly feel that the president-elect has a mandate from the American people to disrupt the so called “deep state”. Because many voters do not pay attention to politics until the last few weeks before an election, an alternative explanation is that many voters believed that the information that bombarded them was true.
An older voter was interviewed on one cable channel at a Trump gathering who explained that the economy was in shambles, inflation was out of control and the Democrats were responsible for the mess which he felt was the condition of our country today. Comparing apples to apples, most economists differed from this man’s analysis. Inflation was down across the board; the cost of corn flakes was still too high but overall, the US economy was in excellent shape compared with the economies of other nations around the world. The world was and is still experiencing long-covid but relatively speaking the US is far and away in better shape than any other nation.
Transgender people make up a very tiny percentage of the population. Forty million dollars was spent on ads that targeted transgender people as if they were going to take over high school sports. The facts of how we are dealing with transgender people were misrepresented in gigantic ways. Children are not coming home from school with hormone blockers or being scheduled for radical surgery. Transgender people are real and need to be treated with dignity and have appropriate healthcare like the rest of the population. They are not a threat to anyone.
Undocumented immigrants are not terrorists, rapists, murders and robbers. For the most part, they are poor people, looking for a better life. Demonizing them was a successful strategy. While there is no argument that unregulated immigration is a real problem, deeply in need of humane solutions, stirring up resentment, fear and bigotry was and continues to be an un-American way to address the issue. Unregulated immigration is a real problem, but it is not an invasion, threatening our American way of life.
Sexism is still alive and well in the air we breathe. Like racism, it has been with us so long that it is possible to miss its manifestation when it is in plain sight. A Black woman, running for president of the United Sates, was bound to encounter headwinds because of her identity. To discount this, is not dealing with common sense. Labels that called into question her mental acuity and native intelligence have chased women since the days that girls were discouraged from doing math and science in school.
When all the ballots were counted after the November election, the pundits and pollsters were right. The election was won on the margins. The electoral college majority disguises the narrow majorities in a number of states that actually gave the country the Republican victory. It is not unfair to propose that the election’s outcome was the result of all the people who were not paying attention for the preceding fifty-one weeks before the election and voted, based on the misinformation that flooded the airways and digital world in the closing days of the election.
Voting for change is an understandable decision if the economy is in shambles, unemployment is out of sight, inflation is rampant, and despair is widespread in the nation. Voting for change is understandable if the country is being invaded by rapists, robbers and undesirable people who are threatening the safety and well-being of American citizens. Voting for change is understandable if children are being forever-altered by gender-changing surgeries, the playing fields in school sports are being transformed by transgender kids who pose a safety risk to other players and enormous amounts of tax-dollars are being spent on incarcerated transgender felons.
Because voting is a privilege of all citizens, all who chose to exercise this sacred franchise have a corresponding obligation to become conversant with the important issues of the day. Without a commitment to search for the truth and to recognize misinformation, also known as lies, voting citizens are not fulfilling their civic obligation. Facts matter. Truth matters. Correct information matters. Budha, Jesus and Gandhi all agree.
The 2024 election demonstrated that a majority of voters opted for a drastic change in the direction of our country. While this needs to be respected in our democratic republic, it is important to realize that the landscape in which information is imparted and absorbed is changing radically. It may be true that the election was decided by people who were not paying attention. As the next four years unfold, it will become very clear whether this assessment is a correct one. As the Book of Proverbs observes: “The word of truth lasts forever but lies last only a moment”.
Msgr. Garrity is a Senior Priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and High School, Lynn.
