As I listen to endless campaign messages and related conversations, I wonder if it is possible that we are living in two different Americas? One America is focused on the future, supporting and defending the constitution, equality, and the health, welfare and safety of all people living in this country. The other America is focused on the past, setting aside our rights guaranteed by the constitution, and health, welfare and safety only for a privileged minority.

The America I live in, albeit imperfect, has a record economy, record j0b numbers (16 million added under Biden-Harris versus 3 million lost under Trump-Pence), record stock market growth, inflation that has been reduced to target levels, average U.S. salaries and wages outpacing price growth by $4500  (Jan 2021 – Jul 2024), the U.S. a net exporter of energy with the highest energy exports on record for 2023, critical major infrastructure projects underway across the country, prescription drug prices being reduced or capped, the August drop in grocery prices being the largest recorded, major crime down nationally, the majority of the country has clean air and water, and we have a reinvigorated and strengthened NATO.

In addition, our education system ranks at least 13^th globally (other countries in the top 20 are much smaller, except for China whose numbers cannot be verified), and 11 of the top 20 universities are American. A 2024 study in CEOWorld Magazine ranked the U.S. No. 2 (after first place UK) as having the best performing education system. American schools are well known for providing balanced, research informed curriculum which encourages critical thinking. If academic accomplishments in red states matched that of blue states, we would be in the top 5. Fortunately, we have local area educators who are focused on improvement and are seeing good results, due in part to programs like Leader in Me.

These economic achievements are echoed in a recent report by the Economic Policy Institute that looked at 10 common economic measures (like gross domestic product, wages, private job growth, wealth inequality) since 1949. Despite a frequent Republican claim, the research found that U.S. economic performance is better with Democratic presidents/administrations.   They found that since 1949, “positive indicators like growth in GDP, income and wages is faster, while negative indicators like unemployment, inflation, and interest rates are lower.” They also found less income inequality with Democrats.

But, what about the high inflation and higher interest rates we are emerging from? The pandemic created global inflation as people emerged and began demanding goods and services that were limited due to ongoing supply chain and transportation issues. The U.S. is widely recognized as having dealt with inflation very efficiently (although painful for those of us buying groceries or supplies or applying for loans), and our strong economy is seen as propping up other countries. Careful policies by the Fed and the Biden-Harris administration have brought inflation down significantly and that has allowed interest rates to begin coming down. However, extreme weather from climate change will continue to impact some grocery costs, particularly for produce and other crops grown for people or livestock. Mergers that have reduced grocery-related competition and Greedflation will continue to impact costs until excessive windfall profits are addressed. Inequality.org issued a report that showed corporate profits accounted for 52% of inflation from April-September 2023. Profits drove just 11% of price growth in the four decades prior to the pandemic.

When I read social media posts or listen to conversations with people I assume are living in the same America I am they celebrate (rightfully so) graduations, new jobs, promotions, marriages, new homes, vacations, births, etc. of family and friends.

In the next post or conversation, they describe how the U.S. is being overrun with crime. They claim, schools are totally failing and falsely claim school nurses are conducting sex change operations daily in the nurse’s office. They assert that all of those 16 million new jobs are just pandemic loss replacements (Biden/Harris: 16 million jobs created, Trump/Pence 3 million lost) have all gone to illegal immigrants who are also voting in large numbers. They repeatedly state that babies are being aborted after birth, and that the country is godless and unredeemable.

They appear to spend the remainder of their day doomscrolling to find the next thing to be angry at or offended by or to label demonic or satanic. Facts that give a negative view of Donald Trump are quickly dismissed as Trump Derangement Syndrome.  They do not seem to grasp that the idyllic family lifestyle they were describing earlier would not be possible in the fictitious hellscape of the America they claim to live in.

Many also do not appear to appreciate what a blessing and privilege it is to live in the U.S. I have an acquaintance in Ukraine who would love not fearing that an aircraft overhead is going to drop missiles, bombs or landmines. We complain about the price of eggs while many people in war-torn countries have no food or water. We have poverty in Mississippi and the nation, but the majority have a roof over their heads, food on the table, power and water.

Perhaps worse, some of these people speak casually and post about civil war if their candidate loses. They act as though civil war is some video game they could play for a few hours from the comfort of their couch and then hit the off button when they get bored. Just visit our beautiful Vicksburg National Military Park to learn of the sacrifices and horrors of the Civil War. More than 600,000 total died from weapons considered primitive and less lethal than today’s automatic weapons, bombs and drones.  Many died from disease and malnutrition when supply chains and health care systems broke down. Make no mistake, our modern systems will also break down in war.

Here are some additional verifiable facts compiled by subject matter experts, and largely contained in publicly available databases that others can see and research for themselves to examine these claims. Note how this contrasts with paid talking heads on some media outlets who make up false stories and conspiracies often on subjects about which they have no knowledge or experience (the more outrageous and salacious the better – if it bleeds it leads), designed to cause anger and fear. This is done to attract more viewers/readers/listeners, which leads to more advertising revenue and profit for their owners.

The FBI has stated that violent crime is down 3% from 2022 to 2023, down 10.3% in the first months of 2024, and murders are down 11%. Mississippi ranks 39^th in violent crime among all states and has the third-lowest crime rate in the South.

There are an estimated 8.8 million immigrants in the U.S. labor force. Some are well-educated or highly skilled (often working here on special visas), but most work in jobs that require a high school education or less. The majority of new jobs the last four years went to American citizens, and many were in skilled areas like manufacturing and green technology.

Non-citizens are prohibited from voting, and few instances of this have been documented. One Brennan Center for Justice study looking for evidence of this voting after the 2016 election found 30 suspected incidents out of over 23 million votes screened.

Our immigration system and border drug crossing intervention need significant improvement. A bipartisan immigration bill forwarded this past spring that also contained tools for reducing the flow of fentanyl that is killing thousands of Americans had a good chance of passage until Donald Trump intervened and told Republicans to vote it down because it would benefit President Biden in the election. Those who wanted to help solve the immigration crisis and save lives lost to fentanyl voted for the bill (Democrats). Those who cared more about political theater, who wanted to put political party before the needs of the country to retain an election talking point, or who did not want to take measures to reduce fentanyl deaths voted against it (most Republicans).

Babies are not aborted after birth in the U.S. That would be infanticide or murder and is illegal in all 50 states. Most abortions in the U.S. occur in the first trimester of pregnancy. Only 1% occur at or after 21 weeks (27 weeks is third trimester). A fetal anatomy scan is often performed around 20 weeks. It can reveal lethal fetal abnormalities such as missing organs or organs outside the body meaning the fetus will die before or shortly after birth. Situations like this, or to save the life of the mother, are usually when pregnancies are ended later at a handful of specialized centers.

Instead of depriving women of their freedom to make decisions about their healthcare, the emphasis should be on preventing unwanted births. Fifty-four percent of babies born in Mississippi are born to unwed mothers. Yet, the same people who have given themselves the right to deny medical freedom to others also fight to prohibit education about sex and contraception in high schools. Even worse, attorneys fighting to restrict access to an early pregnancy termination drug recently testified that more births to teenage unwed mothers (the same ones they label Welfare Queens when they need government services to provide for themselves and their child) meant possible future voters for them plus more state and federal funding from increased population – their apparent true motivation that matches others calling for a ban on all forms of contraception.

I believe that religion/spirituality is an important part of life. Some of the earliest immigrants to what became known as the colonies and then the U.S. came in part seeking religious freedom. They did not want the King of England dictating what and how they worshipped, and the founding fathers were also careful to avoid dictating a specific religious belief.

Although many state constitutions reference them, the words God and Christian are not in the U.S. Constitution. Article 7 uses “the year of our Lord” to specify a signing date. The Declaration of Independence refers to the “Creator” without definition. “Religion” appears in Article 6, which prohibits a religious test for government office holders, and in the First Amendment, which says Congress shall make no law establishing a religion or prohibiting free exercise thereof. “In God We Trust” was added to U.S. currency during the Civil War when Union supporters reportedly wanted to show that God was on their side in the war.  Freedom of religion does not mean that one sect has the right to force their religious beliefs on others, or that the Lutheran beliefs I was raised with are superior to the beliefs of Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims or other recognized religions. All should feel welcome in America.

The upcoming election is about these topics and so much more. Project 2025 (project2025.org) is described as the blueprint for the first 180 days of Donald Trump’s administration. These approximately 900 pages from the Heritage Foundation (HF) and over 140 members of Trump’s former staff call for the firing of thousands of federal employees, firing military officers at will, (replacing both with loyalists), and abolishing many federal agencies – NOAA, TWS, DHS, FEMA, EPA, Dept. of Education, PBS, the Federal Reserve Board, FDIC, Head Start, OSHA and many others. It also reduces benefits for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans, believes federal retirement is too generous, and prohibits any diversity efforts.

Project 2025 seeks to create an authoritarian president in place of our three equal branches of government and allow her/him to control the Department of Justice. It would also eliminate many federal regulations in banking, the environment, and employee safety, and change to 60-70 hour work weeks to avoid paying overtime. It would require public school children to take a military entrance exam, but not kids in private or religious schools.

Project 2025 would take financial control of donor-funded university endowments (that fund scholarships, sports etc.), abolish accreditation boards for colleges and universities and establish a competing government run American Academy. Sounds a lot like state-sponsored education in North Korea and China. As alarming as this is, HF’s president, Kevin Roberts, has bragged that there are additional pages of Project 2025 deliberately being hidden from the public.

Trump tries to deny knowledge of Project 2025, but his own Agenda 47 (https//www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47) and rally speeches echo much of it. It is a series of videos and policy statements that include mass deportation, opening public lands to mining and real estate development, forbidding any mention of or work on climate change, mass federal employee firings, abolishing federal agencies, and using the military against the public. Some of the federal employees referred to as unelected, nameless bureaucrats live in the Vicksburg area – our friends, relatives, and neighbors who are national public servants and whose spouses and children teach in schools or support businesses in town.

Trump’s flawed economic plan that has been criticized by award-winning economists includes tariffs of 10-2,000% on foreign goods. Tariffs are not the free money he claims. They are passed down to consumers as a form of tax or result in retaliatory tariffs on U.S. products that make it very difficult for Mississippi or U.S. farmers, ranchers, wood producers and others to sell their products. They already experienced some of these losses with tariffs when he was in office. Under his economic plan, Social Security will be bankrupt in six years, inflation will balloon, and a recession worse than 2008 is likely.

He again proposes tax cuts for the wealthy and proposes policies that will likely raise taxes on the middle class by at least $4,000. A 2020 research paper by David Hope and Julian Limberg looked at data spanning 50 years from 18 countries to examine this premise of trickle-down economics. They found that tax cuts for the rich only made the rich richer and increased income inequality. There was no beneficial effect on real GDP per capita or on employment to benefit the middle class or poor.

Trump supporters have told me, “Trump won’t actually do these outrageous things.” “Trump is just exaggerating for attention and to own the libs.”  “The system of checks and balances that stopped him last time will stop him again.”

No, decent people like Mark Esper, John Kelly, James Mattis, Mark Milley, Rex Tillerson and the majority of high-level former Trump officials who have declared him unfit for office after working with him will be replaced by loyalists who will not question orders. Thousands of civilian agency officials and employees and members of the military will be fired to prevent opposition. More than 30,000 information requests have already been sent to multiple federal agencies requesting email and other communications of federal employees that contain keywords like diversity, climate change, voting, gender, and many others to identify these “disloyal individuals” for purging. Other HF affiliates have reportedly been studying social media pages, speeches, and voting records of top civilians in targeted federal agencies for disloyalty to Trump.

Although many excellent judges remain at the state, local and federal level, we now have the Roberts Six Supreme Court judges who appear to have replaced the rule of law and decades of legal precedence with their personal political and religious beliefs.  Or, with whatever the Federalist Society (five of the six justices are reported to be members, Roberts served on a steering committee) or the Heritage Foundation want. This year, they gave the president almost total immunity (well beyond the Constitution) paving the way for an authoritarian president who ignores the rule of law. They also removed significant rule-making authority from federal agencies and shifted authority to judges with little or no technical expertise. And, amid calls for the justices to adopt and enforce a strict ethics clause and explain more than $4 million in reported gifts received, they issued a controversial ruling that bribes only pertain to official acts, not gratuities or gifts.

A recent intelligence report found that up to 30% of politics related social media messages originated in Russia, China or Iran.  These are our adversaries. They want to sew chaos and distrust with false inflammatory stories to hurt America and turn Americans against each other. They want to diminish America to raise their standing in the world.  They want to show U.S. conflict to convince their citizens that Democracy is a failure. Any elected official or member of the public who repeats or amplifies false Kremlin (or other) talking points about migrants, crime, Ukraine, FEMA response, the presidential candidates, and many other topics is serving our adversaries and not America.

No candidate is perfect since we are all imperfect people. I am voting to build on the success of the current administration, to protect democracy and the government that has served us for more than 200 years. I am voting for optimism, for the future and for faith in the American people as a patriot and not a “hatriot” fixated on the past, on revenge and on blaming others for perceived shortcomings in my life. Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry said it well recently. He described the U.S. as being like quilts his grandmother made. We are many different sizes, shapes and colors, but together we make the beautiful patchwork quilt called America. This creates one, not two, Americas. Please perform your civic duty by voting in this election. There is too much at stake and many of our democratic safeguards have already been weakened or removed.

– Julie Marcy, Vicksburg, Mississippi