The gatherers of facts have it that our least educated citizens were those most likely to vote for Trump. As a career teacher and school administrator, I take keen interest in that analysis.

Privatization of schooling in New Orleans was the opportunistic response of President Bush when Hurricane Katrina’s struck there in 2005. Places of business for those who can afford them, private schools have not measurably improved education. They are, instead, a backward trend toward MAGA-idolized times, when schooling was segregated. Trump provides no reason why he’d rid the country of our Department of Education.

A survey of history textbooks finds all repeatedly lie in favor of a notion of U.S. international and national goodness, and I can recall, at 16, hearing our racist American history teacher lie about cause of the Civil War. Little can be done about recent politicized instruction and book-banning but to call it out.

Civics proves as important as our focus on reading and math. Students must be brought to be engaged in how they are governed, the validity of news and importance of voting.

November voters claim they were better off economically during Trump’s first term, and evidence bears that out. The critical reason — COVID disruption creating inflation — has not fully corrected. COVID was deepened by Trump’s poor response. Recall he claimed, “It will just go away,”and recommend bleach as a remedy. Meanwhile, a million of our neighbors died.

Nothing learned, Trump promises to have brain-wounded vaccine denier RFK Jr. take charge of national public health. This sounds like a joke. This Robert’s father, Sen. Bobby Kennedy, was a revered national hero who as president rather than Nixon in 1968 would have ended Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War.

From the Reagan years forward, rural America has increasingly experienced right-wing propaganda media posting disinformation. Outright lies maneuvered many voters to favor Trump.

Trump’s entire career has been centered on money, his interest in the presidency driven not by service but creation of wealth. Witness his intimacy with the country’s richest men, among them, Elon Musk, on track to become the first trillionaire.

Musk has been chosen to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies,” Trump said. The aim of the dismissal of “unreliable” government workers is freeing business to profit from deregulation of industries. Musk’s proposed measures to reduce the costs of government center crassly on health care and Social Security.

Like Nixon, Trump compiled an enemies list. Unlike Nixon’s, Trump’s list provides names and remedies, such as being shot. Absent is mention of constitutional processes. That FBI and Department of Justice could be dedicated to the desires of the administration would effectively end the rule of law.

Democrats warned Trump would terminate our Constitution. His expressed effort to have Cabinet appointments without required Senate confirmation indicates he could do so by simply ignoring its provisions. Some men picked thus far have been quite controversial — accused sex trafficker Matt Gaetz to head Justice and Fox News host firebrand Pete Hegseth for Defense.

Echoing history, we have returned to the government design of the Founders with males of wealth in control of our destiny. It took 77 years to divest these men of their slaves.

School shootings of children and teachers can continue unchecked with Trump suggesting survivors “get over it.” Homelessness and extreme poverty will be ignored. Trump could safely carry out his threat to have Liz Cheney shot. His chosen Supreme Court granted him immunity from prosecution for retributive actions.

Our robust prison industry has expressed keen interest in the proposal to deport millions of migrants. This process will be initiated, protested, and litigated. The extent of its successful implementation will deliver a severe impact on the economy. Targeted individuals are largely employed on farms and in the food industry. Food prices, particularly meat and poultry, would dramatically increase. The country might be plunged into an economic chaos only a dictator could control.

The truth about immigrants is that they commit fewer crimes, and they do not eat their neighbor’s pets. The MAGA chant by J.D. Vance, that ethnically different immigrants “are poisoning our blood,” echoes Hitler’s complaint about German Jews.

A factor in Trump’s election victory was that yet another person of color, this time a woman promoting women’s issues, rankled men who have adopted the MAGA line, that the societal role of women is taking care of children in the home.

Charlemont resident Carl Doerner is an investigative journalist and historian, currently editing his newest work, “Breaking the Silence: Revisioning the American Narrative.”