Editor, The Beacon:

Your guest columnist has it exactly backward in asserting that the “Republicans emphasized fear, Democrats emphasized hope” in the recent election (“Election 2024: Fear Trumped Hope,” Dec. 26-Jan. 1). Far from offering any hope for real policy changes from this current woeful administration, it was the Democrats who trafficked in crass fearmongering — that Trump was the next Hitler or Mussolini and was such a “threat to democracy” that 2024 will likely be our last election if he wins, and also whipping up hysteria over the utterly imaginary “climate crisis,” which can only be solved by pumping trillions of taxpayer dollars into endless green-energy boondoggles.

It was only the Republicans who offered a reason for optimism and hope to reverse course and begin to clean up the messes created by the feckless, destructive and extreme left-wing policies of the Biden regime. We can now hope to finally secure our open southern border, reduce the inflationary fever caused by Biden’s massive deficit spending and his irrational war on our energy infrastructure.

And we can hope to roll back the odious and overtly discriminatory DEI and “woke” gender-identity policies by which biological males are allowed to compete in women’s sports. And don’t get me started on the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle.

The writer frets that Republicans may “deport immigrant aliens.” Interesting choice of words. No, they are only talking about deporting illegal aliens who have crossed into our country in violation of our laws and processes. Omitting the operative word “illegal” is, to steal a phrase from Mark Twain, all the difference between “the lightning and the lightning bug.”

John DiChiara

DeLand