A Dec. 9 letter writer (“From UFC to NFL, everybody’s happy again”) bizarrely proposes that “people seem to be happy again” simply because she has seen some professional athletes dancing like Trump. No doubt some millionaires are dancing at the prospect of four more years of Trump’s radical economic agenda centering tax cuts for the massively wealthy. Most Americans, though, are not dancing at all (I say “most” because 68% of registered voters did not vote for Trump: 164 million people either voted for Kamala Harris or did not vote at all, as opposed to 77 million who voted for Trump). And no wonder most Americans are not dancing: Trump’s damaging tax cuts for millionaires and corporations are going to be paid for through unprecedented increases in our national debt (just like last time), brutal and unnecessary cuts to the government services on which most Americans (particularly the most vulnerable, at-risk, and marginalized) depend, and ill-conceived trade tariffs that are going to put us at odds with our closest international allies and drive up the cost of consumer goods leading to a resurgence of inflation. I hope the letter writer takes a genuine look around our country in the coming years: she’ll see that, while millionaires might be dancing, millions of middle- and working-class people — people who care about our security and stability, the future we’re leaving for our children, and America’s standing in the world — are not dancing at all.

Matteo Pangallo

Shutesbury