Project 2025
Subtle like a sledgehammer, here's the recipe to kill 150 years of progress with one swing.
Sherman, set the Way Back Machine to the 1850’s, for that is where Project 2025 would like to take us. It’s the brainchild (and boy, do I use that term loosely) of the authoritarian Heritage Foundation, the ultra-right-wing think tank founded in the 1980’s on the premise that keeping voters who might lean Democratic from the polls would be good for the country.
So what is Project 2025? From Wikipedia, it “is a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from the Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power should the Republican nominee win the 2024 presidential election.[3][4] It proposes reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers as political appointees in order to replace them with loyalists more willing to enable the next Republican president's policies.[5] It seeks to infuse the government and society with Christian values.[6][7] Proponents have framed the plan as a means to dismantle a purportedly vast, unaccountable government bureaucracy.[8] Critics have characterized Project 2025 as an authoritarian, Christian nationalist plan to transform the U.S. into an autocracy.[9][6] Many legal experts have said it would undermine the rule of law,[10] the separation of powers,[4] the separation of church and state,[11] and civil liberties,[4][10][12] including the civil rights of women, persons of color, and the LGBTQ community.[13]” Sounds charming, huh?
They’re Baaack!
Just like poltergeist, there are a number of people (mostly white men who fear and promote the “replacement theory” that suggests a laundry list of ills associated with migration to the north from the “Global South”). Their fears range from a loss of jobs (but manufacturers, meat packing plants, and farmers, all say we are in desperate need of immigrant labor), to the supposed “Democrat” plot to bring waves of immigrants to the U.S. to overwhelm the vote. (Yes, they still shun the proper use of the adjective “Democratic” in favor of their infantile dis.) The fact that only citizens have the right to vote does not stop them from spreading this paranoid lie.
They’ve tried to keep much of the plan under the radar, saying that like a football coach, they aren’t going to tip their hand and let the other side see their play calling. Secret political movements make me very nervous.
At bottom, Project 2025 is a wish to return to the “good old days” when women, LGBTQ, and people of color knew their place. As Paul Dans, the Heritage Foundation’s president, says, if violence is necessary, they’ll act violently.
Moreover, what they wish to do is nothing less than to permanently enshrine minority rule here, something that we now know via gerrymandering, judicial appointments, and the senate filibuster, is easier than we thought.
From the Perspectives blog, we get this, “They even have a blueprint for ending our democracy if Trump wins. It’s called Project 2025, a sweeping attack on our democracy, our fundamental freedoms, our health, social justice, the livability of our planet, and a lot more. Project 2025 would systematically dismantle our democratic checks and balances and consolidate unprecedented power in a second Trump presidency. It’s truly a roadmap to make Trump, already an aspiring dictator, into a real one, and to impose a radical social/religious order on all of us.”
Of the 38 people credited with writing Project 2025, 31 worked in the Trump Administration. That stat makes it hard to believe the ex-president when he says that he knows nothing, Sargent Schultz style, about Project 2025, and in the next breath, denounces much of what he just said he knew nothing about. Here’s the quote from his Truth Social: “I know nothing about Project 2025, I have no idea who is behind it.” How’s that for some truth?
The whole thing is a Rorschach test that has Americans lining up on either side of the issues of liberty and justice. Listening to the Heritage Foundation has a decidedly through-the-looking-glass quality, where freedom is enslavement, liberty is clearly not for all, and justice is not blind, but is slanted to exonerate their own and incarcerate their “enemies.” I find the use of “enemies” in the political context to be alarming. Instead of a loyal opposition, they have hated combatants who need to be jailed or killed. Heretofore, not the American Way.
Fortunately, it has not been a good week for the far-right. The Brits threw the Conservatives out in favor of centrists, and though polling suggested the French would goose-step their way to an easy victory for fascism, the center held there too. Perhaps common sense isn’t dead yet.
The Heritage Foundation says, “[W]e are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
We’re going to need both Johnny Appleseed and Paul Revere this time. Spread the word…and the warning.
©2024 Jon Sinton
Well said Jon!
There are so many things to be concerned about here. Of course it is close to Trump; Heritage gave its document to Reagan way back and stuffed the administration with its people. I am especially concerned about the repression coming for Queer folk who have little to defend themselves, but everything in Project 2025 is concerning, even alarming.