Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Coming Into Focus

So Project 2025 is finally having its moment. The Trump administration’s all-out assault on federal agencies is straight out of its playbook.

But let’s be clear about Project 2025. It is a wonky conservative dreamscape but it is not a blueprint for transforming a democracy into an autocracy. However, with a tyrant in the White House, that apparently is what it is being used to help facilitate..

Conservative intellectuals have been dreaming up scenarios for dismantling what is now known as the “deep state” for decades. When I lived and worked in Washington, D.C., in 1999-2001, they were working on it then. But it goes back still further, to the 1970s, when a young Congressman Newt Gingrich first burst on the scene. So for all intents and purposes, it should be called Project 1978.

As for Donald Trump, he is neither a conservative nor an intellectual. When he said he didn’t read Project 2025, I’m quite sure it was a rare case of him telling the truth. The report’s authors may hope to use Trump’s presidency to advance their policy agendas, but they may also live to regret that, given the damage to our democracy that is likely to result.

I won’t list the numerous Trump initiatives that overlap with Project 2025 here, but you can check out a handy list courtesy of MSNBC. Instead, I want to focus on the big picture of what Trump and his band of subversives are doing.

We are witnessing a systematic consolidation of executive power that will continue until and unless some combination of oppositional forces brings it to a halt. During this ultra-hazardous moment in American history, we are likely to see constitutional crises, political assassinations, martial law and eventually, the emergence of a mass movement opposed to Trump’s drive for absolute power.

The first faint beginnings of that opposition are already being whispered over in America’s kitchens, coffee houses and houses of worship. For example, some Americans are quietly making plans to shelter migrants from the reach of Trump’s deportation raids, in just one example of what could ultimately be a new underground railroad.

Meanwhile, if the Democratic Party is going to stand up to Trump’s plans, it had better get its act together soon. It needs to craft a counter-strategy to regain control of the House in next year’s midterm elections. 

Democrats can start by acknowledging that they were caught off-guard by the speed with which Trump has implemented the first stages of his coup d état. And, while we’re on that subject, the mainstream media is still reporting that Trump is “joking” about a third term.

Donald Trump doesn’t joke.

Journalist Jim Acosta’s final message as a host at CNN was an appeal for viewers to resist America’s slide into autocracy that is now looking inevitable. Acosta closed with this: “Don’t give into the lies, don’t give in to the fear hold on to the truth and to hope.”

***

For an extensive, in-depth study of the rise of right-wing extremism in American politics see “Displacement and Replacement: The Political History of David Duke, Patrick Buchanan, and Racial Resentment.” (JHS) The author is journalist- historian Dylan Weir, who is also my son.

HEADLINES:

 

at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)