Yves here. This is not pretty, to put it mildly. This is not Steve Bannon speaking. The Project 2025 chief is the head of the Heritage Foundation, which once was a respectable if hard core conservative organization. A right wing contact agreed this statement was disconcerting, since one aim of Project 2025 was to develop lists of potential Trump Administration members who would not sandbag him, and not to go around rabble-rousing.
By Jake Johnson, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as “the second American Revolution” ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.
Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on “Real America’s Voice” that the coming “revolution” will “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be”—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right’s efforts to seize power.
Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election “depends” on the “fairness” of the contest and the outcome.
Watch Roberts’ remarks:
#Project2025 architect Kevin Roberts makes it clear: @Heritage is no longer a think tank.
It's a terror group.
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." pic.twitter.com/4KHbX7oLle
— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) July 3, 2024
“We are going to win. We’re in the process of taking this country back,” declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is “institutionalizing Trumpism” in preparation for a possible victory in November.
The Heritage Foundation president also hailed as “vital” the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision earlier this week bestowing what analysts and critics described as king-like powers on the presidency—powers that Trump is already planning to exploit.
Project 2025, a sweeping 922-page document, provides Trump with a detailed blueprint to advance his far-right agenda, including by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.
Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has called Project 2025 “a blueprint for autocracy,” characterizing it as “a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010.”
“If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim,” Scheppele added.
Scheppele’s assessment echoed that of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which warned in an analysis published late last year that “the entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the ‘real’ community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent.”
“Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and ‘replacing American values,'” the analysis said. “Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism.”
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First thing on the agenda should be a new Operation Warp Speed for a nasal treatment for Covid for the whole world. I wonder who is game enough to be Mr Trump’s Chief of Staff this time ?
First thing on the agenda should be a new Operation Warp Speed for a nasal treatment for Covid for the whole world.
[ China has already developed an inhaled Covid vaccine and treatment.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202210/1277974.shtml
October 25, 2022
Shanghai to provide aerosolized vaccine as booster shots, latest move in China to explore better vaccination strategy amid mutations *
By Leng Shumei and Du Qiongfang
* https://news.cgtn.com/news/2022-10-26/Shanghai-starts-administering-inhalable-COVID-19-vaccine-1errwNUt2VO/index.html ]
Notice the immense problem that America created in looking to China for promising examples of vaccine and treatment development:
https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1801639668100042772
Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand
This is an absolutely insane investigation by Reuters
https://reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/ *
At the height of the Covid crisis, the Pentagon ran a massive secret disinformation campaign “to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other life-saving aid that was being supplied by China”…
If I remember correctly, the US government was putting a lot of pressure on Mexico and Brazil to discount the Sputnik-5 vaccine from Russia. I can’t remember who was doing it, State Department, Pentagon, it could could have been anybody. I have to admit I wasn’t sure they were out to discredit Russia or they would just wanted to preserve market share for US vaccines.
America is completing the process of doing to itself what it has long done to other countries, friend, foe or bystander: Subverting the entire structure of government.
The only thing more dangerous than the Project 2025 is what they want to stop.
“….structure of government.”
Great line.
What is the “structure” of the US government?
Thursday showed the “structure of US government” to be on auto-pilot, run by slanted think tanks and war profiteers! Recycling war profits back to appropriators and bill passers. Biden runs nothing!
That unified, auto-pilot structure of government needs to be shuttered.
That “structure of government” beat Trump the first administration!
The unelected, unaccountable kind, the undemocratic running their arcane “our democracy” must go!
Do not be surprised when the extreme right and left proudly publish what they intend to do. Revolutions down the ages have had this out in the open aspect. Try to read “Mein Kampf” a little and you discover that the Austrian Corporal was open about his plans. Lenin and Trotsky were quite prolific publicists for their revolution. The American Founding Oligarchs spent years writing and publishing on the subject of their plans to separate from England.
So, take this ‘Plan’ seriously. These “patriots” will try and do exactly what they declare. There is nothing so dangerous as a ‘True Believer.’
At this point, I am sadly coming to the conclusion that the only effective way to remove ‘money’ and its attendant corruptions from American politics is through armed struggle.
Stay safe. Remain eternally vigilant.
Good advice. Dying empires are ever so dangerous before they eventually get reborn as a charming tourist attraction.
Yeah? I can imagine it becoming so “charming” that upon your arrival back home, you receive a recording of everything you did and said on your trip.
That gave me a good chuckle.
Don’t pack your bags yet; there’s a prolonged and messy interregnum yet to come.
Correction, please. This IS the interregnum.
We’d awaited seasons 4 & 5 of Babylon Berlin; only to discover, we can watch it happen real-time, by stepping out the front door? Duopoly protection racket agitprop was all we uppity essentials were ever offered. WAY before ALEC took state houses, neoConfederate Dixiecrats replaced “our” party, with United Democracy/ Lincoln Project announced who we were allowed to LOTE-in (to feed us to EZ Credit, Payday Loans; indentured by public equity landlords, pill-mills, PhARMA & FIRE Sector creditors?) We’ve had a head start, since WAY before Powell’s Memo & Reagan’s Miracle?
If we consider 9/11 as our ‘Reichstag Fire’ moment, then the ‘Enabling Act’ process can be stretched out over some time to hide the fact that civil liberties are being curtailed. First the “Patriot Act” and next the Citizens United ruling by the Supreme Court legitimizing corruption in politics began the slow slide into the Post Democracy Era of American politics.
“By the rivers of Washington, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Democracy.”
I’d forgotten what day it was (status quo!) So, no online trading, we’d watched Zogby on Amy Goodman (typically I’d try not to spit coffee on the TV, choking in laughter.) I’d figured, UDP would simply announce Likud’s choice, like the Vatican? Josh, Gretchen, Andy & Chase don’t have Newsom’s icky name recognition. Tragic, inexplicable mid-air catastrophe in 5… 4… 3…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vu39seLqIo
Personally, I thought the Zogby interview was quite enlightening. How many DNCers give interviews and actually respond to questions and explain what is going on in the DNC?
Transcript included:
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/7/3/james_zogby_2024_biden_replacement_options
Anyone who thinks the current situation is unique should read up in US history, especially the 1880s, 1890s, Woodrow Wilson, various Robber Baron-Red Scare-McCartyism-Patriot Act etc. Bearnays Sauce submersion, Zio-neo-crap hegemony, climate pertubation, and nuclear weapons have kind of upped the ante, but this ain’t the first rodeo. Having lived through the first Heritage Foundation assault on Democracy ™ I’ve seen Resistance of the bureaucracy in action, though I’ve also seen seemingly decent people sell out to the autocratic impulse. So no guarantee it won’t be the last, given those burgeoning additive effects of course…
Perspective matters? These instances looked quite different, from above & BELOW! It’s not unlike how kids seldom envision being serfs, sharecroppers or runaway slaves. Folks who’d grown up with grandparents who’d just survived, what novels & motion pictures celebrated as glorious US history & refugees of our puppet tyrants FEEL this, cascade into Falangist oligarchy, a bit more viscerally than those in denial, or smug, impatient beneficiaries?
I would people who have read much history especially of the 20th century.
Strange, I listened during my childhood as people, sometimes the survivors themselves, asked the why, how, and if of the various unrests, wars, revolutions, and coups during the first two-thirds of the century, including the United States.
And here is the answer.
>>>Anyone who thinks the current situation is unique should read up in US history,
There is the difference that the ruling class as a whole, which included the various actors in such as politics, religion, business, science, or what have you, were generally much more competent being interested more in the doing, than the acting, more building than stealing.
This is the single greatest difference, I believe, between the past and now.
That song line would scan better if that last word were changed to “freedom”.
Hum that Jimmy Cliff melody in your mind . . .
” By the Rivers of Washington, where we sat down, and there we wept, when we remembered freedom”.
Are those Americans opposed to ‘money’ and its attendant corruptions in American politics strong enough to win an armed struggle starting in January 2025 if the organizers of Project 20Trumpy5 win the election and launch pre-emptive attacks on such potential ‘armed strugglers’ to make sure they don’t survive to have an ‘armed struggle’?
Would those same Americans be better prepared to survive such an armed struggle starting in 2029 if they could buy themselves 4 years of pre-violence-delay in order to plan for that armed struggle? If they would, should they vote themselves that 4-year-prewar-period to spend those next 4 years getting as ready as they can? Assuming, lets say, that Bannon gets elected President in 2029?
The case against voting for Biden’s circle is avoiding the meganuclear war Biden’s circle could bring with Russia. If one thinks the risk of meganuclear war under a re-election of Biden’s circle is nearly zero, and one sets it against the certainty of armed aggression at many levels starting on Day One of a Trump 2.0 Administration, then the case for voting for Biden’s circle seems pretty strong. But only if one intends to spend the next 4 years of a President Biden’s Circle Administration getting ready for the Heritage MAGA Gilead violence which the Conservative spokes-folk are promising.
No point voting for ” 4 more years of delay” in order to get “self-defense ready” if one plans to waste those “4 more years of delay” on crap like pacifism, non-violence and gun control agitation anyway. Might as well vote for Trump and get it over with.
If American “democracy” is overthrown, do you really think it will be by the Republicans?
Do the spooks approve of this project?
Inquiring minds, etc.
Judging by how well the system responded to previous real threats like 9/11, they haven’t even noticed.
I’ll follow Lambert:
> today’s Republican Party has not defined its enemy clearly at all (supposing, with Schmitt, that to be the purpose of a political party)[4]. We can therefore conclude that Trump’s Republican party will not have the impact that Lincoln’s party did (or, for that matter, Hitler’s). A comforting thought!
Both the Military Intelligence Complex and Project 2025 take as their Grand Strategy the consolidation of power in the national state. But as Orbán said:
> “We [Hungarians] are not a mixed race … and we do not want to become a mixed race,” said Orbán on Saturday. He added that countries where European and non-Europeans mingle were ‘no longer nations.’”
That ain’t the United States, and trying to use the same techniques will fail.
I’ll suggest the outcome would more likely FUBAR its way into a Nordquist dream and precipitate out more states rights. This has already happened re Roe_v_Wade under a theoretically liberal administration. The National State will continue its war grift, but peoples daily lives will be more affected by where they live.
A friend-of-friends works for Google and had to move to Austin for the job. Then Texas started to go all Handmaiden’s Tale tracking menstrual cycles. He and his wife are not happy.
> tracking menstrual cycles
Wut.
> SB8
> How period tracking apps and data privacy fit into a post-Roe v. Wade climate
>> The law bans abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detectable — typically around six weeks. It also empowers private citizens to enforce the ban through payments of at least $10,000 for anyone who successfully sues an abortion provider.
>> “Anybody could get their hands on this data by simply purchasing it from a company that is already collecting it,” Brown says.
> Texas schools want to know when female student-athletes had their last period
>> The company’s website boasts that it is both HIPAA and FERPA compliant, but Rank One Sport’s privacy policy says it also can turn over student data to legal authorities as well as to other third parties, “including but not limited to schools, military bases, and athletic departments” the company does business with.
FERPA is very strict about sharing student information to non-academic institutions (of any kind–especially law enforcement). It is a federal crime and adjudicated in federal court. That gets expensive fast; and one of the reasons academic institutions rarely dispense with any info about students. (It is why Trump/Bush/Obama’s scholastic details are unknown.)
Let’s take as a given that state institutions will toe the line set by a fading federal government.
I’m still worried about a High School Assistant Coach thinking “Angel Reese is on the other team and I have no chance to win the State Finals unless she’s gone.” While picking up an extra ten large on the side.
I hate to sound like a Luddite, but anyone who keeps health data on an app should expect it to be misused in the worst possible way. I refuse to use insurance portals and deal via mail and phone.
Why not just call Project 2025 by its given name – fascism ?
Fascism is what I see when I hear “our democracy”.
Who torpedoed Bernie?
Bravo.
I agree completely.
It is my belief that the DNC Elites and “Super Delegates” are to blame for our current “problem” too.
Chicago 1968 redux. “The Whole World is Watching…. The Whole World is Watching…”
IMHO, Bernie willingly torpedoed himself.
NC is right and wise not to support or allow up votes and down votes on comments, but I heartily endorse yours.
Fascism arguably requires a kind of mass movement boots on the ground type presence, people seem significantly politically unengaged, online is a poor substitute for actual political engagement and action, true fascism would be far more active rather than a kind of bipartisan top down dictatorial takeover which is what this appears to be. The type of person this kind of argument appeal to simply do not have the kind of skill and aptitude to make something like this work, it’s less Atlas shrugged than atlas threw his toys out of the pram and called it a plan.
Was listening to an interesting discussion by Matt Christman on the history of bipartisanship wherein he argues that the checks and balance system congress, senate, presidency, court were suppose to counter balance each other because it was presumed a kind of mutual class interest would prevent true factionalism breaking out, old school GOPer understood that America had to change to be a consumer high debt economy ignorer for the dollar to work as a global reserve currency and that the culture type politics was raw meat for the rubes, because in truth there was no real structural difference between the two neoliberal blocks, but gradually that eroded and the rubes who genuinely believed the culture war type talk took over.
Project America seems to be working very well for the upper upper crust which is what it was surely designed to be, the people behind project 2025 seem to be rubes who don’t grasp this is what it was supposed to be all along, the problem with fanatic is that they are defect deranged, have a poor model of how society actually function and its very unlike this will work the way they think they can, the likes of Bannon and Cummings (how well has taking back control worked out vis a vis Brexit?) or in this case Roberts strikes me as being the typical “you can get very far in the world by understand one thing”, type much like say Andy Warhol, so they may have a crude understanding of media and power through a particular peculiar focus (and of course being of the right and as such aligned with the forces of established order they can get some kind of backing and status from the powers that be that their left equivalents could only dream of), but that in and of itself does not make you a Napoleon. And I’m pretty sure every one of these clowns secretly thinks they’re the cleverest one. no honour amongst thieves, too many cooks and all that, I doubt this will end well though it may cause irreversible damage, but I also doubt it will succeed.
Inverted Totalitarianism. Sheldon Wolin.
America will continue down this path as long as Americans are convinced that they are consumers and not citizens.
“Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism.”
Authoritanism? Under Biden, we had the Twitter files which exposed DeepState collusion with big-tech mass censorship. Millions of videos removed from YouTube on matters relating to covid, vaccine adverse reactions, Hunter’s laptop, FTX, Ukraine, excess deaths, Ivermectin, rigged ballots, dead voters, Jeffrey Epstein, food factory fires, corrupt DA’s….
The changing of dictionary definitions for recession, herd immunity, vaccine…
Putting your political opponents in jail and driving them towards bankruptcy isn’t exactly a Democratic principle? Novaro, Jones, Powell, Bannon, Stone, Flynn, and recently even the use of excessive lawfare against the former President himself.
Because it’s a scary title, like “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
“If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim”
This can backfire on the right, if the next President were to come from the “left”. Trump is 78, and although he is more robust then Biden, he’ll probably start drooling 2 years from now, and then what? Maybe this is not about empowering Trump, but rather the person who will come after Trump, whoever that might be. For all we know this is just another stratagem from the Deep State.
“For all we know this is just another stratagem from the Deep State.”
Yeah. I would just replace Deep State with something broader and more openly known like the entire political system.
Chris Hedges when trying to warn of overly punishing the Jan-6th-ers had predicted against whom it would all be directed eventually.
Reminds me of the late Jonathan Demme´s remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” from 2004
Worth a watch.
(Meryl Streep unaware that she was used as a stand-in for HC. My speculation.)
Nah, the current Supreme Court won’t agree that a Democrat president is acting in an official capacity unless it is to hand over the presidency to the Republicans, or invading another nation or things that don’t matter to them.
After all, while official acts of the president is above judicial review with this decision, which acts are official remain below it, which is what allows them to treat different presidents differently.
Part of what the 2025ers plan on doing with their powers, if they get them, is make sure that no “leftist” ever becomes President ever again.
Never. Ever.
Could they succeed? I love a good gamble. Let’s elect Trump and find out.
“Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and ‘replacing American values,’
As a leftist, constantly being “instructed” by white liberals and the mainstream of the Tartuffian Republican Party, my answer is a shrug. So what else is new?
Kevin Roberts, not to put too fine a point on it, is just one more white boy with authoritarian tendencies.
Brethren and sistren, let us recall the Ku Klux Klan, Lester Maddox, Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel, John Bolton, tinhorn dictators all.
The irony is that no matter what one thinks of Trump, Trump himself is too disruptive, too much a manager by chaos, too much the real-estate magnate to become the New Duce. I’m not sure how one channels all of his resentments into goose-stepping.
But minions like Kevin Roberts have plans. Well, we will see what happens to all of these grand documents. I wouldn’t count on much. The U.S. government has been wrecked and made ineffective by liberals and the mainstream right–for years. Remember Reagan, the Clinton(s), Obama’s endless squandering?
How is a tottering government that can’t even build roads and bridges supposed to take over the whole country and enforce conformity? Is someone going to make the trains run on time in a country that has a barely functioning railroad system?
Also recall the ‘unitary executive’ theory, which said George W Bush could do whatever he wanted, including torturing some folks, as long as he got some hack lawyer to sign off and say it was OK. That was some pretty bad stuff right there, but Pelosi took impeachment off the table as soon as she won the speakership, Obama told us to look forward, not back, when he became president, and his wife is now swapping gobstoppers with the war criminal.
Sure seems to me that the Democrat elites only get their panties in a wad about “authoritarianism” when they can use it as one of many sticks with which to beat the big orange cur. Otherwise, they’re pretty OK with it, especially if it allows them to rig primaries and shove the candidate of their choice down voters’ throats, drone some folks after getting elected, etc.
Greenwald had a very good take last night on the Supremes decision on presidential immunity, putting it all in context. He rightly notes that presidents and high ranking officials have always had immunity for any number of egregious crimes (Iran/Contra, droning US citizens, etc.). It was a tacit ”gentleman’s agreement” in the past (although it may be time to change that phrase now that Hillary Clinton and others have enthusiastically joined the war crimes racket), and it was only the democrats’ lawfare efforts that caused the Supremes to make it explicit. Again, there seems to be just one person that the Democrats fear might benefit from this immunity. I’m quite sure they aren’t looking to put GenocideJoe in the Hague.
I may be wrong here, but it’s very hard to get exercised about all this when it seems to be just another byproduct of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Exactly. This is all fugazi, a kayfabe. There is no grand battle between democracy and fascism. America has been a dictatorship since before 9/11.
i just don’t like the gravy,
Your comment prompted me to recall a letter from Thomas Babbington, Lord Mcaulay, in 1857 to a Mr H.S. Randall (Hon) of New York, regarding Mr Randall’s biography of Thomas Jefferson.
Mcaulay’s letter can be found pages 2-4 in the following link
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=3269&context=ocj
Mcaulay was a Whig Party member, MP and Peer, i.e. a 19th century British liberal, but at the same time very sceptical of Jeffersonian ideals. Personally, I find his politics repugnant. That said, he was rather prescient in terms of where American governance and the American Constitution would lead.
The part of the letter that he is most known for is his comment that ‘Your constitution is all sail and no anchor.’
If I could spin this quote a little differently: the american constitution is all wind and no sail. I think this is more accurate.
I’ve always thought that the problems the US now faces were present at its very inception both in its constitution and institutions. Both fully embrace classical liberal ideology BTW. How do you reform something that was defective from the get go? Not a good prognosis IMHO.
Maybe before the election Biden should fire the whole Supreme Court and start over. Who could tell him no?
Your first mistake is assuming that corpse has agency.
The move from de facto presidential immunity to de jure immunity is bound to increase the scope of presidential power. We can’t hang any charge on presidentially ordered operations, no matter how evil, now.
Right after Trump was sworn in, The Guardian ran a Dem opinion piece expressing shock over the authoritarianism that had taken over the nation “since January.” I don’t think the writer was too young to remember the Cold War, when most or the presidential authoritarian powers originated. SDS and the antiwar movement were in the streets protesting it 60 years ago when a Democrat, and then a Republican, were using the criminal powers. Stoller was right on target when he said that the court had retroactively decided Watergate was legal.
As we’ve seen with the scandal over Biden’s people manipulating social media, or the genocide, use of the illegitimate powers of the presidency is an unbroken bipartisan constant.
I’d say the court decision has focused my attention on the next move in the game, but not in the way the Dem opinion-makers want.
pelosi had no choice but to take impeachment for torture off of the table. torture was made legal by bill clinton and al gore.
the patriot act, bill clinton, the endless wars, bill clinton. till you take the bull by the horns and go through every presidential order, every bill bill clinton signed or issued line by line, no one will care because they know its american law or its a precedent.
When perusing Clinton’s signed bills, don’t forget the signing statements which add needed context.
THANKS!
While MAGA of any colour (red OR blue) will streamline the country domestically turning BRICS into the new evil (wait and see until e.g. a new attack on Brazil will occure), in cooperation with the EU the hatred towards BRICS will also be the new inter-continental bond.
This from Germany on Katja Kallas who will be fun to watch meeting with Agent Orange in D.C.:
“Kaja Kallas: An extremist is now to represent the EU”
https://www-nachdenkseiten-de.translate.goog/?p=117577&_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
from FREITAG:
“Kaja Kallas: The designated EU foreign policy chief does not want to compromise with Russia
Portrait Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is counting on a victorious peace for Ukraine. This will leave the European Union even less room for any form of diplomacy ”
https://archive.is/CVma7
p.s. that´s how the new Hedgian fascism looks like – it´s blond 🤣
Well she’s replacing Josep Borrell who was another intense Russophobe so no real difference. Hopefully she won’t start muttering about the European garden and the like. But where money becomes involved, she reverts to the norm-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaja_Kallas#Husband's_business_scandal
This is all so odd because Trump was not really President during his first term. Ryan and McConnell set the domestic agenda. The Federalist Society picked the judges. And the spooks continued to run foreign policy. Trump spent his time fending off his many attackers.
Hard to imagine Trump as an empowered executive. Maybe this is prepared for someone else. I sure hope Trump doesn’t pick Rubio.
It is dated 2023. But could habe been written in the 20th century
It became a hair-on-fire issue…….after the Presidential debate.
Started to come around to the idea of the North Dakota governor being the VP selection. Smart business guy I suppose, with his Great Plains accounting software being ubiquitous. Microsoft bought that company some 10 or so years back.
And, he’s been governor of an oil & energy producing state. Surely that helps with the donor class. Extra points if the guy is true Midwest nice.
“Project 2025, a sweeping 922-page document, provides Trump with a detailed blueprint to advance his far-right agenda, including by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.”
“If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim,” Scheppele added.
I’m having a hard time seeing how this is so different from what I have observed in our government when controlled by either of the Uni-Parties. No less than Putin and to some extent Xi have noted US policy does not change regardless who is President.
When Obama became President, didn’t Dick Cheney’s hand picked Victoria Nuland remain in power in various roles and didn’t her and the agenda she represents policy arc continue uninterrupted under both Bush and Obama and beyond?
As for violent response to “The Left” should it resist, how is that different from Obama taking the 1st step of imprisoning and torturing dissenters like Julian Assange, Snowden, etc? He applied The Espionage Act fantastically more than all predecessors combined, and more openly suppressed free speech using State violence against individuals as well as more openly codified state funded propaganda and brainwashing disinformation. And Obama knowingly helped falsified “evidence” before the FISA Court that Russia was working with Trump to do bad things to America…which BTW helped get us at least 8 years of non-stop 24 hour media saturation of completely false non sense making Russia Enemy Number One.
When I told my team blue friends that Hillary and Obama have turned Democrats into bigger warmongers than Republicans, they told me my views are caused by racism towards Obama. When I repeatedly told my blue team “friends” that Obama was codifying and intensifying everything GWB did, they mocked me as a Republican. When I told them Obama intervened to extend laws to allow him to kill/imprison folks at his pleasure, they told me the Senate forced him to do it. When I showed them You tube video of Dick Durban(?) telling the Senate and the world that Obama wants this law extended and the Senate would kill it had he not wanted it, and we must all vote for it because Obama wants it, they unfriended my on FB.
I have difficultly seeing anything other than a continuation of our current course which has been and likely will remain a disaster.
Nuland entered the corner offices of DoS in 1993 with Strobe Talbot and Clinton’s grand schemes to expand….
Nuland rose ever since, until a few months ago.
Yes. This is just part of the usual “good cop, bad cop” political theater – which cop is which depends on whether the viewer identifies as blue or red. The actual policy trajectory of our duopoloy is simply to keep ratcheting up the centralized war machine. “The second American Revolution,” the “left” – what bulls**t. Both Roberts and Johnson, the author of this scare piece, might actually believe what they are saying; such true believing ideologues are useful.
I remember well the original Heritage Mandate for Leadership written for the incoming Reagan administration, and the accompanying hysteria. They did accomplish a lot. Much of it had begun under Carter, and was continued under Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama.
By the way, what is the foreign policy stance of this Heritage “blueprint”? I haven’t heard much on that score, and I haven’t bothered yet to check. All I know is that is will “purge” government of all that is Good and give us the big ‘F’.
Exactly. Aren’t career civil servants what others call the deep state? Obama purged the military too.
Those who want to “deconstruct the Administrative State” refer to career civil servants as The Deep State in order to focus public hatred onto them in order to get public support for abolishing the departments which regulate food and drug safety, environmental safety, etc. etc.
Deep State USED to mean the same thing that Colonel ( Retired) L. Fletcher Prouty meant by the term ” Secret Team”. He wrote a book about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Team
To some people, that is still what Deep State means. To those people, Deep State means the persistent small networks who all knew eachother and had the skills to carry out and the power to authorise the killing of Kennedy, X, King, Kennedy, etc. etc. etc.
Whoever shot Kennedy, X, King, Kennedy, etc. etc. . . . . it probably wasn’t a GS-grade Civil Servant.
https://listverse.com/2014/02/05/10-reasons-bill-clinton-was-secretly-a-terrible-president
““Extraordinary rendition” is when shady government operatives stuff a bag over your head and fly you off to some foreign country where they can legally torture you. It sounds like something Alex Jones might dream up in a paranoid frenzy, but it’s a well-documented phenomenon under both Bush, Jr. and Obama—and Bill Clinton was the guy who started it all.
Clinton and Gore signed off on the first rendition back in the ’90s, despite being aware that it breached international law. Until recently, rendered people frequently wound up in the prison cells of places like Mubarak’s Egypt or Gaddafi’s Libya, where they were tortured with electric shocks, rape, beatings, and even crucifixion. It can sometimes go hideously wrong: In 2003, the CIA snatched a terrorist off the streets and beat, tortured, and sodomized him, only to discover they’d accidentally grabbed the wrong man. The victim just happened to share a name with a wanted criminal. His suffering came care of the Clinton/Gore dream team.”
————–
https://theintercept.com/empire-politician/biden-iraq-liberation-act/
“In January 1998, the neoconservative Project for the New American Century sent a letter to President Bill Clinton calling on him to overthrow the Iraqi government and making that goal an official “aim of American foreign policy.”
“Joe Biden voted in favor of the act, which was signed into law by Clinton in October 1998. In touting his support for the law, Biden said, “So it seems to me that we have a big problem. Saddam is the problem. Saddam is in place. Saddam is not going anywhere unless we do something relatively drastic. It is clear our allies are not prepared to do anything drastic.””—–
are you sick of the endless wars? they can be traced to one person, and one person only, the man who single handily destroyed the u.n. mission to protect sovereignty, he broke international law, is a war criminal, bill clinton. today we are involved in so many wars, have so many military bases around the world, its mind boggling. anyone who would vote for these monsters again, needs their heads examined.
——————–
we now know yugoslavia and milosivic were found innocent: Bill’s deeds have lessons for Americans. Had we learned them, maybe no U.S. forces would be fighting in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/10/14/1575064/-Bill-Clinton-s-war
——————-
lets cut out the dog whistling, if you do not like the wars, go to the source of the problem, bill clintons enshrinement of regime change polices cooked up with dick cheney
“Regime change polices were set up by bill clinton: This was a unit established by President Bill Clinton, then continued by Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. Mike Pompeo, the current director of the CIA, has confirmed that this unit exists. This has led to rumours in the press, followed up by President Trump, of a US military option
the bipartisan interventionist/militarist consensus of centrist Dems and hawkish Republicans has brought only disaster, death, humanitarian crisis, exploding debt and endless war for nearly two decades.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/47722.htm“
Fact: many USians vote for these monsters.
Nobody is forcing them. They could simply not vote, it’s not compulsory.
Or they could vote for a sane person like Jill Stein for example. But they don’t.
What does that tell us about them? That they prefer monsters over sane people to lead them?
“Forgiven”, for they know not what they do.
That denies them agency, which they certainly do have.
And without that agency, the system becomes illegitimate. I doubt those people see the system as illegitimate because then why support it by voting?
This article is BS from someone who wants attention about someone who I’ve never heard of. I used to read Common Dreams until I found out how that site was so blue and would not allow any viewpoint that went against their “boys”. BTW, what the the writer mean by the left or progressive. The meaning of these terms has been lost for a while.
What the Supreme Court ruled was true to its character but the truth is that we’re already at a point that the it doesn’t really matter. We have a dictatorship and the cabal that rules uses the President as their stooge dictator. Neither party represent any of the people but the rich. I see people quoting the Constitution as if it meant anything and I’ve come to believe it became meaningless with each administration along with the budget deficits. The Patriot Act, the digital surveillance and money in politics has totally destroyed any semblance of Democracy in our country.
“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same”.
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/16.html
Just opened first part of the 900+ page doc. I’ll read more later. First impression:
Looking at the list of authors:Ivy League alumni, think tank members, university professors, and civil servants.
Appears to be just a different part of the social issues spectrum of the PMC.
They will be serving the same masters that the PMC usually serves.
The outline of the plan:
The project is built on four pillars.
l Pillar I—this volume—puts in one place a consensus view of how major
federal agencies must be governed and where disagreement exists brackets
out these differences for the next President to choose a path.
l Pillar II is a personnel database that allows candidates to build their own
professional profiles and our coalition members to review and voice their
recommendations. These recommendations will then be collated and shared
with the President-elect’s team, greatly streamlining the appointment process.
l Pillar III is the Presidential Administration Academy, an online
educational system taught by experts from our coalition. For the newcomer,
this will explain how the government functions and how to function in
government. For the experienced, we will host in-person seminars with
advanced training and set the bar for what is expected of senior leadership.
l In Pillar IV—the Playbook—we are forming agency teams and drafting tran-
sition plans to move out upon the President’s utterance of “so help me God.”
———-
Basically a bunch of people that are going to make a lot of noise, but not change what’s in people’s heart (if ya got heart!)
Then the same broken record: deregulation and tax cuts for the rich.
When I was a young lad, the Pillar II was called nomenklatura (wikipedia), a.k.a list of people vetted for administrative positions.
Fire most of the CIA
A lot of warmongers in the State Department
A fair number at Justice
1/2 the Generals
And a lot of the folks at NIH, CDC, FDA
So Trump really is going to put Maddow in a concentration camp?
Shame on Commondreams for being as wackadoo as the Heritage Society. People have been misusing the term gaslighting from the movie Gaslight but what it is supposed to mean is terrorizing with Fear Uncertainty and Doubt as a means of control. And that has been the left defense against Trump and the threat–as the elites see it anyway–of popular objection to the Dem version of government.
Trump is not Hitler. Maybe some rightwing people want him to be that as much as some leftwing. But how many divisions does the Heritage Society have? Living out here among the supposed future storm troopers I say not many.
Oh and happy fourth of July.
Well, we’ve not all been watching Canary Mission’s doxxing progrom clear all Lefty, Proletariat & super-predators outa Ivy League, Tech, law, economics, poly-sci, regulatory & journalism credentialization, by ah, er… Liberal Democrats? Kinda wonder, what this portends for DNC’s replacement of Biden? Lots of “X”conspiracy theorists, sorta kinda figured Likud was “interfering in US elections,” believe it or not?
I see parallels between the Roberts court reacting to the constant lawfare against Trump by strengthening presidential immunity and the right creating a blueprint for taking control of the Trump restoration as a reaction to Trump’s inability to form a government that didn’t fight him (like generals ignoring his orders to draw down troops in Afghanistan). As with the Bork nomination (not to mention adventures abroad) the risk of blowback has long been under appreciated.
They didn’t “strengthen presidential immunity.” They merely reaffirmed the principle that has always been in place. It’s the Dems who have been attacking that principle with their lawfare. One may object to the principle but then talk to the Founders.
The attitude toward this latest ruling is that people are shocked shocked to learn that the US president has a great deal of power. Perhaps therefore we should be more careful about electing senile old men to fill the position.
You have to wonder how many of the writers expressing shock over presidential authoritarianism actually know better. 60 years go people protesting an illegitimate presidential war were having the CIA and FBI used against them. And whoever gunned down the Kent State students — and Kent activists from that time I have met believe it was a Federal operation — got away scot-free.
So in practice, the immunity was always there — but with the new court decision they have a prior authorization to proceed that they didn’t have before.
The SC sent it back to the lower court and said they should try to decide what is “official” versus “unofficial.” It doesn’t seem like a blank check.
You’re right in Trump’s case.
But the decision establishes precedent to give immunity to official acts (like, say surveillance or repression under national security authorities). That’s where the blank check is.
IMO Roberts’ motivation with the immunity decision was to put an end to the past 4 (8?) years of lawfare before the likely mandate level victory of the Republicans in November, thus preventing an orgy of revenge. I thought that the decision would be unanimous. In actuality, it mostly codified the previous reality. Project 2025 is mainly a wish list. It remains to be seen whether Trump will embrace it.
Looking at the comments above it would seem this essay has not provoked the outrage expected. Over-hyping and fear-mongering are transparent and so, easily dismissed. The war-worshipping, gender denying, pronoun-insisting woke are playing a weak hand which simply can not cover up the fact that Biden and his regime have been a disaster, especially for those who are looking for a suitable sobriquet now that “progressive” and “liberal” values have been perverted by the ridiculous, indeed dangerous, Democrats controlling the media megaphone.
Maybe Joe Biden has NOT been a disaster for ALL the world?
I’m hoping that Russia elects to establish a “Thank You Joe Biden” monument on their soil.
Russia could thank Joe for:
1. Helping Russia and China to improve their economic alliance
2. Helping Russia and India to improve their economic ties
3. Helping Russia improve relations with the global south.
4. Helping Russia establish, in the eyes of the world, that their country is able to manufacture effective
military hardware in quantity and at low, relative to the USA, cost.
5. Helping Russia demonstrate, to the world, that it is effective in battlefield electronic countermeasures.
6. Showing to the world that Russia preserved much of its manufacturing base while the USA decimated its manufacturing base.
7. Helping the global south view Russia as NOT assisting in the killing of 10’s of thousands of non-combat Gaza citizens as does the USA.
8. Showing the world that the USA demands its way, either by UN vetoes, ignoring International Criminal Court findings or ignoring widespread world protests against its actions.
9. Showing the world that the USA, while nominally promoting free press journalism and free speech, believes it can prosecute/persecute any world citizen for publishing accurate information that is embarrassing to the USA.
Perhaps Biden and his regime have not been a disaster for Russia/China and the global south?
“Left?” What Left? I see no “Left” in America.
Liberals? Sure, plenty. PMC? A surfeit.
But Left? It is to laugh …
Yep, todays so called demodog party should feel right at home with the 2025 crowd.
Apparently conservatives believe that liberals want the working class to own the means of production. In fact, the raison d’etre for liberalism is to make sure that never, ever happens, and they’ve done a great job. But do they get any credit? No! The injustice….
There is no extreme left in the US. The closest thing we have to a leftist is a Democratic Socialist Senator from VT. But that is too much for the reactionaries to handle.
But, but… many of the Republicans (and some Democrats) keep complaining of the Marxist takeover of America.
They have redefined Marxism to mean Gay Marriage and Gay Pride Parades and etc.
This Project 2025 hysteria feels like some DNC astroturfing to drive turnout.
If you truly believe Trump is a fascist and these Heritage Foundation goons are going to do Reich 2.0 I’ll give you a bit of advice: you can’t vote them out.
American politics is a dead end illusion, and, guess what? This country has been outright fascist for decades. Liberals are just having Zoloft panic attacks like 2016. A second Trump term is going to be business as usual.
Sorry to disappoint the lunatics frothing at the mouth for a civil war.
Facts don’t lie: it’s about economic/ wealth control, which under the pretense of conservatism has given us over 1000 multi billionaire oligarchs, who’re dictating a full power grab, none in the interest of the country’s future. Just whiteness the deindustrialization of the manufacturing base. Then there’s the issue of university academic syllabus and freedom of expression. Oligarchs are also dictating terms of the current wars in Ukraine – Larry Fink has been charged with “rebuilding” Ukrainian industry and economy, which means privatization with Israeli oligarchs lapping it all up and turning Ukraine into the second Jewish state – and of course, they’re forcing the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Oligarchs funded the end of Affirmative Action. Whatever people’s feelings about Affirmative Action, the fact that these same people are forcing criticism of Israel as unlawful. And criticism of themselves as antisemitic – how’s this not a version of Affirmative Action?.
In the process, the country’s institutional destruction is being covered by the use of evangelical fatwas that are turning women into property; burning books and all the rest.. Is that what the nation wants or needs?
Most of the American nation including its conservative part is not into the more extreme goals of the Christian Nationalists. While any one political faction is likely to dominate, even to somewhat control, the entire country, if it is not careful, the reaction would eventually destroy whatever it considers progress. While the Overton Window might be strongly shifted, I do not see the more extremely liberal elites of California or the more Conservative elites of the South successfully imposing the majority of their proclaimed beliefs without an actual civil war.
Whoever “wins” 2024 will have to make an apparently sincere effort to improve the economic well-being of the majority of Americans or lose power. Using either the security state to maintain power will just strengthen their demise even if it works for the immediate term.
These are the people who put in place Prohibition (Amendment XVIII).
Maximalists. Would not, could not compromise. The result was, of course,
the amendment was reversed. Same mindset as the Christian Right.
One wonders whether a similar future fate awaits them.
If there is any bloodshed at all it will be trickles. The state now has the ability to place the entire population under house arrest and total information awareness surveillance. It was all drilled in 2020.
Give the right wing credit for addressing the need to identify ways in which our failing government must be changed. Of course, as usual, their ideas are unamerican and foolish. Fortunately, the Trump era has given us a blatant and enhanced picture of the weaknesses that have led to the failure of our government. There is an important question at this time which is what do we need to do improve our government. My suggestions include taking dependency on money away from the political parties through some form of public financing for elections, some form of proportional representation, and institutionalization of some form of greater public control over government functioning and law making after elections. We need an active and ongoing discussion of proposed changes more than discussion of what has already happened. One of the things that we have learned from the Trump era is that most Americans by far want the status quo whatever that is, and they don’t know what that is.
> Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics
Deplorables, in fact.
Reactionaries are called reactionaries because they react (funhouse mirror-style, often). For example, “replacement theory,” much derided as a sign of incipient fascism, is an obvious albeit distorted restatement of Ruy Tiexiera’s “coalition of the ascendant” (underline that “ascendant”), the theory that a decreasingly white electorate necessarily meant a permanent Democrat majority, and so all Democrats had to do was sit back and wait for demographics to do their work (and hence no need to deliver in policy). Trump blew that up in 2016, 2020, and (so far) in 2024. So now much of the Democrat part is a gaggle of identity silos, working at cross purposes.
If the liberal Democrats don’t like Project 2025, then they can skip brunch and write a better three-ring binder (to which conservatives will react, probably stupidly). But brunch is sacrosanct. So here we are.
The whole “demographics will bring a permanent majority” narrative of the Dems has been going on my entire adult life (and I’m not a young man by any means!) and has always bothered me for many reasons (might as well wait for continental drift to change the electorate) but the replacement theory goes way back before that. I’ve got a book called “The Rising Tide of Color” from 1920 that is the exact same argument replacement theory people talk about today. It was written by a “Klan Historian” and eugenicist and is a darkly fascinating read (he wasn’t bound to the dog whistles and relative politeness of our modern era) but the arguments he proposes are the exact same as todays.
Also have a collection of writings from the 1850’s on justifications for slavery and when they discuss the “threat” of freeing slaves they use much of the same replace my theory logic as to why it would be dangerous.
So, it might be more accurate to say the coalition of the ascendant was a reaction against the reactionary replacement theory idea.
I had always understood reactionaries to be people who wanted to re-institute a preferred-by-them status quo ante which existed before the institution of a reform or reforms which they didn’t like. It is not just about reacting to a passing thing in a moment of time.
If I should not think of the long and deep New Deal Repeal-and-Removal movement as a reactionary movement, what should I think of it as?
Here is a wikipage describing what I have always understood “reactionary” to be , under the heading of “reactionary”. Is there some other word we should prefer for what this page is describing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary
> “a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010.”
I don’t think that’s true. I skimmed the thing (reads like irritable three-ring binders). I would say its an aggregation of several generations of work product from Heritage “scholars”, so-called. That doesn’t make Project 2025 A Good Thing, quite the reverse, but we might as well get the provenance right.
Kim Lane Scheppele has been urging a color revolution in Hungary for years. The urging has nothing to do with democracy in Hungary, since the Orban government was elected and is broadly supported, but with the Orban government being relatively supportive of non-prejudicial productive relations with Russia and China. What now angers Lane Scheppele is loss of influence in Hungary of openly subversive American controlled NGOs.
Lane Scheppele long ago gained access to Paul Krugman’s writings for the New York Times in vilifying the Orban government:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/the-unconstitutional-constitution/
January 2, 2012
The Unconstitutional Constitution
By Paul Krugman
The latest on Hungary from my Princeton colleague Kim Lane Scheppele…
[ Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has called Project 2025 “a blueprint for autocracy,” characterizing it as “a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010.” ]
This is prejudicial nonsense. The only problem being an unwillingness of the elected Orban government to give over Hungarian sovereignty to American interests against Russia and China. Hungary economically, lacking American military and subverting NGO spending, has been doing just fine:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pNnS
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Germany, France, Poland and Hungary, 2000-2023
(Indexed to 2000)
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1pNnP
August 4, 2014
Real per capita Gross Domestic Product for Germany, France, Poland and Hungary, 2000-2023
(Percent change)
I thought Orban took over the Hungarian government by winning the elections in 2010. And it was the Hungarian constitution that turned Fidesz land-slide into a supermajority capable of changing the constitution – just as the writers of the constitution had planned, since they didn’t believe they would get it right the first time.
And oddly enough, after two more electoral victories, when the Hungarian parliament granted him “state of emergency” right to rule by degree without a time limit, he didn’t take the opportunity to turn Hungary into a fascist hellhole, but allowed the same parliament to take away those rights a few months later.
As far as authoritarians go, it’s almost as if most post-WW2 US presidents have outdone Orban by a margin.
[ I thought Orban took over the Hungarian government by winning the elections in 2010… ]
Important comment, all through. Hungary is not about to give over sovereignty to George Soros and American financed NGOs, which is evidently what Kim Lane Scheppele was counting on. ]
It sounds to me like the Heritage Foundation is making sure that the deep state duopoly remains firmly in control by claiming it’s a “revolution.” Who are they trying to kid? This is just “Hope and Change” with right wing branding.
‘by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.’
Yeah, pretty sure that I have seen this movie before. When the Republicans were recruiting people for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq after the invasion, they recruited true believers too. If you could speak Arabic or knew about the region, they threw you out the door. But if you agreed that Roe Wade was wrong, you would be in. And this unqualified mob went to Iraq where they made a mess of things and partied in the Green Zone rather than see what was going on in Iraq.
And centralizing power in the Presidency? Is this a variation of the Bush-era Unitary Executive Theory where in order fulfill his oath of office, that the President had to be above the law in order to enforce it. And that the President answers to neither Congress nor the Federal courts. So all this is some sort of Bush-era stew pot which has regurgitated this project. Since it is from the Heritage Foundation, should I mention that Obamacare has its origins there too?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
Thank you, Rev.
Please have a look at my comment when it comes out of moderation.
On the ObamaCare’s Heritage Foundation roots, see here (from here).
An excellent example of the general point. There has been a steady devolution in both foreign and domestic policy since Carter. It has been carried out through both Democrat and Republican administrations; it is bipartisan. Only the rhetoric changes depending on which party is speaking to which constituency. This Heritage document is just a Red Team contribution to this year’s WWF match, which I admit is especially farcical by historical standards.
Since, Henry Wallace?
Ken Galbraith?
Fannie Lou Hamer?
Barbara Ehrenreich?
You really can’t FIND “leftist Democrats,” on Google, now? We’re nonexistent, like COVID 19, our Chinese & Rooski equities or Oscar, Emmy, Tony winners at a Gaza rally?
Thank you, Yves.
Readers will be delighted to hear that the Heritage Foundation hosted some of the UK Labour opposition spokesmen a few weeks ago and is advising the next UK health secretary on bringing obama / romney / boehner / Swiss care to the UK, including the sale and lease back of hospitals from BlackRock. Starmer’s destruction of the UK is going to be amazing. Can we have WW3, please?
Thank you, Colonel. And to think that this video only came out five years ago-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kll-yYQwmuM (5:04 mins)
Now coming to the UK. Gaaachh!
Being July 4, I have to circle back to the Bloodless headline. The tree of liberty must from time to time be nourished with the blood of tyrants.
One man’s tyrant is another man’s freedom fighter. Today’s Paul Harvey Bumper snicker:
Who’s YOUR Tyrant?
Preface: stereotypes are so fun and abhorrent because they are true!
“Liberals” and ‘the left’– that incredibly organized monolith- owns countless and is proficient at using their vast array of guns and ammo.
Of course it will be bloodless. The monolithic left — well stocked with strings of pearls for clutching, and mouth guards to prevent jaw-muscle fatigue from gnashing of teeth? Check.
I’m still sorting one well-cleaned functioning gun, one bullet, versus several guns and countless thousands of rounds of ammo in the safe. It seems that calculus is running through an increasing number of numb minds these days. Screw potable water and dried food-stuffs. And fergoshsakes don’t get to know and share with your neighbors and community!
I think a 30 30 and a bandolier is quite a fun look. Serape and Broad-brimmed straw hat futures!
Badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinking Badges!
An “energetic executive” would assert the “outer bounds” of his authority and round up every single person associated with “Project 2025” and have them all charged with treason while being given the Julian Assange treatment.
We wouldn’t even be having this discussion if Mr. Energetic executive Obama had put Mitch McConnell in cuffs for blocking his SCOTUS appointment.
Or even just “recess-appointed” somebody when the Senate went into recess, the way a certain pro-Bama co-worker who was smart enough to have known better just SWORE that Obama would do that very thing.
Comments seem to reflect Republicans have no agency and the Democrats have made them do them do the awful things they otherwise wouldn’t.
It’s seems to be much of the same Republican agenda from the 20th Century.
“It”…edit button comes and goes…
I don’t understand the objections. Replacement of professionals by ideologues with neither experience nor expertise worked brilliantly in Iraq. Why not repatriate the experiment?
Calling Bill Black. The answer to complex, bureaucratic red tape isn’t orgiastic deregulation or a reign of occupational terror against civil servants by an unfettered Leviathan, pace the worthy theologians of the Heritage Foundation and Supreme Court. That’s criminogenic. Call me crazy, but I don’t get how you reform a corrupt political system by dialing up corruption.
If you’ve got to cut a Gordian knot, at least have an Alexander do it with a sword, not the caddies of some bloated con man with a nine-iron. And cut it in the right spot, at the root of the evil. Begin by pruning money in politics. We’ve got government unchecked by checks. That’s the fattest finger on the scale. It’s out of balance, and I see no remedies on offer from either party of property, only Gresham’s knowing smile.
If the goal of (so-called) conservatives is to dismantle the administrative apparatus, it makes no difference if it’s by way of legal edicts or willful incompetence.
The usual route has been to defund, complain about how it doesn’t work, cut, and privatize the function.
Ah, Edith and Archie singing “Those Were the Days”: Mister, we could use a man like Ronald Reagan again!
Project 2025, the same old libertarian anarchism, but this season turning the whole executive branch into an All in the Family Tammany. What am I bid, friends? Loot and scoot!
Looking forward to it. Sympathetic too. Folks will need the extra coin as reserve currency presidents become personae non grata. And credit where due. It will be no small thanks to all this hard work for easy money.
I would think you should get and store your non-right wing/ usa fascist information early and safely onto a computer that is not connected to the internet. My friend’s grandfather, a ex-WW1 German soldier, was being shipped off to a concentration camp because he had torn down a Nazi flag from his house prior to WW2. While he was saved by the town’s mayor, any sign that you hold anti US fascist views will get you to somewhere you don’t want to be.
The Democrats have cried wolf far too many times for me to get worked up about “Project 2025.” See “Russian Election Interference” hoax for one.
Seriously, what did Trump actually do in office last time? He cut taxes for the wealthy and appointed federalist society judges. Standard Republican fare.
Unfortunately, the Dems have nothing but fearmongering to run on so this is what they do. (Not to mention impeaching Trump twice for I’m not even sure what while war criminal W is still walking around free as an elder statesman.) Dem nonsense has no credibility anymore.
He also did a better job at handling the pandemic than Biden. Admittedly not a high bar to clear, but cleared nonetheless.
Dare I say “Hand maid’s tale’ here we come!
Common Dreams poses as a leftist media outlet situated outside and “trying to move the party to the left”. But it’s nothing but a party-aligned sheepdog operation and never has been anything else. I stopped reading it years ago, probably after the 2016 “election”.
But it’s a great source if you want a sense of what Karens hyperventilating sounds like.
Perhaps the old version of the left has been rounded up by sheepdogs into a vealpen version. Taibbi talks about how optimistic he was covering Obama the candidate and how disillusioned by the subsequent President who sought to comfort the comfortable rather than afflict them. ID pol has been used to flush out all the commie remnants. With no historical inevitability lefties were told to think small.
Meanwhile Phoenix is 113 today and thousands are still dying on the other side of the world. We need a new Roosevelt dedicated to practical solutions rather than fading ideology that neither side still believes in. Our founders were practical people. They called it the Age of Reason. Later Franklin said “nothing to fear but fear itself.”
The Dems are definitely the party of a Franklin. Except it’s Franklin Pierce, not Roosevelt.
1. There was never “democracy” in the US. Before the frontire closed, there was this release valve that provided for some hoi polloi to appropriate indian occupied territories. Then the noose started to tighten. Remember that strike when Rockefeller’s goons machined gunned entire families?
2. Great Depression happened on similar rules that are revived today and only WWII and some bones thrown to hoi polloi, as well as total destruction of the rest of industrialized world put US ahead of everyone else.
3. While 1950s to 1980s are fondly remembered in the US, it was just a blip that the Trilateral commission swore to deflate and revert to the “historical” mean: out and out, unconstrained oligarchic system (masquerading as a democracy).
4. Presently there are two main factions of the oligarchy vying for power-their Overtone window is also constrained by the two party system- both swearing to iron fence the security and military apparatus, because both need uncostrained world reach: cannot give up on that, because all demons will then come back home and the game will be up and it will be very messy – good for the world that will be protected by two oceans from the US madness; too bad that Canada and Mexico are still too far away from God, for their safety.
To be honest, fascism, or whatever you want to call it, sounds so much more coherent than what we’re likely actually going to get. Watch as Trump’s second term is exactly like the first: four years of directionless flailing, with the real lasting legacies being more deregulation and conservative judicial appointments (which Democrats will quietly vote for).
Conservative ideologues might have grand visions of using Trump as the vehicle for sweeping change, but watch as this quickly starts to implode because Trump has few if any consistent principles, and is incredibly petty and starts firing these guys over strange personal beefs.
Round up the Heritage group and send them to Gitmo.
In my opinion this article vastly underestimates the abyss that we are facing–the realization that we are presently living under the most powerful totalitarian system that has ever existed.
The key question is not some antiquated and largely irrelevant debate about right and left responsibility but rather about how we can individually find the strength to resist.
The Heritage Foundation is one of the many ‘helpful’ think tanks in the Atlas Network:
https://atlas-legacy.s3.amazonaws.com/partners/global-directory/united-states/2.html
The Heritage Foundation is one of several hundred Neoliberal think tanks spanning the globe and spreading the doctrines and economic bounties of Neoliberalism. We owe so much of our present Civilization and Society to the efforts of the Atlas network and its affiliates. They are not fascist unless you think of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile as fascist.
The Heritage Foundation’s interest in Trump does raise one puzzle: Trump’s seeming war against the CIA and the CIA’s ties with the Democratic Party seem at odds with the CIA’s past ‘support’ for Pinochet. Current politics is becoming so confusing.
To paraphrase a sentence from a short novel from the middle of the last century from a slightly different context:
Looking from outside and scanning from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; it has become impossible to say which is which.
We have the Fraser Institute and the MEI (Montreal Economic Institute) up here in Canada — they are reliably wrong about everything.
My take-a-way from the debate is that everyone needs to work on their golf game.
As a non American I cannot understand US politics:
1. How anyone with a heart or half a brain could vote for an amoral, narcissistic, sociopathic liar like Trump,
2. How the DNC cannot come up with a better presidential candidate than a senile hack like Biden,
3. Why US citizens tolerate a totally corrupt, blatantly political Supreme Court.
4. Why self proclaimed Christians could vote for Trump.
The US is morally and financially heading down the gurgler at an ever increasing rate – the problem is that what happens in the US effects the rest of the world, something which self absorbed US voters either don’t understand, or simply don’t care about.
Better all start learning Mandarin and boning up on your Xi “thought.”
The future may be Chinese dominated, but it’ll never be linguistically Chinese. The language, more specifically the writing system, simply sucks too much.
Question for Yves. Call me ignorant if you like, but it seems to me, given that the US
dollar is the world’s ‘safest currency’ that if genuine revolution and chaos broke out
post 2024 election, many nations and corporations would want to pull out their assets,
causing perhaps massive weakness in out currency. The meme has always been
that the Republicans are driven by the needs and wealth of the 1%. Why would they
risk massive loss of wealth for the sake of a terrible internal conflict?
Also, what types of specific risks and their consequences are we potentially talking about?
Thank You
May I?
We’re the third most populous country and a top-three economy on the planet. As bad as Wall Street corruption is, it’s still less subject to government whim than China. Yves has writ multiple times on this, check the archives.
What we are/will have is civil unrest, which Turchin gives a mortality rate of 0.3%, which is about Covid level and is normalized. Mortality is unevenly distributed. The US is enormous, diverse, and will have pockets of stability larger than most nations.
Strong corporations have money for regulatory capture. Weak ones are stripped by private equity. All part of the oikosystem.
I guess we’re on to the next ‘Big Reveal’, wherein POTUS is directly threatened
by his 1% donor class to remove himself from the race. Never in my my lifetime
has the phrase ‘Naked Capitalism’ seemed more apropos.
I recall a line from one of the Star Wars movies- “So this is how Democracy ends-
with applause.” Oh, the Humanity!
“As bad as Wall Street corruption is, it’s still less subject to government whim than China…”
What a fascinating comment, on the need for a financial system that is unchecked by government rather than being regulated by government. Still, China has been managing the financial system in favor of tangible production for these 45 years of stunning general growth. American manufacturing productivity in contrast has ceased growing these last 12 years.
According to Trump (via his Truth Social account) on Friday, July 5:
“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it,” he said. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”
Knows NOTHING. No IDEA.
If Trump knows “nothing about” Project 2025, then how is he able to “disagree with some of the things they’re saying” and that ” some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal”? The only way he can “disagree with some of the things” is if he knows what “some of the things” are. And how can he know what “some of the things are” if he knows “nothing about” Project 2025?
The sentence self-contradicts itself. It is just more bullshitting by Donald Trump.
I agree! That was my point. Forgot to end my post with, /s. He’s a back-peddling idiot.
From the “People” section of a Presidential platform:
https://www.jillstein2024.com/platform
All i know is that when Virginia finally put some Dems in, they legalized weed (one of the few DSA candidates, actually, almost single-handedly), and expanded medicaid.
And I would have had the last few thousand of my student loans forgiven if not for some a**hole republicans that sued the Biden admin to stop it.
Biden and Trump are both old and both suck really badly. But Trump hasn’t been able to put together a coherent sentence since well before his first term. I don’t really give a shit if Biden’s in a coma, if Lina Kahn stays in at the FTC that’s what I’m voting for.
I mean, the fact that the media and even many commenters here talk about donald trump like he has any idea about anything. the guy doesn’t read, doesn’t learn, doesn’t care, and says whatever the people in front of his face want to hear if he’s being managed. and if not, he does whatever satisfies his sociopathic sadism. that’s what he thinks about in his spare time, who pissed him off and how bad he’s gonna make them “experience some things.”
I mean, the most impressive thing that he did in his first term was not learn a single actual thing about governing or international relations or the economy. I don’t care if he does believe in the exact opposite of everything currently considered doctrine, but he has to understand that in order for it to be true, otherwise he’s just a dumbass that got elected ‘cuz rich people spent a shit ton of money.
Come on, I actually saved the ONE PAGE analysis that his treasury dept did under steve mnuchin regarding his tax cuts, where one whole paragraph is telling the actual smart people at the CRS how they’re wrong. I’m not an economist, not even well informed when it comes to international finance or gov finance or anything . . . but it’s insulting that these folks are pulling salaries and are afforded respect and power of position and then proceed to essentially spit on the common citizen with some slapped together BS.
If folks are accelerationists that’s cool. if not, whatever. but if i’m getting screwed 100% by republicans and 99% by democrats, unless someone has a compelling reason why I shouldn’t get that 1%, and i only have two choices, as a pragmatist i’m gonna pull the d lever and not the r.