We know that the press and other news media have done their best to normalize the behavior of the Republican Party and to act as if they have policies. The party of billionaires has no policies, just like they had no platform in the last Presidential election.
What they do have is an agenda. You can read all about this agenda—dubbed Project 2025—on the Heritage Foundation web site. They don’t keep it a secret. They plan for the Republican Party to take over the government—permanently. And if you don’t believe they can do it, you’re in denial, because they are already on their way.
Project 2025 clocks in at a lot of words, though, designed to weary the reader into giving up. But here’s how I see it.
Sailing on the SS Moneybags
The GOP’s billionaires, who already own most of the wealth in this country, occupy an ocean liner on which they sail in comfort and luxury. The rest of us have been pushed off the ship into the water. The fat cats on the SS Moneybags have no empathy, no sympathy, and no concern for the people in the water, whom they deem expendable.
They don’t throw out life preservers, much less boats. They don’t care if we have food, water, or any way to survive. We watch them sail away, catching drifts of orchestra music and the scents of dinner, while we float in their wake. Some of us manage to tread water. Some of us sink. The sharks are circling.
A rescue ship is heading our way but the billionaires man the guns on the SS Moneybags and load the torpedoes. They don’t intend to let anyone interfere with their cushy lives and will do anything to keep things the way they are.
Visualizing the Future
Now, I both read and write science fiction. We science fiction people think about the future, not the past, and we speculate what that future might be like under different scenarios. Many have written about futures like this one but it’s surreal to see it happening around us and possibly getting worse. Meanwhile, most Americans go about their days oblivious to the real threat.
Even so, the billionaires know that what they intend to do will be unpopular with those of us who don’t have a net worth of the 10-figures and up, mostly up. After all, the United States has 737 billionaires with a combined wealth of more than $5.5 trillion. As Heather Cox Richardson says:
“But the system never worked as promised. Instead, during that 40-year period, Republicans passed massive tax cuts under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump, and slashed regulations. A new interpretation of antitrust laws articulated by Robert Bork in the 1980s permitted dramatic consolidation of corporations, while membership in labor unions declined. The result was that as much as $50 trillion moved upward from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.”
They know that rigging the tax code, as they have done for decades, makes us angry. Also, they probably understand that taking advantage of services like fire, police, roads, water, natural gas, and other utilities without paying for them is theft but, hey, that’s of no concern to them. All that matters is that they get to live their privileged lives while foisting the bill onto the middle and lower classes.
The Kindness of Billionaires
As for us, we will have to depend on the kindness of billionaires (a rare commodity) to survive. The fortunate will have jobs providing the billionaires with what they need: clean houses, manicured grounds, gourmet food, well-maintained cars and airplanes and computers, professional security, etc. You know: the staff. The billionaires will also need workers for their businesses and factories, to be paid at whatever rate the wealthy deem fair. No unions allowed.
It sounds good and it looks good—for them. The problem, of course, is that they can’t sustain this economic model indefinitely.
An Unsustainable Economy
Their businesses and factories might produce goods and services, but fewer and fewer ordinary folks will be able to afford them. New cars will grow dusty in showrooms while workers drive old beaters as little as possible to conserve gasoline. Restaurants will go out of business.
Homes will linger on the market for years while the unprivileged classes live crammed into small, overpriced apartments, as they do in third-world countries. Home appliances will lose their markets. Travel will shrink to a trickle because no one can afford the air fare and we have no national rail grid as Europe does.
Are you getting the picture?
Safe Houses and Wine Cellars
Many of the uber-wealthy have already created safe houses, where they can retreat and live unbothered by the torch-and-pitchfork crowd. Oh, they may have to let go of some of what The Wall Street Journal calls their “portfolio of homes” but that’s a small price to pay for safety.
At some point, however, they will have to replenish their wine cellars and supplies of single-malt Scotch. They will want fresh steaks and seafood. The caviar and champagne will run out. Then they will need a workable supply chain to deliver their supplies. That might not exist any more. Not to worry: they will use private jets flying into private air fields to carry in their goodies.
Billionaires Needing Protection
We do foresee one little bitty problem with that, however. This is not the Middle Ages. The American people now have better armaments than torches and pitchforks. Thanks to the gun manufacturers and their tame legislators at state and federal levels, America is a heavily armed country. Eventually those who have bought weapons to defend themselves against the federal government and the “intellectual elites” will figure out that their real enemy is the family in the gated compound with 24-hour security.
Will the U.S. Army protect the billionaires? No doubt their bought-and-paid-for government will activate the armed forces to keep their own salaries coming. But the army is made up of ordinary Americans; men and women who have families back home and those families will not be doing well.
Deposing the Ruling Class
What happens then? I think of the Iraqis breaking down the walls of Saddam Hussein’s palace and seeing for the first time the luxury in which he lived. Or the Ukrainians ousting their president, Viktor Yanukovych, and discovering the palace paid for with their money. The Romanians put Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife up against a wall and shot them.
If America’s billionaires were as smart as they think they are, they would stop enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else. Instead, they would start using their money to improve the country. Jeff Bezos could probably build a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles train out of Amazon’s petty cash. That’s among the things I would do if I were a billionaire.
It appears, however, that greed trumps common sense. Thus, the SS Moneybags sails on. The corrupt legislators and Supreme Court Justices grab as much as they can while the grabbing is good. And the rest of us struggle to take our country back.
Will we succeed? Ask me in November.
