For four years, I woke up every morning wondering what an unhinged, ungovernable president was going to do to our country. We survived that and for the next four years, I greeted the day without worry. Whether you liked Biden’s policies or not, at least the country would remain stable.
Now #45 has become #47 and the fear has not only returned, it’s worse. This time, the Republicans have prepared. They even wrote down what they planned to do in a second administration.
Lukewarm Reaction to Project 2025
Many people warned Americans what Project 2025 contained but the reaction was lukewarm, at best. The document, which was posted online for everyone to see, was simply too long, too complicated, too unbelievable for most Americans to contemplate.
The ones who did pay attention often slid right into denial. Number 47 fueled this denial with his own public rejection of Project 2025. He claimed not to know anything about it—a repudiation that was ludicrous on its face given that his running mate wrote the introduction. The voter reaction typically fell into several categories.
- “He doesn’t mean it.”
- “He can’t do all this.”
- “No one could possibly believe this.”
- “Checks and balances will stop it.”
- “The courts will reject it.”
More of That, Yes Please
And yada, yada, yada. As Andrew Coyne said, in the Globe and Mail:
“The candidate out on bail in four jurisdictions, the convicted fraud artist, the adjudicated rapist and serial sexual predator, the habitual bankrupt, the stooge of Vladimir Putin, the man who tried to overturn the last election and all of his creepy retinue of crooks, ideologues and lunatics: Americans took a long look at all this and said, yes please.”
No one, not the voters, not the media, not the analysts, not the pundits, predicted that the candidate would give an unelected, unqualified immigrant and daily ketamine user who is on the autism spectrum and is unaccountable to anyone, complete freedom to do whatever he wants with the United States government.
As an immigrant, Elon Musk couldn’t run for president so he simply bought one.
Few would anticipate that the members of the president’s own party would cave in over and over again, abdicating their own power and authority to accept and accelerate this arrangement. By confirming obsequious cabinet secretaries who would open the doors to confidential information, both literally and figuratively, they added their own impetus to Project 2025.
Who Cares About Project 2025?
Project 2025, with its prediction of devastating budget cuts, wholesale firings, demolition of entire bureaus, and withdrawal of social support programs did nothing to deter these voters. Many of them found immigrants and transexuals more riveting and important than our national security.
And then we had the millions of American voters who didn’t vote at all because they didn’t like either candidate. I have never understood this mindset because it means ending up with whoever others think is the better candidate. This also means putting your future in the hands of people who may not know more than you do about the government—and probably know a lot less.
It reminds me of an article I read about Cambodia, which reported that people voted for the Khmer Rouge because they decided it couldn’t be worse than what they already had/.
Implementing Project 2025
So, here we are, with #47, his unelected co-president, and his minions implementing Project 2025 as fast as they can. Forget all that gaslighting about how he didn’t know anything about it. Politico has counted 37 ways where Project 2025 has shown up in the current president’s executive orders. And the number goes up almost every day.
The good news is that executive orders don’t constitute actual laws—yet. The bad news is that it only takes three things to give them the impact and authority of actual laws:
- A captive judicial system that will support and declare legal anything this administration wants to do.
- A press that practices anticipatory obedience, bowing down to and doing the bidding of the co-presidents in the White House before they say anything.
- An administration that considers actual laws easily ignored if inconvenient.
Heading in the Wrong Direction
Unfortunately, we currently have all three in practice and trending in the wrong direction. Others connected directly to Project 2025 now serve in the administration.
Foremost among these is, of course, Vice President J.D. Vance, who wrote the introduction. The current president named Russell Vought as Director of the Office of Management and Budget, a much more powerful position than it sounds. Mr. Vought co-authored Project 2025, writing a section on expanding and transforming the executive office of the presidency.
Border Czar Tom Homan, John Ratcliffe (Nominated as head of the CIA) and Pete Hoekstra (picked for Ambassador to Canada) are listed among the dozens of Project 2025 contributors who aided in “development and writing” the roadmap to tyranny.
If you find yourself shocked every day by what is transpiring in Washington, D.C., ask yourself what you did in 2024. You may have voted against it, voted for it, or not voted at all. But Project 2025 is what we have now and what we will be living with for the next four years.
Buckle up.