Classic books are viewed as those that provide a message that is true for any time period under any circumstances. A classic written by Sinclair Lewis nearly 100 years ago remains true to this day. Reading his, “It Can’t Happen Here” is as valuable today for its message as it was when first written. It is time to re revisit it. What is “It”?
I recently received this article via the Chippewa County Democrats, written by Jim Hightower, Deanna Zandt, and Laura Ehrlich, about Project 2025.
We’ve seen a ton of social media posts and emails in the last week or so about Project 2025, and although we’re still working on a fuller analysis to give you the lowdown on what it means to you, as well as tools to fight it, we felt it was urgent to get some solid info into Lowdowner’s hands as soon as we could. Y’all are quite the army of activists (we see the results when you take action!) and we know that if we offer up the goods, you can take them and run with them.
Here’s our brief primer on what this mess is, what’s at stake, and what you can start to do.
What is it?
If you don’t know what Project 2025 is, or would like a brief summary to use to alert others about it, here you go:
It’s a painstakingly detailed, 922-page step-by-step plan to impose an American dictatorship of moneyed authoritarians and Christian nationalists, removing your and my democratic rights. Yes, this is an actual coup.
It sounds insane, yet there it is—a document written and being loudly promoted by a power-mad cluster of Trump bosses, Putin-esque despots, Reagan-loving economists and Ayn Rand-ian academics, moneyed corporate donors, and general far-right quacks and media blowhards. It’s innocuously coded “Project 2025” because the intent is to launch their full assault on the democratic fabric and structure of our national government next January, on Day 1 of another Trump presidency.
This scheme has been devised by The Heritage Foundation, a DC think tank set up in 1973 to promote the elitist economic and cultural doctrines of its über-rich founding funders, Joseph Coors (yes, that Coors) and Richard Mellon Scaife (yes, that Mellon). In recent years, Heritage has gone from merely being right-wing zealots to off-the-charts Trumpists… and now they’re going deep into the distant extremist cosmos. Thus, the head cosmonaut, Kevin Roberts, has megalomaniacally exulted that Project 2025 is “the second American revolution.” Unfortunately, it’s a dangerous devolution, with little tin-hat Kevin acting out what he pretends is a heroic coup.
This would be silly and inconsequential, except the Trump Party has become alarmingly treacherous. Ominously referencing the January 6th violent assault on democratic rule, Kevin said that his coup “will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.” Of course, “the left”—i.e., sane democracy fighters like you and me—do not acquiesce to tyrannical wannabes.
But his ace is that The Donald, despite his denials, has hailed Heritage’s authoritarian agenda as his own and has cheered its plan to fire thousands of public employees on Day 1, replacing them with a lockstep army of enforcers that Heritage and others say they’ve already recruited to seize and Trump-ize every federal agency. This, combined with Trump’s own pledge to use the US military to enforce his political will, is where Project 2025’s subversive coup gets real.
Here are just a few of the steps we’ve learned so far that Heritage autocrats intend to implement:
- Nearly eliminating abortion access altogether at the national level.
- Cutting Social Security benefits.
- Giving ever-more tax breaks to corporations and gabillionaires.
- Selling off national parklands, wetlands, wildlife sanctuaries and other public properties
- Eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS).
- Imposing a “biblically-based” definition of marriage and families.
- Eliminating the Department of Education.
- Preventing LGBTQ+ couples from adopting children.
- Eliminating the food stamp program (SNAP) and the free school lunch program.
- Putting the Department of Justice and other independent agencies under the direct political control of the President.
- Eliminating organic food promotion, conservation programs, and most climate policies of the Agriculture Department
For more in depth reading, check out this series from the Center for American Progress.
Why is this different from previous right-wing agendas?
One, they were piecemeal proposals, like Bush the Second’s failed attack on Social Security, or they were just sloganeering war whoops, like Grover Norquist’s empty call to make government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.
Two, Project 2025 is a comprehensive, all-in-one blueprint for a radical plutocratic and theocratic takeover of our government, surreptitiously advanced by many of the same anti-democracy corporate supremacists and billionaires who’ve already seized control of the judicial branch.
Three, the Republican Party is perfectly willing to submit to and grovel at the feet of moneyed extremists, media demagoguery, and political thuggery—even in support of stupid, poisonous policies the American people overwhelmingly reject.
Four: Donald.
What can I do?
Right now, the most important thing you can do is to tell your friends and family about this terrifying agenda. Right-wingers are currently attacking the media reporting on this, calling progressives and even moderates who oppose the coup “Chicken Little”-types, trying to minimize this elitist assault on America itself. We cannot let them.
The most important people to share it with are not your super conservative relatives that drive you nuts, but rather people who may be feeling ambiguous about voting for a Democrat (whoever that is ends up being) for President. You’re not going to change the people who’ve already gone over to the crazies, but you have a chance at inspiring more undecided voters to at least vote against an explicitly un-American, Christian Nationalist, fascist ideology.