We have been here before

It’s Wednesday, everyone.  ALMOST halfway to the weekend!

As pleasantly surprised as I am at how seamlessly the Biden-to-Harris transition took place, those of us who lean a little more progressive need to make sure not to take our eye off the ball.

The media has done a good job of making people aware of Project 2025, a multi-pronged effort to formalize what Donald Trump wants and plans to do if he regains the White House.  And, yes, there’s always been a lot of double talk from him about getting even with his enemies, and putting a 10% tariff on all imported products, but this project, which is nearly 1000 pages in length, goes to great detail in outlining what policies will be enacted, which ones will be changed or eliminated, departments and agencies that will either be consolidated or eliminated and become a part of the executive branch of the federal government and on and on and on.

Simply put, we will discard much of the social and economic progress we’ve made as a country if this program is implemented.  Social Security and Medicare will be GONE.  There will no longer be worker protections like OSHA or workers’ compensation or unemployment insurance or labor unions.  The highest income taxpayers and most corporations will receive—wait for it—a massive tax increase, while middle and lower-middle class citizens will pay a great deal more in federal income tax.  The Department of Education will be no more.  The Department of Justice will exist, but instead of being an independent body, it will now fall under the direct control of the White House, so that law enforcement can be used to exact revenge on political rivals and other enemies.

The aspect of this that most people have heard of without knowing very much about the rest is that there will be a “mass deportation” of people who entered this country illegally, regardless of when or how they did so.  Large camps are to be set up, people rounded up and held until they are deported.  And we’re talking about MILLIONS of people.  Oh, and that will also include everyone who is currently here under the protection of DACA, also known as the Dreamers’ Act.

So all of this nonsense that Trump and his running mate, the shape-shifting JD Vance, keep spewing in rallies and other public appearances about childless cat ladies, and electric boats and sharks and Hannibal Lecter and so on is largely cover for what they have planned.

Yesterday the leader of this effort, which has been funded and directed by the Heritage Foundation (an extreme right wing group that bills itself as a “research and educational institution whose mission is to build and promote conservative public policies”), announced he was leaving the organization, and shortly thereafter, the Trump campaign announced that they were not a part of the planning of Project 2025 and would not be implementing any of its policies.

Don’t believe it.

The title of this post, that we’ve been here before, is so prescient.  Not because I say it.  If you’re interested and have the time, listen to a podcast called Ultra, by MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.  The right dislikes her, but she’s now into season two of this series.  Within it is a detailed accounting of the Christian Nationalist movement that came into being in the 30s and still exists within the pages of Project 2025.

The most recent episode walks through a scheme by some ultra-conservative Republicans in 1956 to replace the incumbent President Dwight Eisenhower (a Republican) with Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (yes, THAT McCarthy) via the submission of alternate slates of electors, with the intent of throwing the election into the House of Representatives to resolve.

Sound familiar?

I am close enough to retirement to be really worried that the MAGA movement will succeed in putting Trump back into power and follow through on this whole scenario.  My wife is already retired.  While her Social Security benefits are not a large monthly amount, we count on that to run our household and do for our kids and their kids.  

And I cannot help but think with alarm about my five grandchildren, the eldest of whom will begin her second year of colleage soon.  What kind of a country will this be if Project 2025 becomes real and no longer a set of broad hypothetical concepts?

Coming full circle, it isn’t difficult to see why Joe Biden held on as the Democratic candidate for so long, because he felt it was important for himself, a traditional politician, to stand in the way of this movement.  Now that he came to the realization that he would have difficulty winning and the Democratic Party moved to make Vice President Harris their standard bearer, I feel better, but this is no time to exhale and stop worrying.

I apologize if I seem like an alarmist, but until the last two weeks of the 2016 campaign, I remained convinced that Donald Trump would never be elected President.  Yet he was.

So we HAVE been here before….