Hyperbole & Hysterics? I Wish
Hyperbole & Hysterics? I Wish
What's at stake if Trump-led Republicans ascend in '24
Rep. Jared Huffman, Chairman of the Democratic Freethought Caucus, is leading an effort in the U.S. House of Representatives that is of the upmost important to any semblance of democracy the United States has ever known. The Stop Project 2025 Task Force includes Rep. Ted Lieu, Vice-Chairman of the House Democratic Caucus; Nanette Barragán, Chairwoman of the Hispanic Caucus; Judy Chu, Chairwoman of the Equality Caucus and Labor Caucus; Diana DeGette, Co-Chairwoman of the Pro-Choice Caucus; Jamie Raskin, Co-Chairman of the Freethought Caucus and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee; and Pramila Jayapal, Chairwoman of the Progressive Caucus. Rep. Ayanna Pressley has also joined, among others.
Rep. Huffman explained the objectives of the Task Force recently as follows:
“It’s a two-part objective. One is to help the American people understand that this is real and that it’s coming, because if they do understand, I think they’re going to want no part of it. The second part is, in the unthinkable, if Trump somehow manages to win, we’re not going to have the luxury of time. If we’re reacting to these things as they’re rolling out, or in any way caught off-guard, we’re going to lose, so we’ve got to be ready to call it out and fight it in real time, and that means we need to really understand it now.”
The BBC recently offered short and succinct reporting overviewing the approximately 900-page Heritage Foundation document known as Project 2025. The document is an authoritarian fever dream, a fact that no one at Heritage or anyone endorsing it really denies. There are no attempts at clever disguises here, no couching ideas in more acceptable language for broader audiences or trying to appeal to better angels. It’s as blatant as it is inhuman; as patently absurd as it is deadly serious.
The plan would give POTUS despotic powers over a huge portion of the federal government, subjecting a majority of the civil service to Trump’s whim. It would allow Trump to seek revenge via the Executive Office of the President against his political opponents and any and all perceived enemies using his cabinet and executive powers. Anyone seeking refuge or asylum at the southern border of the U.S. and any undocumented migrants within the nation’s borders would be treated as subhuman pests and subjected to incarceration, internment, and/or expulsion. The official stance of the U.S. federal government, especially if Republicans were take control of both houses of Congress, would be that climate change is nonexistent and we ought to behave accordingly.
Historically and presently marginalized and oppressed persons like the 2SLGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities would face ever-greater victimhood at the hands of the state with the furtherance of their forced ostracism and subjugation to a white supremacist and homo-and-transphobic minority. Christian nationalists (the term I prefer that more accurately describes them is theocrats) would be empowered to run roughshod like never before over church/state separation, dismantling what remains of our secular order and erasing freedom both of and from religion. Dominion theology, which is at the core of today’s influential New Apostolic Reformation movement, would rule the day as the theocrats rose to power over what they call the seven pillars, or mountains, control of which they believe they must seek to hasten the return of their lord—family, religion, education, media, arts & entertainment, business, and government.
Then there’s the issue the political right never forgets, no matter how strong a majority of Americans want them to . . . abortion. Project 2025 doesn’t have too much to say here, except that they want to pull abortifacient pill mifepristone from circulation. They don’t really have to say much more because an authoritarian SCOTUS already overturned Roe v. Wade, allowing for state-level abortion bans and restrictions that have been catastrophic for pregnant persons of limited means who want to exercise their bodily autonomy by terminating a pregnancy.
The most fearsome restrictions yet to come will no doubt apply to contraceptive methods. More and more people, especially women and minors who have sexually matured, will find it difficult to lawfully obtain the best and most effective contraception, most notably drugs like Plan B that prevent implementation of zygotes on uterine walls and are misclassified by the authoritarian right as abortifacients, in contradiction of medical science. The unwanted, often unhealthy or malformed, children that result from these pregnancies forcibly carried to term will find little to no help in a world where social welfare programs have been decimated in favor of more and larger tax breaks for the wealthiest persons and entities.
I don’t want this future for my own children or for posterity or even for myself. We can’t let this dystopian vision, not unlike that depicted in the film V for Vendetta, come to pass. We must resist and be prepared for the worst should our increasingly faulty electoral system (made intentionally faulty, again by Republicans) fail and our democratic institutions crumble. I am heartened by the Stop Project 2025 Task Force and hope to see more entities like it form across our government and across the rest of our society, culture, and economy. Unfortunately, I can’t say with confidence that the Biden administration can fend this off. Biden got too cozy with authoritarianism himself in Israel to be the candidate we need in this moment.
As is so often the case in the late capitalist hellscape under which we labor in the third decade of the 21st Century, those of us capable of empathy, rationality, and mindful awareness are on our own. We must form coherent community now and be prepared for every eventuality.