The Threats Posed By Trump Aren't New and They Didn't Start With Him...But They Are Real & Horrid

Project 2025 is part of a very long authoritarian response to progress that must be stopped or at least rebuffed

I was so glad to see this piece by David Sirota in The Guardian this morning. Sirota beautifully covers an important topic that is too often overlooked or deliberately obfuscated: Project 2025 is not new and Trump is just the latest useful stooge for a larger and far more nefarious agenda.

For years now political punditry, even on the left, has largely cleansed the legacy of Ronald Reagan. We see frequent comparisons between Trump and Reagan where Trump is denigrated and Reagan held up as the presidential equivalent to the “shining city on a hill” he often spoke of America being. This rosy look at The Gipper and the movement that made him a two-term President misses the thorns.

If you’re not familiar with what is referred to as the “Powell Memo” of 1971, you should be. In addition to the linked Sirota piece above, I recommend this reading list to familiarize yourself with the framework for which this memo was a cornerstone:

Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America by Nancy MacLean

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naoi Oreskes and Erik Conway

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

What these reads reveal so well and so thoroughly is over 50 years of right-wing authoritarian backlash to the New Deal, Great Society, and virtually all of the environmental, labor, consumer, public health, and sociocultural and economic (i.e. sexual revolution, civil rights era racial & ethnic, LGBTQIA+, class, freedom from religion, and antiwar) progress made from the 1930s on.

We have some new phrases and acronyms now like “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI)” or “Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG),” but I summarize these ideas and efforts as social justice and its pursuit. So-called “conservatives” are adamantly opposed to the pursuit of social justice and that’s as true in 2024 as it was in 1980 with the election of Reagan. There’s a false narrative that 20th Century and modern conservatism are and have been based on principles like “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” That’s not at all what conservatism since the early 1900s has been about at its core.

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

Democracy is very inconvenient for authoritarians (the accurate adjective for those who are mistakenly referred to as “conservatives”). When a political system begins to actually respond to movements, like during the fallout of the Great Depression or with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 65, respectively, the authoritarian right cannot tolerate this. Successful social justice initiatives will inevitably lead to those freed from bonds of various kinds of civil and social oppression realizing that their heaviest chains are their CLASS chains. Class warfare scares the authoritarians more than anything.

The driving force of authoritarian power structures like white supremacy or white Christian theocracy is CAPITALISM. The moment the underclasses of society realize that enormous wealth and income inequality is a feature and not a failure of the system as designed, woe unto those cutting miniscule slivers out of the pie to toss to the masses and running off with almost the whole thing.

This is why the red scare was orchestrated following both the Bolshevik Revolution and the end of WWII and this is why we still hear Republicans at all levels of government using words like “Marxist,” “Socialist,” “Communist,” “Moral Relativist,” or “Darwinian” to describe anything remotely communally-driven or egalitarian. Hyper-individualism, selfishness, and greed are what enable their hierarchical power structure with the “right” people at the top.

You may be asking at this point why 200 former Republican staffers decided to publicly back Kamala Harris for President. You have to understand, these are bookies in expensive clothes. Trump’s got too much baggage. All of those indictments, including 34 felony convictions, and all of that financial trouble (i.e. having to be bonded on close to half-a-billion dollars in civil fraud and sex abuse penalties) are not well received by strong majorities of the public nationwide. Plus Trump and his ilk are always adding to the list of issues his campaign must contend with.

These party insiders don’t want to risk backing a loser (again). They know they can’t just dump him because he’s turned virtually the entire GOP base into a MAGA cult of frothy-mouthed, potentially violent worshippers, but they don’t risk much by backing Harris whether he wins or loses. These are mostly neocons who feel quite comfortable that, even if Harris were to revert back to her more progressive self from her first presidential bid in 2019-2020, she won’t have the Democratic congressional majorities or executive wherewithal to stymie the military industrial complex or threaten U.S. global hegemony (to the extent that she doesn’t gleefully fuel it, a real risk given her DNC speech reference to “the world’s most lethal fighting force”).

Would they get the toxic masculine warmongers they really want with Trump and Vance? Absolutely. But the first woman Commander-in-Chief hellbent on denying the patriarchy the satisfaction of calling her soft will do. Besides, Vance’s for-profit exploitation of an Appalachia that mostly rejects him and his very odd obsession with and contempt for women who don’t breed makes him yet another Trump liability. Back the woman of color and you’re more apt to keep your broader agenda moving forward.

None of this, however, changes the fact that a second Trump term would bring to life authoritarian fantasies in ways I don’t think most of us can begin to comprehend, especially if coupled with Republican congressional majorities. While nothing new, Project 2025 is a dire threat, and Trump is inextricably linked and willfully beholden to it. This is the golden opportunity for the mind-numbingly complex web of right-wing think tanks, legal groups, nonprofits and more, funded by the oligarchy with untold sums of dark money, to realize their vision as never before.

Would I prefer to vote for Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia on the Party for Socialism & Liberation ticket? Absolutely, it would be wonderful to cast that vote (if they were even going to appear on my ballot or be considered a valid write-in). But I will cast my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on the Democratic Party ticket, even in insignificant West Virginia, because I cannot live with the idea that I may, even indirectly, have contributed to this country becoming a Heritage Foundation dream come true.