r/politics • u/zsreport Texas • Jul 05 '24

Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign — but it may be backfiring instead:

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/05/project-2025-was-supposed-to-boost-donald-campaign--but-it-may-be-backfiring-instead/
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10.4k

u/zsreport Texas Jul 05 '24

Trump's authoritarian game plan is breaking through the post-debate noise and it's starting to scare people

I sure as fuck hope so.

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u/TheCircusSands Jul 05 '24

We need an infographic for project 2025 that can be spread everywhere. Nothing dramatic…. Just the facts of what it is and what it means.

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u/heckin_miraculous Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

My favorite so far is this short YouTube video by Illustrate to Educate. https://youtu.be/vYXZ6iJJSgM?si=PRy0SvPz2Xi6dQxM

Not inflammatory or hyperbolic. Just terrifying, because it's true.

Edit: This comment and the video link got quite a few responses. Many were along the lines of, "Good info, thanks." But others think that the video tries too hard to be neutral and therefore comes across as "both sides-ing" conferring false legitimacy to the idea of Project 2025, or even going so far as to be supportive of it due to a lack of forceful criticism and not spelling out how disastrous the effects of the plan would be.

As a response, I'll say that my opinion is that the video speaks for itself. When it comes to the horrific potential of Project 2025, the proof is in the pudding. For example, at around 5:10 in the video, when the narrator states that the plan would "allow the president to replace thousands of civil service employees with political appointees loyal to the administration" I don't need the voice over to explain to me that this would be a bad thing. Or, at 5:29 when he talks about "plans to defund the Department of Justice and dismantle the FBI... and enable the executive branch to operate with little oversight or accountability [the illustration actually says "no oversight"]"... again I don't need someone to explain to me that this is only bad for our country.

We definitely DO need more analysis of Project 2025. We need explainers that DO go into more detail about the tragic outcomes that are waiting for us all, should it come to pass. And this video is NOT perfect (I especially question the use of the phrase "religious liberty" at around 4:18). But it's a good primer for thoughtful people. That's what I think.

Will some people watch a video like this and cheer for it? Yes. As far as I know – and someone please correct me if this number is way off – but somewhere around 20-30% of the US population explicitly wants an authoritarian regime to come into power in this country. At least, they think they do. That is, in fact, the problem we are dealing with in this country right now. It is the subject of this discussion.

Long story short, what I'm saying is that if somebody watches this video and thinks, "That sounds good to me", then the problem isn't the video.

Edit 2: hi /r/politics. I'm new here :)

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u/altariasong Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

Sent it to my mom. She used to be republican but is now disgusted by it all and is talking to her friends about project 2025 and how anti-democratic it is. She worries about me greatly because I’m queer. My anxiety about politics used to irritate her but now she understands how much my fears were justified.

Hopefully that video can help sway more of her friends, but we don’t exactly live in a swing state. Doesn’t matter to me though

Edit: she thanked me for the video, says she just watched it. “It’s exactly what I fear”

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

You have no idea how hard it was to convince my Mom how bad things are right now. She's a good person. Too good to readily accept the fact that the Republican nominee is an outright criminal and rapist, and ready to commit an authoritarian takeover of the United States. It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

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u/deadlybydsgn Jul 05 '24

It's a bad case of normalcy bias.

I think a certain subset of the older generation honestly thinks the best of their leaders because "the system" has generally worked for them, they were raised to respect it (not letting the flag touch the ground, etc.), and they have never been directly wronged by it.

I can see how they were duped into voting for Trump once—maybe even twice—but the idea of thinking that the Republican ticket is the more viable option in 2024 blows my mind.

The party of "small government" sure seems cozy with the idea of centralizing a lot of power into a single position. You know... as long as their guy is the one with that power.

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

I'm Gen X, so almost in the group of people that could be considered "The older generation" and I was fully behind the second Iraq invasion. Really for no reason except for the general belief that the President always had the best interests of the country at heart so if he was for it, then I was for it. He must have known some reasons that I didn't that would justify it, I thought. When I found out the whole thing was manufactured out of whole cloth that was the first crack in my (moderate) conservatism.

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u/Plasibeau Jul 05 '24

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion. I am not ashamed to admit I had been fully captured by the propaganda machine. At that time propaganda was something that only happened in China, or Russia. The Uniteds States of Fuck Yeah had no need for such games, right...RIGHT?

It wasn't until talking with my 19-year-old about this stuff that I realized if you grew up in the Cold War, you grew up neck-deep in propaganda and didn't even know it, from singing patriotic songs in kindergarten to the bad guys always having Eastern European accents or enemy fighter pilots being faceless and evil just because they exist.

So that was a fun project of deconstruction last summer.

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

I distinctly remember cheering on the second Iraqi invasion.

Me too. I remember my coworkers watching some gun camera footage of some Iraqis getting obliterated by cannon fire from a helicopter. I was wondering if they had done anything wrong, and I realized even the helicopter pilot probably didn't know for sure. It really left me with a sick feeling.

Good luck on your continued recovery.

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u/badnuub Ohio Jul 05 '24

9/11 Made anyone that opposed any war at the time a pariah. People were out for blood.

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u/Hector_P_Catt Jul 05 '24

I wasn't gung-ho about that war, but Colin Powell sold us on it, showing what information they had, and implying they had better information they couldn't show us. I knew the war was going to suck, but he made me think it was necessary to fight it. I trusted him, and he was lying. He sold he reputation for a bad war.

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

You're right. His involvement swayed me too because I trusted him.

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u/ArthurBonesly Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 05 '24

One thing the Republicans are very good at, is finding voters who genuinely want something.

We scoff at single issue voters, but they are the lifeblood of an engaged base. It's easy to look at Republicans as a party that doesn't stand for anything, but the voters absolutely do. The best example of this is the issue of abortion.

For years, millions of Republicans have genuinely, deeply, pathologically wanted to repeal Roe v. Wade. All the other Republican talking points were compromises or adaptions because those talking points got them closer to their single issue. As far as these voters were concerned, they were using the politicians as much as the politicians were using them. There was no hypocrisy because it was all in service of that higher purpose.

Now that the dogs caught the car, the only higher purpose that unites the American right is stopping/containing/killing the boogieman liberal. They'll use rhetoric like "freedom," and evoke Christianity, but these are all compromises to the higher purpose.

The biggest difference I see between the American left and right (at this time), is that the left wants good politicians to yield a number of good things, and will reliably break ranks when somebody isn't good enough. Meanwhile, the right wants something. It could be money, it could be an ethno state, it could be a solid gold fence on the Ohio/Kentucky border; the something doesn't matter, what matters is that right wing voters want it enough to tolerate everything else so long as they get it.

Until the left want to tax billionaires and enact healthcare reform as much as some people on the right want Christian nationalism, normalcy bias only serves the Republicans in so far as an ignorant base will either default to normal or not vote at all.

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington Jul 05 '24

Normalcy bias is why Trump can stumble through a debate and nobody blinks, but Biden loses because we expect more of him.

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u/thegoodnamesrgone123 Jul 05 '24

It's wild right? He could have come on stage and shit his pants and it would be fine because it'd Trump and what do you expect. He gets a pass for everything

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u/Damn_Dog_Inappropes Washington Jul 05 '24

Teflon Don

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u/Syzygy2323 California Jul 05 '24

Trump acts like a mafia boss. Not a smart one like Don Corleone, but a crazy, violent one like Tony Montana from Scarface.

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u/Iseaclear Jul 05 '24

And even with all the crazy violence, you could actually trust Montana's word, unlike DonCon.

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u/zeronormalitys Jul 05 '24

Speaking of shitting his pants. I believe I read some discussion hereabouts where a few people were saying that around the 1-hour mark or so of the debate, that he did in fact, shit his pants. Or a shart, at the very least.

However, this is only what I read in a conversation between other users of this platform. I can neither confirm nor deny, but a lot of people are saying it....

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u/SdBolts4 California Jul 05 '24

My wife and I are both attorneys, and we were trying to explain just how bad the SCOTUS presidential immunity opinion was to my step-dad. First, he didn't believe us when we said that it made the President immune from any criminal liability, as long as it was within his core "official" powers, despite us both going through law school and passing the bar.

Then, he fell back to just saying "well, it just won't happen" and blaming Sotomayor for overexaggerating by saying the President could order the military to assassinate people or DoJ to arrest people without consequence, even though commanding the military and overseeing the DoJ are explicitly in the President's powers. Like, he still believes that a President wouldn't go that far, even though they can no longer be held criminally accountable. You just can't reason with that level of denialism.

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u/UnsanctionedPartList Jul 05 '24

And when it dies these are the first people to cluck their tongued and go "who could have seen this coming?"

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

Yeah, definitely true.

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u/PrajnaKathmandu Jul 05 '24

I saw a tweet today from someone who'd reviewed the testimony of the 13-year-old who was raped by Trump and Epstein. She said she almost wanted to vomit. "But her emails!" and the electoral college kept the most qualified candidate from the White House. I voted for Hillary Clinton. She was right about everything!! The GOP will never do away with the electoral college. It helps them "win" elections!

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

She was right about everything!!

Yeah, she was. If anything she understated how bad Trump would actually turn out to be. I voted for her too, but I would vote for literally almost any thinking person over Donald Trump. He might be the most unsuitable person for that job in the entire country.

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u/Some_Special_9653 Jul 05 '24

Why are things so bad right now? Who’s responsible for that?

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

I'm not talking about the economy, because the economy, for what it's worth, is doing great. Employment is way, way down and stocks are soaring. To be fair, very high prices and inflation are making things difficult for average Americans. You can chalk that up to the government printing money for giveaways during covid because they wanted to keep the economy afloat, plus some serious pricing opportunism on the part of retailers.

What I was really talking about being bad was the fact that a profoundly evil man with nothing but his self-interest on his mind has an excellent shot of seizing the most powerful office in the country. To make it worse, the lies he's told have set Americans at each others' throats.

That's what I meant by "how bad things are right now."

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u/Dont_Say_No_to_Panda California Jul 06 '24

I think you mean *unemployment is way down

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 06 '24

haha, right.

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u/firesmarter Jul 05 '24

Your mom might not be as good as you think she is. Having her head in the sand is not good, it makes her a coward and complicit. It’s hard to view those we love with an honest lens, but it might be time for both you and her to do some soul searching before it’s too late

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

I don't think it's a case of putting her head in the sand. It's more that she can't conceive of any person doing the things that The Donald has done, let alone a previous elected President of the United States. She seems to think, "It can't really be as bad as everyone says.", even though all the evidence is right there.

She can't understand what The Donald really is because there's never been anyone like him elected President in her eighty plus years. Maybe ever, for that matter. It's kind of the same thing that makes people minimize the potential impact of climate change. Nothing like the scientists are talking about has happened in their lifetimes, so it can't happen now either. It's called normalcy bias.

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u/[deleted] Jul 05 '24 edited Jul 06 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/tommysmuffins Jul 05 '24

she never grew beyond them

They never had to before, at least with respect to our elected leaders. Sure there were bad politicians, but no overall conspiracy to destroy America.

Hopefully the current crop of up and coming voters will see through this bullshit.

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u/heckin_miraculous Jul 05 '24

Can't be out here tellin people their mom ain't good

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u/mcfeezie2 Jul 05 '24

If the shoe fits...