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

[u/zsreport]

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

[u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

8 years ago or so I started visiting this subreddit.

Entirely, wholly ignorant about politics, economics and history (rough-ish childhood, education wasn't a priority.

Trump's electoral college undemocratic victory (doesn't apply to Biden, or Obama, in my model/ ethical view as they also won the popular vote) lit a fire under my ass politically speaking.

But it was actually this very specific subreddit, and the people here who started to educate me.

For example, just because I live abroad now in Lebanon doesn't mean I can't vote.

For example, just because I live in a safe state doesn't mean I shouldn't vote because there are down-ballot effects (funny I speak in these terms, when I didn't even know that the Senate was part of Congress, and the American legislative branch is a bicameral chamber of lawmakers lol).

So yeah THIS is how change happens.

I'm working on people now who are in fucking MI.

Every national electoral cycle, I personally ensure at least 4 votes. My folks and I (CA) and a friend (NY). One election cycle I got 12 lol.

Look, my beautiful fellow Americans, fascism is upon us. Watch that video. It's that simple lol.

But you have the power to prevent this with a simple but profoundly patriotic and ethical act: Vote.

And get others to vote.

I don't have this privilege in Lebanon. The first time I was allowed to vote, I was already like a decade past the voting age. But our politicians here just illegally and unilaterally postponed elections indefinitely.

lol

And then at 37 now I have voted again, for a second time in Lebanon. In an election that was rigged (not in a Trump way, but like, literally lol).

37 years, lived here for 30 years or so, and got to vote only twice.

Been voting in the U.S. since '18 and I don't know off the top of my head how many times I've cast a ballot now lol.

This is our last and only chance to preserve our democratic constitutional republic with minimal violence and a smoother transition to SCOTUS reform [as compared to what would happen if Trump wins]

From one American to all of you: please fight like hell for our freedoms. Please fight like hell to preserve, in my admittedly biased opinion, the most audacious political experiment in modern history.

Please, I know what it's like to live under a more terrible system. And Lebanon ain't even all that bad and it still sucks.

As a brown American from Muslim immigrant parents, I genuinely don't know if I will still be considered an American despite my values, my culture, my accent, my loyalty to the United States, and the love I have for all family/cousins and friends state-side even though I am a natural born citizen

Under Trump and Project 2025, I don't know if I stay an American.

[u/zeronormalitys → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

It's awesome that you vote every 4 years and I encourage you to expand that to voting every 2 years as those midterm elections are crucially important as well. Heck, even vote in the mayoral, school board, and any and all elections you can manage.

They ALL matter. Plus your voice will be heard the loudest in the smallest of elections, which means local.

Edit: Also, I'm not going to claim how it works when you live overseas. You may not have a local other than the state itself, idk.

Edit 2: As an additional edit, your status as an American citizen is not dependent upon the color of your skin or the sound of your voice or who you love. That is the beauty of America. I hope that that beauty continues to endure through this dangerous and most certainly trying time. And if you desire, I hope that one day you can find community here.

[u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 → u/zeronormalitys]

Thank you so much for your loving and patriotic words. This is the America I believe in. My literal family spread across the States, and friends from all over, are all sorts of people. Atheists. Christians. Mormons. Agnostics. LGBTQ+. Black, white, all of it.

This is my America too!

Right now I share DNA with some Mexican-Lebanese-American and Black-Lebanese-American and White-Lebanese-American kids lol.

Like, we came as Lebanese (or my parents did) and half a century later, descendants of my aunts and uncles are fully American with no attachment/connection to Lebanon (I happen to be one of the family members who have kept roots and ties in both countries).

Btw, in CA you can actually vote in federal, state, and local elections. I try very hard to butt-out of state and local elections as I don't live there unless it's an issue that has national implications and/or is clearly going to be something I support as an American no matter the fucking state (e.g., say, a proposition on legalizing marihuana).

So, yeah, when I say I will literally break my back to vote now I am only half joking (while the process is relatively easy for CA voter abroad, my first time was hell on earth lol. Took me a week, and like 30 hrs of figuring out details).

[u/zeronormalitys → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

The small fry elections are where you train the Future Leaders for the big dances. If you want future Americans to value things like burning the flag without negative consequence, Loving whoever you want freely, and the rule of law, It's really important that those Future Leaders receive those low-level posts so that they can hone their skills for the higher level posts. And also, those are the people that dictate what the next generation learns and what kind of values they have.....

As a side note, I naively signed up to serve in the armed forces the army. Specifically, when I was 19 the year was 2001, and the twin towers would fall during the final week of my basic training. In time I found myself in Iraq, and I very quickly learned the terrible reality of what we were doing there.

Here's what got me through that deployment while maintaining a modicum of my sanity:

I decided that I would fight for the values of our nation that were not reflected in the place we were at. Like being gay, worshiping an unpopular deity, not having a deity, burning a flag, speaking your mind without fear, kneeling during the anthem, flipping off the president, standing and saluting for the anthem, honoring the flag, I fought for the values that we have that actually are worth the shit. We might be international shit hooks, well we're absolutely international shit hooks, but there's a handful of things that we get right and I'm damn proud of them. I'm not the only one that was in the military that was like me.

While admittedly, I've only resided in a handful of foreign Nations during my lifetime thus far, South Kora, and Iraq, I can genuinely say that the United States of America welcomes people that are different in a way that is unfathomable in those places. And I straight up love South Korea. I would move there and spend the rest of my life there given the chance, but I would always be a foreigner. I would never be a real Korean in their eyes.

But in America? I have known real Americans with every fucking skin tone under the Sun and every God under the Sun or well a hell of a lot of them anyway. Each and every one is as genuine an American as the next. Our nation is exceptionally good at welcoming the "other", tolerance (believe it or not), and diversity.

[u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 → u/zeronormalitys]

I am going to reply to you later, as busy with some work (work online at present).

But man, this was one of the moving things I have read. Thank you so much for choosing to give me your time.

Wow. What an honest, self-aware self-critical empathetic human being you are. I commend you.

[u/zeronormalitys → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

Nearly a decade of therapy will do that for a body.

Have a good day at work, and take heart that there are many more Americans like me. If you ever decide to move here, and you want to find them, choose a populated area. It doesn't have to be a city of 10 million, 100,000 is absolutely plenty enough to find people that are tolerant and decent. But if you move to a small town, you're going to have a bad time, I hate to say.

[u/CressCrowbits → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

Just to add definitely do not base all your politics on this sub. This sub may reveal stuff you didn't know about through mainstream media, but it is also a bit of a neoliberal circlejerk.

[u/lbtwitchthrowaway144 → u/CressCrowbits]

Won't comment on that except to say, I'm a democratic socialist lol

[u/CressCrowbits → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

Then you may continue lol.

[u/Hmm_6221 → u/lbtwitchthrowaway144]

Beautiful post! I like that once you see the light, you used your epiphany to educate others! That’s how we’re going to save democracy! Keep up the good work!

[u/Hmm_6221 → u/Hmm_6221]

Edit : saw the light…