Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/24/john-oliver-on-trumps-plans-for-a-second-term.html
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I really hope that people are paying attention to this… it’s some scary shit, especially since I doubt that SCOTUS will do much to stop this or that Congress will be able to do so…
Thing is, the right wing voters who think they want to live in a theocracy, really would not like it once it were here. They would not appreciate the actual loss of freedoms they’d experience.
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The radical right, empowered by the bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS, sees the endgame in their sights - dismantling of democracy, ensuring that nobody who disagrees with their agenda has any ability to oppose them in any way. There’s no way they’re lifting their foot of the pedal when they’re so close to getting everything they’ve worked for.
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Even if he loses.
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It’s amazing how they apparently haven’t even considered the idea that the broad executive powers they are trying to grant Trump in 2025 would eventually be wielded by the next Democratic President.
I know that Trump doesn’t care two whits about what happens after he leaves office but you’d think at least a few of the evil policy wonks trying to enact this plan would. They can’t all be naive enough to think Republicans will hold the office forever.
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My point is that I think that many of Trump’s rank and file supporters will not really understand what living in this kind of theocracy actually means. They’ve not read up on theocracies and know little about secular autocracies, except what’s been fed to them by Fox about places like the Soviet Union or China (which are often deeply distorted out of the lived reality of living in those places during the Cold War). They don’t actually understand the depth of deprivation that would be imposed on them, not just the people they have been led to believe that they hate (immigrants, Muslims, trans people, feminists, etc).
Of course the elites who are shaping policy documents like Project 2025 would be happy with it, because it would line their pockets and free them up to be as cruel as they feel like being to the rest of us… But that’s not who I’m talking about. The average white evangelical Christian who supports Trump would quickly come to find their lives highly circumscribed, and would be shocked that find themselves living that way… they’d also be shocked by the economic deprivation and by the rise in violence aimed at the rest of us… They have no clue what any of this would actually mean in practice. I promise you that the right wing media scape is NOT talking about project 2025, except in very circumspect ways.
They’re not worried about that, because they don’t plan to have another election (not really, not one that would put a Democrat in the white house). We all know that this is a plan for a one-party dictatorship.
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That said, it’s also a sign of the flailing death throes of the neoconservative movement. They’ve been aimed at this moment since they chose the Southern Strategy and now it’s ride or die.
Let’s make sure it’s the latter.
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Could be, but let’s not count those chickens until they’re safely hatched? I think the Indian election recently, where Modi did not get the results he expected, was a positive sign of maybe the right wing backlash losing steam, but we have the UK elections coming up, as well as the French elections after the EU elections…
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So much this.
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I don’t think we can stress this point enough. They are pretty much openly calling for the end of Democracy here and we need to take that seriously. Not enough people understand that, especially rank and file republicans (Trumpers or not).
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one additionally scary aspect of this I’ve seen others mention, is that if Republicans were to commit actual fraud now it seems a lot easier to make it look like “oh Democrats lost so now they think there’s voter fraud”
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… they’re not planning for Democrats to ever win elections again after they “fix” everything
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Here is some more on this, since Oliver is focused mainly on the schedule F stuff in this piece (which makes all the other stuff in Project 2025 more possible)…
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And that is why they are working so hard to destroy democracy and democratic norms. Gerrymandering, disenfranchisement, legislative appointment of electors contrary to voter’s expressed wishes and even violent insurrection are all part of the playbook to prevent any Democrat from being president again.
edited to add: Whatever it takes is justified in their minds.
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Project 2025 is NOT Trump’s plan. Trump is part of Project 2025’s plan.
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There is something in what you say. I mean nobody, even the Heritage Foundation can rely on Trump to do what they want. It’s not like he’s ever going to read, much less understand a ~900 page plan of action. But their thinking is that by laying an easy to enact functional plan for autocracy in front of him he’ll go for it.
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… it’s not like he’s going to say “no” to a plan that says “more power and less accountability”
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Just in case anyone still thinks that the Heritage Foundation is a bunch of cold, calculating cynics merely using Il Douche as their figurehead, a reminder that the head of the think tank, Kevin Roberts, is also a swivel-eyed lunatic.
ROBERTS: Why aren’t we talking about the people who–
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: I just wanna know, do you believe–
ROBERTS: –are supporting legislation that abortion can happen until three days after the person’s born. This is an absurd framing by this network.
SANDERS-TOWNSEND: That is an absurd assertion! As a person with an actual womb, I’m telling you, that does not happen
[…]
ROBERTS: The work of the Heritage Foundation is to institutionalize Trumpism as a new version of conservatism.
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I really think there is a sector that won’t even notice or believe in any authoritarian turn. They’ll gobble up the propaganda that the virtuous Drumpf admin is cleaning up crime, getting rid of brown people and “pedophiles” (i.e. everyone who exhibits any variance to gender binary), and they’re already so complacent about wage theft, healthcare inaccessibility, and they love the destruction of the education system as it is.
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