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seawasp Sometimes change isn't random....
A lot of people are stunned, to say the least, at the speed at which the USA is shooting holes in its own ship of state, turning us from a majestic, if sometimes ill-maintained ocean liner into a third-world garbage scow that happens to still have some operating nukes.
It's very, VERY important to understand that this isn't just a sudden change, and it's not an accident. We are seeing the culmination of a half-century (or more) of very deliberate plans to destroy the advanced, slowly-becoming-enlightened civilization that we got glimpses of in my youth. This deliberate plan isn't a theory; it's not a wild-eyed concoction of too much coffee or drugs. It's something that its makers wrote down, followed, refined, and wrote down AGAIN, as they checked off various boxes.
The Heritage Foundation is the current center of this plan. It bills itself as a "think tank", but it is far more than just a set of people thinking about stuff. The Foundation is designed to execute radical change in the political landscape of the USA, by deliberately undermining all the liberal and forward-looking policies, supporting "conservative" (really, reactionary and even backwards-looking) candidates, and guiding the movers and shakers down a path which is to result, ultimately, in the creation of a not-very-disguised theocratic state run by Christian-But-Not-Actually principles as enunciated in the more radical evangelical, prosperity-gospel preaching, white churches.
This is something you can verify by reading the afterword of Project 2025 (named, of course, "ONWARD!"). The author, Edwin J. Feulner, is one of those who wrote the original "Mandate For Leadership" given to Ronald Reagan in 1980. In fact, he wrote the *Foreword* for that original version. "Onward!" details the genesis -- and the absolutely, deliberately practical design and intent involved -- of the Heritage Foundation's plans to create a very specifically conservative plan that would be able to displace the democratic-liberal movement that had become dominant in the 60s. Among other things, the Foundation realized that it would require TIME to enact the changes they wanted, and thus the Mandate was a living document, updated and presented to each new Conservative/Republican president with the latest plans, aligned with whatever advances or withdrawals in their plans had come about since the last time.
There were, in general, far more advances, because their counterparts, the Democrats, didn't attempt a similarly coordinated strategy. They, and the liberals and idealists, believed that the advances made in the 60s and 70s into the early 80s simply showed a natural progression of younger voters towards more unified, humanistic, and socially-aware goals, and that "business as usual" would lead inevitably towards a more open and accepting society.
By contrast, the Heritage Foundation (and other allied groups, such as the (American) Libertarian Cato institute) recognized that the social justice movement was VULNERABLE. The immediate outrage of the Vietnam War, and the immediate emergencies of literally burning rivers, choking smog, and DDT-endangered birds were either over, or being addressed. Such political movements require inputs of energy to keep going in high gear, and so the Heritage Institute didn't try fighting the changes too hard on the higher levels.
Instead, they became advisors on how would-be conservatives at LOWER levels of government could design their campaigns to beat liberal-democratic candidates. They would design advertising campaigns, provide materials, coaches, etc., to help put together a COHERENT base of local, then state, level politicians who would prepare the way for more successful national-level campaigns.
This of course had some of its roots in Nixon's infamous "Southern Strategy", in which he targeted the disaffected, mostly white, voters who felt alienated by the rapid shifts in social norms. Reagan promoted this further, allying himself with the "Moral Majority" so-called Christian movement of the time. All of this, naturally, REALLY goes back to the KKK and related groups, and to the old but never-quite-eradicated colonial attitudes that drove manifest destiny and whitewashed most of our history.
This is why, when they finally took the bit in their teeth at around the turn of the century, the attitudinal shifts seemed to take place with increasing speed and exremity: the Foundation, and its tool the Republican Party, had captured vast swathes of the government throughout the Southern, Southwestern, and Midwestern states FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. This meant that they ccould generate the appearance of a "grassroots" swell of support for a national candidate through a concerted set of actions starting with local candidates and offices going right up through county and state and then Congressional positions. This also allowed the increasing appointment of Heritage-preferred judges , supporting increasingly conservative interpretations of law.
It's VERY important to also recognize that this is NOT merely a "billionaire's club" running the show, although it would be idiotic to say the super-rich aren't part of the major guiding forces. A great deal of the strength of this movement comes from radical "Christian" groups who are APOCALYPTIC in their outlook. These "conservatives" often claim they are supportive of Israel -- but that support is actually mostly a particularly toxic variation of Zionism, which favors the EXISTENCE of Israel as a destination for the Jewish people... so that they can fulfill their role in the triggering of World War III. These people really do want to "immanentize the Eschaton", trigger the end of the world so that they will be the chosen ones.
This is also why a lot of their selected people seem not to give much of a damn about what's happening in the future; THEY DON'T EXPECT A FUTURE, or at least, not one in which the choices of mere mortals matter. God and Satan are gonna have their final battle, and Jesus (their white, very conservative Jesus who believes in prosperity) will remake the world. In such a belief system, obviously things like "global warming" don't MATTER; even if they were to be true, God's gonna just fix everything.
Those members of the Foundation and its group who aren't adherents of this particular brand of lunacy do tend to be wealthy and powerful people whose primary concern is maintaining and extending their power. This is why THEY support the dismantling of the government; the U.S. Government has traditionally been the ONLY force large enough to intimidate major multinational corporations. These people honestly have convinced themselves that governments and all these social justice causes ONLY exist to steal away their resources liike vultures; they are generally so far removed from the lives of regular people -- even the few who started out down towards the bottom -- as to no longer understand the point of such causes, or why they have an immediacy for most of us down here.
This all has interacted and built upon itself in the last fifty years -- the issues I've discussed elsewhere about, for example, how corporate law has developed into something that no longer even pretends to support customer-centered businesses, all come from the changes that the Heritage Foundation and its compatriots have worked so hard to promote.
We are now in a desperately dangerous situation for both the USA and the world, and we don't have the luxury of fifty years to fix it. I foresee a very, very unpleasant next few years.
A lot of people are stunned, to say the least, at the speed at which the USA is shooting holes in its own ship of state, turning us from a majestic, if sometimes ill-maintained ocean liner into a third-world garbage scow that happens to still have some operating nukes.
It's very, VERY important to understand that this isn't just a sudden change, and it's not an accident. We are seeing the culmination of a half-century (or more) of very deliberate plans to destroy the advanced, slowly-becoming-enlightened civilization that we got glimpses of in my youth. This deliberate plan isn't a theory; it's not a wild-eyed concoction of too much coffee or drugs. It's something that its makers wrote down, followed, refined, and wrote down AGAIN, as they checked off various boxes.
The Heritage Foundation is the current center of this plan. It bills itself as a "think tank", but it is far more than just a set of people thinking about stuff. The Foundation is designed to execute radical change in the political landscape of the USA, by deliberately undermining all the liberal and forward-looking policies, supporting "conservative" (really, reactionary and even backwards-looking) candidates, and guiding the movers and shakers down a path which is to result, ultimately, in the creation of a not-very-disguised theocratic state run by Christian-But-Not-Actually principles as enunciated in the more radical evangelical, prosperity-gospel preaching, white churches.
This is something you can verify by reading the afterword of Project 2025 (named, of course, "ONWARD!"). The author, Edwin J. Feulner, is one of those who wrote the original "Mandate For Leadership" given to Ronald Reagan in 1980. In fact, he wrote the *Foreword* for that original version. "Onward!" details the genesis -- and the absolutely, deliberately practical design and intent involved -- of the Heritage Foundation's plans to create a very specifically conservative plan that would be able to displace the democratic-liberal movement that had become dominant in the 60s. Among other things, the Foundation realized that it would require TIME to enact the changes they wanted, and thus the Mandate was a living document, updated and presented to each new Conservative/Republican president with the latest plans, aligned with whatever advances or withdrawals in their plans had come about since the last time.
There were, in general, far more advances, because their counterparts, the Democrats, didn't attempt a similarly coordinated strategy. They, and the liberals and idealists, believed that the advances made in the 60s and 70s into the early 80s simply showed a natural progression of younger voters towards more unified, humanistic, and socially-aware goals, and that "business as usual" would lead inevitably towards a more open and accepting society.
By contrast, the Heritage Foundation (and other allied groups, such as the (American) Libertarian Cato institute) recognized that the social justice movement was VULNERABLE. The immediate outrage of the Vietnam War, and the immediate emergencies of literally burning rivers, choking smog, and DDT-endangered birds were either over, or being addressed. Such political movements require inputs of energy to keep going in high gear, and so the Heritage Institute didn't try fighting the changes too hard on the higher levels.
Instead, they became advisors on how would-be conservatives at LOWER levels of government could design their campaigns to beat liberal-democratic candidates. They would design advertising campaigns, provide materials, coaches, etc., to help put together a COHERENT base of local, then state, level politicians who would prepare the way for more successful national-level campaigns.
This of course had some of its roots in Nixon's infamous "Southern Strategy", in which he targeted the disaffected, mostly white, voters who felt alienated by the rapid shifts in social norms. Reagan promoted this further, allying himself with the "Moral Majority" so-called Christian movement of the time. All of this, naturally, REALLY goes back to the KKK and related groups, and to the old but never-quite-eradicated colonial attitudes that drove manifest destiny and whitewashed most of our history.
This is why, when they finally took the bit in their teeth at around the turn of the century, the attitudinal shifts seemed to take place with increasing speed and exremity: the Foundation, and its tool the Republican Party, had captured vast swathes of the government throughout the Southern, Southwestern, and Midwestern states FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. This meant that they ccould generate the appearance of a "grassroots" swell of support for a national candidate through a concerted set of actions starting with local candidates and offices going right up through county and state and then Congressional positions. This also allowed the increasing appointment of Heritage-preferred judges , supporting increasingly conservative interpretations of law.
It's VERY important to also recognize that this is NOT merely a "billionaire's club" running the show, although it would be idiotic to say the super-rich aren't part of the major guiding forces. A great deal of the strength of this movement comes from radical "Christian" groups who are APOCALYPTIC in their outlook. These "conservatives" often claim they are supportive of Israel -- but that support is actually mostly a particularly toxic variation of Zionism, which favors the EXISTENCE of Israel as a destination for the Jewish people... so that they can fulfill their role in the triggering of World War III. These people really do want to "immanentize the Eschaton", trigger the end of the world so that they will be the chosen ones.
This is also why a lot of their selected people seem not to give much of a damn about what's happening in the future; THEY DON'T EXPECT A FUTURE, or at least, not one in which the choices of mere mortals matter. God and Satan are gonna have their final battle, and Jesus (their white, very conservative Jesus who believes in prosperity) will remake the world. In such a belief system, obviously things like "global warming" don't MATTER; even if they were to be true, God's gonna just fix everything.
Those members of the Foundation and its group who aren't adherents of this particular brand of lunacy do tend to be wealthy and powerful people whose primary concern is maintaining and extending their power. This is why THEY support the dismantling of the government; the U.S. Government has traditionally been the ONLY force large enough to intimidate major multinational corporations. These people honestly have convinced themselves that governments and all these social justice causes ONLY exist to steal away their resources liike vultures; they are generally so far removed from the lives of regular people -- even the few who started out down towards the bottom -- as to no longer understand the point of such causes, or why they have an immediacy for most of us down here.
This all has interacted and built upon itself in the last fifty years -- the issues I've discussed elsewhere about, for example, how corporate law has developed into something that no longer even pretends to support customer-centered businesses, all come from the changes that the Heritage Foundation and its compatriots have worked so hard to promote.
We are now in a desperately dangerous situation for both the USA and the world, and we don't have the luxury of fifty years to fix it. I foresee a very, very unpleasant next few years.
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Date: 2025-03-24 11:33 pm (UTC)https://armiphlage.dreamwidth.org/651684.html
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Date: 2025-03-25 12:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-25 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-25 04:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-25 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-25 08:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-26 02:49 pm (UTC)It's ironic that the old SS United States, fastest ocean liner in the world, is now a rusted hulk and being towed to where it'll be sunk.