Why it was EASY for the Inmates to take over the Asylum...

[seawasp]

This of course links back to my detailed discussion of Project 2025, but the point of this post is to summarize the ENTIRE PROJECT in a few basic principles, which in turn show why it WORKED -- aside from the fact that the Heritage Foundation and others put decades of work into trying to prepare the ground.


The radical and extreme change seen in our government, covering everything from the seeming paralysis of the normal mechanisms of government to react to Trump & Company's actions to those actions themselves -- international incidents, creation of incarceration camps, sweeping changes in operation through executive action, etc. -- and even the continued presence in power of a President who is clearly declining in physical and mental capacity by the day (and who never was a mental giant even at his peak), all of course have their roots in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and their people -- both direct employees and those they helped put in various positions.

But even reading my summary, linked above, of Project 2025 is a daunting task; my summary alone clocks in at well over 150 pages, and the actual document breaks 900. 

However, in actuality, most of my critique of Project 2025 can be boiled down to a very few key observations/concepts.

1) "Move fast and break things". This is the SpaceX approach to rocketry, and in rocketry it may even be appropriate for development. Applied to government, though, it's only reasonable if your point is breaking stuff in order to build your own.  In a sense, it's deliberately bulldozing a building so you can start building your own right away. 

   This is perhaps the core element of Project 2025. It sets up or facilitates all the other elements of the document's strategy

2) "Replace knowledge with loyalty". Every single section of Project 2025 has as one of its primary mechanisms eliminating as many as possible of the existing personnel in essentially every department of government and replacing them with people specifically chosen, not for their competence at the government functions in question, but for their willingness to perform to the agenda of the President and his representatives in the Executive Branch. 

3) "Exploit institutional loopholes". Again, almost every section of the document points out that one way around that annoying "confirmation process" of Congress, in which the Representatives and Senators may actually demand your candidate qualify for the position, is simply to fill all positions with "Acting Director Of Whatever" -- as "Acting" doesn't come under the same scrutiny. The POINT of that was, of course, to enable a government agency to continue functioning while a President's candidate(s) went through the full vetting process, but it's ideal for getting around the possibility that one of your candidates simply wouldn't make the grade. 

     This is also the root of the methods for rooting out social support elements of government; you take the literal wording of the proper laws and regulations and apply it in a way that's directly contrary to the known intent. Thus programs meant to help the underprivileged are suddenly re-cast as being discriminatory.

4) "Ignore inconvenient laws". Here's where it gets really blatant, yet in its own way very clever: "Just say no". Instead of arguing -- and adhering to the due process of law -- you just DO stuff, and let the opposition try to grind you down by legal means while you're still running ahead breaking more laws. This is a mug's game for the people trying to keep the system together, because they CANNOT speed up the process to catch you unless they're willing to do the same things you are. The system is used to people recognizing it exists and must be followed for the basic welfare of the society; someone who simply IGNORES the system, and has enough power to make slapping them down a nontrivial task, simply is not something our society or government is, or was, prepared for. 

Years ago there was a political cartoon about Ronald Reagan's apparent untouchability, in which he reads "there are two kinds of matter: matter, and doesn't matter. When the two come in contact they annihilate each other." He then proceeds to answer every question about policies with "Doesn't matter", which silences his critics.

This is what happens when that joke isn't a joke. You just build your Alligator Alcatraz, tell people to do it, and use the fact that you ARE a major branch of government to get the job done, even when technically you don't have the authority to order it, nor the authority to pay for it. People four steps down the ladder from you aren't going to question it when "The Office of the President of the United States" sends you a work order. Businesses don't have a mechanism for saying "no" to something like that, it's purely on the business owner. And even if Congress protests, the protest means nothing if they don't DO anything about it. 


The midterms are now more crucial than ever, and they know it. Not just because of the obvious "a blue wave could take Congress away from us entirely", but because by doing what they've done, they have SET A PRECEDENT. They've said, in deeds if not words, "get what you think needs to be done, DONE, and let people argue about it later", and their worst-case scenario has to be "what if the other side started doing that too?" 

That, I should note, isn't necessarily a good thing for us as a country. That way lies potential chaos way beyond even what we see now, straight down to real civil war. But when you let the demon out of the bottle, you may not be able to control what it does. 

And it may even be NECESSARY for those of us who want to protect the country to use some of the same tactics, because they've already managed to break so very many parts of government. At the least, all the Trump Loyalists that have been shoved into the government need to be removed and replaced with competent administrators, and to do that FAST will likely require the same approach. 
 
I'm not sure how to get out of this, but it's important to realize that the entire course of events was really built on approaches so simple and yet opposed to our system that the system had no way to properly respond. 

 

Comments

[dewline]

Ryk, I think you've got all the key points nailed down accurately.

What I'm worrying about up here in Canada at the moment is that our federal government may now be in the hands of someone more willing to be an accomplice to the 2025 crime family than I hoped or expected. I want to be wrong in a way we can jointly celebrate, like maybe Carney's playing "nice doggie" with Trump and company until he has enough big sticks ready to deploy in the proper direction.

[seawasp]

It's getting harder and harder to play "nice doggie" with Trump because he's getting less and less coherent and functional. I'm not sure that even in his inner circle there's anyone who has much of a dialogue with him.

I'm honestly surprised they haven't removed him and replaced him with Vance or Miller or, well, just about anyone who can string two thoughts together. He's not going to last much longer, I'd think they'd want to make the transition on their terms rather than whenever his creaky old bod finally conks out.

[dewline]

You're not alone in noticing that fact, and I also wonder why they haven't 25th'ed him out of the Oval already. Someone has some kind of leverage here to prevent that and they are using it. The question becomes "who and to what ends?", probably.

[seawasp]

My guess would be Stephen Miller and his Heritage backers. WHY is a little harder, but my guess there would be that (A) Trump's chaos and nuttery serve as good distractors from the horrible, but quieter, things they're doing, and (B) the guy who would replace him, Vance, has the charisma of a plate of overcooked spaghetti with no sauce.

[dewline]

That is a reasonable and horrific hypothesis.