Thomas Zimmer on what to expect from a second Trump administration (and beyond)
snip
...
Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, would like you to know about his “Promise to America.” And I agree: Everyone should know about it. Every now and then, some influential figure on the Right writes something that I wish everyone would read – every voter, and certainly everyone paid or given a platform to give their opinion on U.S. politics. Kevin Roberts’ foreword to “Mandate for Leadership,” the 920-page report “Project 2025” has produced, is such a text. In just 17 pages, it captures and oozes the siege mentality, self-victimization, and grievance-driven lust for revenge that is fueling the Right and animating the plans for a second Trump administration.
One of the more frustrating aspects of studying and talking about American politics is that if you simply trace the radicalization of the Right and the Republican Party, there is a good chance a mainstream audience will dismiss you as a leftwing conspiracy theorist or an unhinged “activist.” Donald Trump’s outrageousness notwithstanding, it is difficult to convey to people who don’t pay much attention to politics how much the power centers of conservative politics have been taken over by anti-democratic extremism. One way to deal with this problem is to get people to actually read and listen to what emanates from the Right. If you don’t believe and can’t trust my (lefty / liberal) assessment, maybe you can believe them? In that spirit, I think it’s worth spending time diving deep into Kevin Roberts’ “Promise to America” – with lots of extensive quotes, as it is important to get a sense of what these people sound like when they are not being sanitized and normalized by mainstream media coverage. This will serve as Part I of my dissection of “Project 2025,” focusing on the worldview and ideas that are guiding the plans on the Right; there will also be a Part II in which I will look more closely at what those plans entail, and the strategies for how to realize them and turn America into the kind of society the reactionary Right desires.
...
Comments