Not really relevant to their actual goal of destroying democracy, just a little culture war to throw a minority under the bus so the masses squabble over it instead of the broader, more universally opposed changes.
Don't you dare minimize this. It's not a "little culture war," it's deliberate cruelty to a people that neo-nazis and Cristian-nationalists see as subhuman. It's evil and intentional.
Sorry, the most useful ones have been banned. Governor Inslee of Washington State banned literally every single semi-automatic center fire rifle this year, including sporting and target rifles.
I just don't really get why people even get behind stuff like this. There's just nothing for anyone to really gain and a whole lot for everyone to lose...
Even the mega rich and the corporations have to recognize that an unstable world isn't really a great place to live or do business right? Or is it just that they're so far removed from everything that they don't have to care?
By the time you're benefiting from this in a non-symbolic way, your net worth is more than you can conceivably spend in a lifetime... Go home, you're done!
I think it's short term thinking. Probably something similar to the way investors think when they're on a mission to earn money, but end up causing enshittification
They are only thinking of "Me" now, or "Me and my kids", they will be dead when society collapses and they don't care. But yes, the obscene amassed wealth is insanity, it means nothing to your lifestyle at some point. And will be useless at death.
As I intentionally filter out as much US politics as I can, this has come out of nowhere for me.
Australia has a couple of really simple things baked into its electoral system to resist something wildly unpopular like this from getting in power:
Compulsory voting. These MAGA crazies are not and will never be the majority. If everyone had to vote, they'd never get in.
Proportional voting. We vote for multiple candidates. If our first choice doesn't get in, our vote goes to our second choice. Then third etc. we aren't forced to vote for a lizard just to prevent the worse lizard getting in (it still almost always comes down to two parties, though).
I know these are total non-starters for our American friends. "You can't make me vote, that's against the constitution or something".
Compulsory voting is definitely intriguing…even if you had the option to vote “null” meaning not vote for anyone but at least you had to make the effort to say something. The crazies I think are a relatively small portion of the US, they’re just SO much louder than everyone else
A null vote here is a option. Colloquially called a Donkey Vote, or statistically reported as an Informal Vote, you can write nothing on your voting slip and put it straight in the box. Also since voting is compulsory it is held on a Saturday, there are usually sausage sizzles, there must be enough polling places open so you're not in line for more than 30 minutes, and early voting is a viable option.
As an American, I think I'd support compulsory voting... But the right would fight that with everything they had, because if everyone had to vote, they'd never win with their current stances.
Yeah, these have saved us on a lot of issues I feel. It’s simply a much more representative system than what the Americans do and it helps keep a lot of fringe ideologies at the fringes, where they usually belong.
Minor correction, we have preferential voting not proportional.
Ranked choice voting (proportional) is still making its way slowly into the mainstream, but with very little reason the change the main political parties torpedo it when they can.
Another way to look at this plan is: how to create an unstable and globally uncompetitive workforce.
America will become a shithole country where no one will want to live or work. The rich will send their children to study and work elsewhere.
When America is inhospitable to everyone except to multi-millionaires or billionaires (who live elsewhere rn anyways, btw as they have multiple nationalities and passports), the rest of the upper class will jump ship to other countries, where they will always get to enjoy the progressive policies and culture they deprive others of.
Remember: if the daughter of a rich person will get pregnant, she will have access to abortion
If the children of the rich want to have sex, they will have contraception
The rich will choose to live in countries with Medicare and other social programs
The rich will always have access to rights, and would straight up be able to “buy justice”, like in countries like India, Pakistan, Mexico, Brazil etc
The rich will always be able to afford clean water and air
Project 2025 isn’t about race or lgbt or “fambily vablues” as the mealy mouthed hypocrites would have you believe. It’s straight class warfare.
All Americans are a target of the class warfare, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Even the rich are worse off because they get to enjoy the judicial process here in America, as opposed to getting robbed by the state as in Russia or China.
In short, project 2025 is a dumb cunt plan of no foresight or insight, and definitely not written by anyone who has goodwill towards Americans or any patriotism
I honestly don't even think the people who came up with this are thinking about that. Like nifty said, these policies will create a brain drain that will be bad for the U.S. economy, including the assets of the rich.
This is just some christofacist shit. I don't think they gave a thought to anything else.
Some of the "claims without a citation" are things that were done under the first Trump administration.
taxes did go up for most Americans under the last tax bill. It's safe to say that if Republicans need to raise taxes it'll be through the lower and middle class.
kids go hungry or into debt for school lunches today because of how little some families make. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a feature for the Republican party and not a bug.
books are being banned in the US at an alarming rate, look at Florida as a prime example. Trump admin agnostic but definitely a party priority.
trump suggested multiple times as president that people should just be shot, killed, or executed for things as benign as protesting outside the Whitehouse. He didn't do it, but it's a pretty short distance between "the president wants to kill you" and "the president is having you killed".
the president did send in national guard and other militarily equipped groups to beat and pepper spray journalists and protestors while president.
trump appointmented judges clearly lack the experience, qualifications, and apolitical-ness expected of a normal judge. You can see that in the supreme Court and you can see that at the federal judge level.
I think the pure length of it introduces enough delay before encountering the really terrifying parts and might interfere with the punch of the message. I might try to do a modified version with some bold text and larger sections so some of the strong full impact comes across right away, without trying to reduce the detail or the scope
Also, I think it is relevant to repeat the founders’ feeling on it. The “government” doesn’t “let” you do anything. Everyone’s just born into the earth into this wild and semiorganized place, as weird social beings that are half monkeys and half made up of something a lot more inspirational. And from time to time, they want to set up a system they all agree on so they can have clean water and roadways and courts and someone centrally in charge of the economy, things like that. But, sometimes like a few thousand people put temporarily in charge of all that start to look around at all the guns and money in their command and get confused and think they have the right to tell 400 million other people “hey check it out you have to do what I say, I DGAF what you think or of it’s right, that’s just what’s up.” And then when that happens it is the job of the 400 million to re educate them on what’s up.
And you could say that if they don’t, they deserve what happens. But honestly it’s not even a statement of deserves or not, or right and wrong. It is simply a statement of the reality of what happens. Most of things like the bill of rights is understood today as like, what the government is “allowed” to restrict and not, but the founders’ view of it was a lot more akin to, these are some examples of what people will do as inherent parts of their nature and God help you if you try to tell them they can’t, and they become alert and organized.
I might get downvoted to oblivion. Why can’t America have a decent president for once again?
Trump is a fascist or at least going on its way to it and supports Israel with what’s it is doing in Gaza. Biden is in the old age and probably has just old age issues and supports Israel with what it is doing in Gaza.
It isn’t just America either, The Netherlands with PVV, France with Le Pen (if I said the name correct?), Germany with the whole AFD thing.
Russia and its war on Ukraine.
My high school history teacher told me in times of difficulty politics shifts right. It's always stuck with me. Everything is shit right now, there's a general malaise and the right provide a target to blame and a simple solution. FWIW the UK just elected a centre left government in a landslide after 15 years of shite, so there's that.
They're trying to get this stuff done now, iirc the whole thing about project 2025 is they want everything queued up for the first days that Trump is in office so that he can hit the ground running
The fact that the manifesto is hundreds of pages long, they hate everything good and decent is country enough to write hundreds of pages about how and why we should burn it all to the ground.