Tariffs on, off, on, off, and on again. Dismantling critical social services across the board at the federal level, abandoning our alliances and commitments with friends worldwide, and slashing funding of social programs to finance tax breaks for the top wealth holders in the United States.
What we have going on in our government under the Trump administration is a 21st-century coup. True, there are no tanks in the streets or military surrounding the White House, but that is not off the table as far as these people are concerned. Call it a soft coup, although it doesn’t feel soft for those swept up in the dark of night and spirited off to foreign concentration camps without a trial or legal representation.
The Republicans have been trying to revoke our democracy and rewrite our Constitution since Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office for his first term on March 4, 1933. The chart above encapsulates our nation's economic profile over the last 100 years. The linkage between oligarchs in control and the overall state of our economy is clear. This oligarchical control is fortified by concentrating wealth and power in a very few people.
In the early 1900s, five out of six presidents were Republicans from 1901 to 1933. As a nation, we had come through the industrial age that started about the 1820s and ran until the 20th century. During that time, much like today, the so-called robber barons, the super wealthy entrepreneurs like John D. Rockefeller, Founder of Standard Oil, dominated the oil industry. Andrew Carnegie led the expansion of the steel industry. Cornelius Vanderbilt made his fortune in railroads and shipping. J.P. Morgan was an influential banker who helped consolidate various industries, and Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing with the assembly line and the automobile industry.
Much like the robber barons of the 19th and 20th centuries, Elon Musk, the Kochs, Larry Ellison, Zuckerberg, Buffet, and Bezos are using their money and influence to dictate policy to a bunch of willing political conspirators like Trump, Miller, Thiel, Lutnick, Bessent, and a host of Project 2025 architects who subscribe to the Hoover approach to government. They are hellbent on returning the U.S. to the 1920s, where the oligarchs had their way with all phases of our government, enriching themselves to the detriment of the common people.
These policies drove us to the brink of destruction in the early twentieth century, and we are moving in that direction once again, thanks to Trump and the P2025 cabal. Project 2025 is a 927-page policy blueprint divided into 30 chapters, each covering a federal government department. The goal is to “destroy the Administrative State.” Each chapter offers detailed proposals for radically restructuring a specific federal department and assuring political loyalists step into key positions of power on “Day One” of a new Republican administration.
Project 2025 is designed to fundamentally destroy all that has been accomplished in the last 100 years regarding the administration of a nation of over 300 million people, including the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs, and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.
“It wades deeply into the culture war that has been dividing the country. Project 2025 calls for abolishing the teaching of “‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology'” in public schools, and “deleting” terms such as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equity,” and “reproductive health” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant … and piece of legislation that exists.” factcheck.org
P2025 is led and funded by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank founded in 1973. There are more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board. Among those are the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point USA, and America First Legal Foundation, which Stephen Miller, a former Trump senior adviser, heads.
“The Reagan administration implemented nearly half of the ideas included in the first edition by the end of his first year in office, while the Trump administration embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition’s policy solutions after one year,” the Heritage Foundation said in a press release announcing Project 2025.
This is what we face in America today. It is every bit as much of a war as if we were fighting from behind trees as our patriot founders did two hundred and fifty years ago. We have to organize and resist at every level and opportunity. We must use the courts, civil protests, and especially the ballot box before those are taken away. We have to rid our government of every right-wing crazy that has infiltrated the system from dog catcher to the White House.
This is not a call for violence. This bunch will only use that to justify the use of police and military to crush resistance and invoke a police state. We must take a page from the books of people like Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi, who triumphed over authoritarianism through peaceful resistance and political action.
We can’t wait much longer, or the far-right will be so deeply entrenched in our government that more drastic actions may be our only option. Fight for change now. Vote in record numbers in 2026. We are the change agents if we choose to be.
Add comment
Comments