Project 2025 Doesn't Scare Me
Trust me I have a clear view about where this whole 2025 thing is headed if we don't get off our lazy bums
Recently I dug in on liberals and their choices to put on horse blinders and pander to “moderates.” Rather than listen to their base and act like human beings to the many faces of human suffering whether that be economic strife from inflation or losing loved ones in Palestine and Lebanon they could not part from neocon foreign policy. But no one is safe from me. My aim here is to entertain you, but mainly myself, as I critique power in whatever cheeky way I can.
The thing about neocons is that they are a very one track minded sort of people. They pigeonhole themselves and therefore others so their politics is based on their religious affiliation. I know that because of how they tried to reorganize Iraqi civil society in the early days of the War on Terror. The Westphalian approach to drawing borders according to religious sectarianism may have worked for Europe but it can’t be cleanly applied to a different region with different beliefs. Which is why the region is still so unstable to this day. That one magic bullet only worked for them once in 1648. A good example is how much this manufactured mess highlights in the Sunni vs Shia Muslim divide in the regional Cold War between Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Shia Islamic Republic of Iran. One is the nice theocracy because it gives us oil and the other is the bad one because it’s prudish and withholding. The reductionism and is far more telling about the neocon evangelical Christian worldview than it does about any other complex person that may live their life in a more balanced fashion. And that is most well adjusted people.
We can learn a lot from the progression seen with the KSA from a US sponsored oil factory in the 1930’s to the regional power it is now. After a couple of decades KSA realized that being so rigidly ideological was good for state making and amassing territory with the Wahabis but not economically sustainable longterm. There are actually very few native people to the Gulf. The way that these economies (KSA, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait etc.) boom is started by exploiting natural resources and continued by diversifying the economy and importing labor from elsewhere. There is no pathway to citizenship since in the Middle East you inherit your citizenship from your parents. Workers stay with a work visa and then go back to their home countries when a contract expires or it’s time to retire. People from all over the Arab World and beyond came to work for higher salaries to get a chance to build up savings and then took all of that money out of the Saudi economy. It’s also worth mentioning that I’m talking about skilled workers in particular. Unskilled labor merits its own article. But we all know that savings is a synonym for disposable income in the eyes of businessmen. Gradually the Saudi royal family started pushing out the religious fundamentalists and decided that they needed to find other ways of revenue than just barrels of oil.
Cities like Jeddah became fun destinations and old men finally realized that banning women travelers under the age of 45 without a male guardian was intentionally throwing tourism money away. They finally let women drive to shut Western critics up and eased up on the public executions instead leaning into the much more palatable actual entertainment. People started attending live concerts which of course are sex segregated. They had Saudi ARAMCO become a publicly traded company. The kingdom has been investing and various real estate ventures internationally like in Egypt’s North Coast, a summertime playground for the well-to-do à la The Hamptons. They once hilariously entrusted Masayoshi Son of SoftBank with $45 billion from their Sovereign Wealth Fund who then went and sunk all of it into WeWork. Then they bought up a whole bunch of sports teams to rehabilitate their international image. KSA came to the realization that for prosperity they couldn’t be bashing people over the head with faith and human rights abuses but be more culturally Muslim. Muslim-ish and thus the horrifying dismemberment of a journalist in an embassy ushered in a new era. The halal-haram ratio came to a much more socially acceptable, “let’s do shots! But don’t you dare fry that bacon.”
I didn’t feel like reading the whole epic fantasy novel sized document but I did watch some lawyers talk about it.
My view of a slog policy directive like Project 2025 is that living in an evangelical Christian oriented theocracy would make life completely unbearable for most people due to how marginalized we would all be by it. You’re lying if you claim not to have at least one “sinful” vice. Think about how Stuart England lived under Puritan Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell after a civil war and the beheading of King Charles I. The people want to congregate, party, go to the theatre, celebrate whatever holidays they want and eat and drink whatever it is they want. All that time that they normally spent having fun had to go to praying but people opted instead for an uprising and a return to the monarchy. My main point is that for a coalition that harps about to economy, they’re almost certainly going to kill it. The bad news is that we’re going to have to endure the hard times before that happens.
The main criticisms of Trump’s administration picks are that most do not have any formal experience in the departments they’re being tapped for. The only reason they are getting picked is because they are loyal to Trump. If all of these picks will be confirmed is yet to be determined and whether or not Trump can handle dissent from his own administration while he’s the president this time around really depends on your political worldview. I personally have a high tolerance for corruption as in I’m way too used to it. The reality is actually very mundane.
Marco Rubio for Secretary of State
Elise Stefanik for Ambassador to the United Nations
Mike Huckabee for United States Ambassador to Israel
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy for Department of Government Efficiency (DoGE)
Stephen Miller for Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy
Kristi Noem for Department of Homeland Security Secretary
Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor
Tom Homan for Border Czar
Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense
Lee Zeldin for EPA Administrator
Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence
Matt Gaetz for Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services
If you’re worried about the long term changes of Project 2025 then I understand the dread. But you don’t have to worry about a policy directive at the federal level that it’s mainly there to benefit large, megalopoly corporations. The plan only works if you play along and nobody is forcing you to buy from the chains for your goods and services. I’ve kind of always held the opinion that the way the United States is structured is in a very individualistic image. To an extent I think that is fine but if you’re isolated and divided then it’s very easy to slowly make your life less enriching and free and also make you think that it’s completely normal to be so confined. In digging in on our individualism then we lost the value of human connection and collaboration. We got so used to shutting ourselves up in our houses fearing social rejection that we’re ironically losing our right to privacy thanks to the Supreme Court.
The expectation that a government does not have an inherently adversarial bordering on coercive relationship with its citizens is naive and many Americans have mistakenly relied too much on politicians to take care of them simply because they have the gift of the gab. Our collective idleness gave rise to bad actors that aren’t interested in service to their constituents and that is the main problem no matter which party. We need to solve the loneliness epidemic and start caring about each other again. I can guarantee that celebrities and politicians are not your friends. I have already said that the Democratic Party is feckless but now the thought needs to be finished in that the Republican Party can be ruthless. My recommendation is to laugh at them as much as possible because the thing they want most is to be taken seriously in their cute little pretend thrones. Nothing is divine because power comes from popular consent. If you have expertise in an issue where your community could improve on in respect to policy then get involved and organize. It’s better to be busy not to let the dread consume you. The kids don’t have to be left behind if Donald Trump himself said that education is going to be turned back to the states. I am talking to those pushy PTA moms. The answer is not to panic and lay down in rot. The answer is to talk about the issues at your local cafe or some other local business that you can revive third spaces in and get to know your neighbors.
I personally would love a late night tea house because I think it would be charming.