"In 2022, [Russell] Vought [one of the chief architects of Project 2025] argued that the United States is in a “post constitutional moment” that “pays only lip service to the old Constitution.” He attributes that crisis to “the Left,” which he says “quietly adopted a strategy of institutional change,” by which he appears to mean the growth of the federal government to protect the rights of all Americans. He attributes that change to the presidency of President Woodrow Wilson beginning in 1913. Vought advocates what he calls “radical constitutionalism” to destroy the power of the modern administrative state and instead elevate the president to supreme authority."
Letters from an American Historian
Pre-1913 as a golden age is essentially a free market fantasy, good old company town Robber Barons before income taxes and labor unions and pesky progressive regulations. And the "radical constitutionalism" sounds a lot like dynastic constitutional monarchy circa 17th century Charles I? A good Christian King-- before they were overthrown for their tyranny by the mob!
Just a reminder: The original idea of democracy and the rule of law was that they work against tyranny, first, historically, against the tyranny of dynastic monarchy but also the tyranny of an oligarchic minority or the tyranny of a large violent mob. That's what all the separation of powers, checks and balances, and "equal protections" stuff was about in the constitution: to prevent the worst forms of tyranny. They've never worked perfectly by any stretch but this is the principle of "No One is Above the Law"; that SCOTUS abandoned with the "Presidential immunity" decision last year and Grump and Vought and their henchmen are now showing us what that looks like.
Everybody is reaching for historical analogies to the present crisis. Maybe we're in the resistance now like in Vichy France? The regime is part of an international plot, nationalist dictators hostile to poor minority immigrants and civil rights and, most importantly, when you get down to it, labor rights and environmental protections, enriching themselves off crony capitalist neoliberal oligarchic crime-ing. Anything but face democratic pressures for antitrust and against tax evasion and environmental reforms.
What are the best movies about the French resistance, anyway? Casablanca? Army of Shadows? The Last Metro? Laissez-passer? Been a long time. Relevant lessons as I recall them: Work in the shadows, underground, find ways to support those under direct attack behind the scenes. Hideouts. Smuggling oppressed people to freedom. Sabotage the killing machine not from the trenches but from behind the trenches, by disarming the killing machine. Lots of anonymous death. A cultural background of berets and clove cigarettes and jazz? Maybe the French resistance was a original source for the beatniks?
You know how everybody is always clamoring about how we need to be fighting back against Trump and the wrecking ball of tyranny he has unleashed? Good idea. But one way of fighting back I don’t think would be a very good idea is fighting ICE and the military in the streets.This has been an obvious Trump MAGA fantasy since Jan 6.
I hope hundreds of thousands show up on the next No Kings Day protests, overflowing city squares and filling the streets like in Europe or Israel or even Hungary recently. But you know what Trump wants is a police state crackdown video starring ICE and his militias with uniform military backup beating down some poor immigrants and protesters. He's looking for another excuse to impose the Insurrection Act. As I've said before, Antifa doesn’t get enough credit for sitting out Jan 6, really exposing it for what it was.
Trump wants a police state crackdown video for Fox. His whole regime is like a special productions series for Fox with Trump in the role of POTUS and Executive Producer. Fight back by making their photo ops nonviolent. Stand vigil with funny protest signs, or better yet, have a dance party with funny protest signs! Call them what they are, violent anti-American, anti-democracy, anti-rule of law, anti-human rights fascists; although, try to do it with clever chants that go over well on Tik Tok and Instagram. Not my okay boomer mansplaining.
I'm familiar with the stupid bigotry in all this of course, it's always been around, but I'm utterly dumbfounded by the bad economics: alienating any customer that isn't a straight white Christian male and his unfortunate loved ones is NOT a growth business model?! Hard to believe this is what the Big Tech oligarchy signed up for but then again there's Musk and Thiel denouncing diversity and democracy on the regular for years now. Culture war markets are big enough perhaps, tens of thousands show up for a genocidal homophobe, but the biggest markets, say, Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, just for one counter example, are diverse and multicultural by the nature of their scale. That's just how it is.
The reality is we've always been a multicultural diverse country; women, non-whites, secular non-Christians, non-straights, non-capitalists, etc. In a way this is perhaps the central democratic insight: that the only attainable and sustainable cultural unity-- y pluribus unum-- or 'more perfect union' is in respect for our diversity, which requires placing limits on ambitions such that they do not turn into tyrannies. In principle it's not really that complicated, a sort of secularized take on the golden rule: universal freedom and justice for all depends on laws that prevent tyranny in all its forms.
Yes, upholding these constitutional laws would likely preclude Billionaires and most definitely the "unitary executive theory." This is a nub of our constitutional crisis. People can pretend they do not get this for only so long before they become annoying, if not violently hateful and desperately anti-social; like the current regime and its domestic terrorizing sponsors.
That speech to the Generals this past week was one of his worst. For one, he is obviously not well. But, foremost, because his blathering is divisive and will obviously only trigger more violence, ordering the military to prepare for assaults on Blue cities. Give me a fucking break! It is endlessly stunning how apocalyptic is the path he has taken the country down. None of this will build a better world. Building an AI surveillance state without human rights protections isn't building a better future. It's choosing the techno-fuedal fortress state and collective "deaths of despair" self-destruction over facing the reforms needed to build a democratic, peaceful, and sustainable future. Reforms I might add that would almost certainly leave all the rich still rich.
Look at his would-be builders, Vought, Miller, Hegseth, RFK jr., Musk, et al, all like him actually con men and destroyers; crude disrupters and power control freaks. The only optimism I see available here is that anything so destructive cannot last. Eventually people who want a future and want a government that builds for the future will figure this out and overthrow this tyranny.