This is how Project 2025 destroys lives
The new episode of Ball of Thread shows how Trump perverts the power of the government against anyone who gets in his way
It would be bad enough if Project 2025 were just a 1,000-page plan to turn over government into a machine that only serves the worst fundamentalist and covetous instincts of the right. But that’s just the beginning.
What’s even more immediately terrifying is how it aims to systematically use the awesome power of the state against anyone who stands in the way of Donald Trump and the Corporatist Christo-Fascists who back him.
Before Project 2025, there was Schedule F, which we discussed with
Don Moynihan, who has written extensively about this potential catastrophe for almost four years. Issued at the end of Trump’s last term, this executive order was the clearest sign the MAGA forces who came into power fumbling and backbiting had figured out what was the biggest obstacle in the way of Trump’s attempt to weaponize the enormous power of the executive branch against his opponents.
It was the people, the decent public servants who’d devoted their lives to, ironically enough, public service.
Jill Lawrence explains that this realization was so general across all of MAGA Land that not only Project 2025 but also the Trump campaign’s Agenda47 call for “a broad assault on the 141-year-old merit-based civil-service system that covers over 2 million civilian federal employees across the country.”
Project 2025 also seeks to rectify the dearth of Trump-loving automatons in the federal government with a plan to staff a new administration with Tucker Carlson-loving, oleaginous freaks.
This staffing scheme has allegedly been shuddered or, rather, delayed, along with the new book by the honcho behind Project 2025, with a foreword by JD Vance, of course, as part of Trump’s kayfabe of pretending not to be an eager backer and patron of this effort built almost entirely for his power and pleasure, complete with gratuitous windmill-hating.
But it’s still the core of MAGA’s plans. The signal is still shining, inviting all who seek to oppress the woke for profit and a monarchal sense of patriotism; should Trump take power, it will be the opposite of what happens when the rats flee the ship.
And we know what happens when the rats are in charge. At least, I do after helping Marcy Wheeler put together episode five of Ball of Thread on “Taking Down the FBI.”
Defending the integrity of the FBI or specific FBI agents is not how an aging lefty still rankling about the abuses of the “War on Terror” expected to spend my time.
But Marcy manages to reveal both the personal costs to Trump’s authoritarian targeting of individuals who had the gall to investigate his campaign—even those seeking to protect him from sleazy grifters—and the risk to all Americans that come from our top law enforcement agency living in utter fear of both Trump and the increasingly fascist movement he represents.
This is made all the more complicated by the fact that some agents inside the Bureau are on the side of Trump’s authoritarian targeting. We also know that MAGA-loving agents and some non-MAGA agents high on their self-righteousness have played a key role in destroying the candidacy of one Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and seriously wounding the reelection and family of another, Joe Biden.
Yet it can get so much worse, and we know how that would look due to the treatment of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. These two FBI employees were engaged in an extramarital affair. Their texts on FBI devices and private lives were exposed to the world because they got caught up in the investigation of Donald Trump’s campaign, an inquiry Strzok, in particular, had tried to keep from happening. And as Trump was mocking them, acting out orgasms on their behalf, in front of his crowd, the “leadership” of the FBI and the Department of Justice turned the power of the government against them. Page left the Bureau, and Strzok was fired hours before he was eligible for his pension.
It would be enough to drive many to suicide. And if Page and Strzok hadn’t been so accomplished and surrounded by loved ones more forgiving than MAGA, this story might have a far worse ending. Because of their resilience, they got the DOJ to settle a lawsuit this summer over the obviously illegal release of their texts.
But their now-ritual shaming is still part of Trump’s act and, as Marcy notes, an object lesson for anyone who would dare suggest that the law should bind Donald Trump.
And that lesson succeeded. The FBI didn’t take steps it should have taken before January 6th. Delays of investigations of both January 6th and the stolen document cases can be directly tied to FBI inaction. And, as Marcy notes, you don’t need to jump to partisanship to explain these lapses. FBI leaders may fear getting their agents caught in Trump’s sights. And they should.
That’s how Project 2025 would work and already works.
It’s the realization of Wilhoit’s Law: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
One imperfect man—possibly the most unfaithful man on earth—gets to use someone else’s imperfections to both inflict personal wreckage on his targets and to help him get away with a crime spree unparalleled in American history. All it takes is for the right people in the right spots to see loyalty to Trump as obedience to God.
