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  • The Unite the Right Rally happened in 2017. Qanon began in 2017. There was still infighting in the republican party in 2017. They were still trying to solidify support behind their movement. Now they have more support. Before 2017, the heritage foundation helped Ronald Reagan get elected. The simple answer to your question is that things progress over time.

    Unite the Right was a very bad thing. They chanted "Blood and Soil" and "Jews Will Not Replace Us". I watched it as it happened. The counter-protestors at the rally were Socialist groups. If you watch the video of the attack on Heather Heyer, the counter-protestors were carrying IWW banners. The media never talked about that. Then Trump very famously said "There were very fine people on both sides"

    There is a similarity between Project 2025 and Unite the Right. Both things have been co-opted by the Democratic party. Joe Biden claims that he was inspired to run for president because of Unite the Right, which is bull shit. He even said this again at his most recent debate with Donald Trump. Biden is taking actual threat from the right wing and using them as a threat so that he can be elected and then he's not going to do anything about it.

    Republicans do actually want to do Project 2025, just as they supported Unite the Right. You should not be saying "Project 2025 isn't a real threat". You should be saying "Joe Biden is not going to do anything to stop Project 2025." Just as Joe Biden did nothing to stop the overturning of Roe V Wade or countless other rulings of the supreme court during his presidency. Just as the Democrats didn't hold a real primary. Just as Joe Biden has no political policies even listed on his website.

  • Project 2025 is a repackaging of the same shit they have been pushing for decades now. It’s just the latest strategy and it’s taken the form it has because Trump’s incompetence genuinely impacted his ability to pull the trigger on the agenda during his first term. His team hadn’t been focusing on preparing candidates for political appointments, for example. This is a direct response to the shortcomings of his first term. They’re adapting.

  • because they could be slowed down by court challenges and eat shit in the next election for doing wildly unpopular legislation in 2017

    this is literally what we talk about when imagining how the democrats could be more successful, the republicans did it they packed the courts and are getting ready to shove through their agenda more efficiently this go-round

  • Incompetence? Lack of will? Kinda hard to say

    The truth of the matter is the executive, the president, can just fire a ton of "non political" "career" federal workers from agencies that they wish to cripple. Surely Trump was informed of this within weeks it not months of being in office and from there it's not like it takes much to have someone provide him the biggest list possible from all the agencies he wants to fuck over and then proceed with the firings.

    It kinda suggests to me either even Trump recognizes this is an absolute, top tier, gun in the mouth situation if he did it or like maybe the less absolute ideologically psychotic right wingers (like Jared who seems to be all about enriching himself, building up imperial power and stuff and not so much about just bulldozing the entire infrastructure of the country he's robbing blind with his father in law) blocked the stuff from getting to Trump's desk. Or blocked him from taking it seriously, something like that. Because ultimately the fact can't be avoided that Trump could have just done it last time and yet he didn't for some reason and the "why not?" and "will he this time?" are legitimate questions.

    This has been a goal of the republicans for like 40-50 years though so I'm sick of democrats calling it project 2025. It's like project 1970 or some shit

    • I forget where I was listening to it (perhaps the Chapo interview with Ryan Grim and Jeremy Scahill), but they brought up a very good point. The US federal bureaucracy is an absolutely leviathan and sprawling beast, encompassing many extremely specialized disciplines. Assuming executive power and firing everybody is easy. If you wish to debilitate an agency, this is good enough. But if you wish to effectively wield an agency as an ideological instrument, the pool of Steve Bannon-like figures you can staff it with is rather small, lacks the myriad of specific skills, and is completely insufficient.

      These agencies are incapable of being effective without buy-in from the rank and file. You cannot simply fire all 35,000 employees of the FBI (for instance) and find suitable, ideologically pristine replacements on the street corner. You can give a lot of dumb guys guns and batons and run an effective police terror regime, but things like data analysis, resource management, logistics, public relations, maintenance of infrastructure, process improvement, research and development, etc. will all deteriorate. Such a regime is incapable of retaining global hegemony (or even significance) for long.

      • Yes, that's correct, however my counter or whatever is "they don't care." Like legitimately a ton of right wingers do not see the scheme you're describing. They're ideologically driven by "WE DUN WANT NO GUBBMINT!"

        It's sort of an interesting source of infighting between the elite right wingers who want to milk shit vs the base right wingers who want to burn it all down. Well, it's less interesting when you consider that they want to cut all the good parts of the government (regulations, social security) or yeah fully openly weaponizing things like the FBI.

        I have to just assume someone somewhere like maybe a Bannon or maybe a Jared is saying "no, no do not burn this down. We have to just change who is in charge." And yeah finding a "competent" guy to head the FDA but in a pure evil way is hard- I'd sort of argue though that the FDA, EPA, etc. are already totally captured and run in an evil way which raises questions of "what the fuck else more do you guys want?" besides the total destruction strategy.

        It just seems like they got everything they wanted from back in the 1980s and now to justify their eternal war on "the libs" they're just cranking the insanity meter up but the people who have been enriched by the gutting of regulations are like "hello? No. We don't want this totally gone. We are milking the cow, dumbass!"

        I hope I explained that well enough in my rambling

      • Such a regime is incapable of retaining global hegemony (or even significance) for long.

        Omg i hope they do it, please collapse

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