Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
I grew up during the late sixties and early seventies when youth counterculture was king. Rock and roll, pot, LSD, free love, and political activism were all part of the scene. The country was sharply divided along political lines—just as it is now. Protests and clashes, sometimes violent, over the Vietnam War marked the line between generations as well as political ideologies. The left demanded peace while the “establishment” wanted to stop the red evil communism before it reached our shores.
As the conflict escalated, protests, college sit-ins, and street demonstrations mounted. Sometimes things became violent. At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, activist Karleton Armstrong planted a bomb in a research center, accidentally killing a studnet. The American viewing public was appalled when police brutally mauled and beat anti-war protestors at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago on national TV.
In 1971, William Powell published The Anarchist Cookbook, a handbook designed to instruct the masses in the art of hand-to-hand combat, the manufacture of explosives, drugs, booby traps, demolition, surveillance, and other activities related to mass anarchy. Although the book was denounced by various anarchist groups, it persisted as an icon of the counter-culture movement. Many would-be revolutionaries had one on their bookshelves.
Today, sixty years later, another publication is providing a blueprint for a new vision for America. Sponsored by the far-right think tank The Heritage Foundation and drawing support from elements of Christian nationalism, Project 2025: Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promisi is a comprehensive manual for dismantling American democracy piece-by-piece.
Spawned at conservative Hillsdale College, this nine-hundred-page document has four “pillars”. According to CBS News, the first section outlines policy for the White House; secondly, it establishes a database for those deemed suitable to serve in that administration, training for those workers named the “Presidential Administration Academy”, and a blueprint of actions for that administration to follow.
While this hardly sounds as militant or dangerous as a handbook for making Molotov cocktails or booby traps, Project 2025 is a well-planned, well-coordinated, and insidious plot to wrest the ruling power of this country from the people and hand it to a narrow-minded, avaricious, greedy, and cruel-hearted elite—a far cry from the sixties hippies and would-be revolutionaries. All they wanted to do was stop the killing.
Based on an interpretation of executive unitary theory stating that all aspects of the executive branch of federal government, including the Justice Department, the FBI, the FCC, Department of Homeland Security, Health and Social Services, and Department of Defense are under the direct control of the president. Following this dictum and using the legion of presidential appointees indoctrinated through the Presidential Administration Academy, Project 2025 demands that the president would have complete control over these departments—and the executive branch of our government.
Project 2025 also recommends terminating the Department of Education, cutting Social Security and Medicare, and explicitly outlawing abortion in all circumstances. It would also terminate legal protections based on sexual identity or gender status, and curtail DEI programs. There is a strong racist undertone in the Project 2025, a tribute to the pro-white Christian nationalist movement that goes back decades.
In short, Project 2025 would end life as we know it in the United States.
Public schools would no longer exist; they would be replaced by privatized charter and religious schools following the religious godly doctrines proclaimed by The Heritage Foundation and its Christian nationalist affiliates. Elected school boards would be abolished. Federal aid to low-income students would also be terminated. Texts and all reading materials would be subjected to the strict scrutiny of the Christian far right. An example of what this might look like can be seen in some Florida charter schools, where textbook producers like Abeka produce lessons that, according to the Orlando Sentinel, teach the following:
“Some private schools in Florida that rely on public funding teach students that dinosaurs and humans lived together, that God’s intervention prevented Catholics from dominating North America and that slaves who “knew Christ” were better off than free men who did not.”
Social services would be cut. Those unable to care for themselves will be left to sink or swim. The Affordable Care Act will most definitely not survive this onslaught. Abortion will be strictly illegal. Even women needing to terminate their pregnancies in order to save their own lives would not be eligible. They will be left to die. Tragically, in Georgia, which has abortion laws similar to the Project 2025 mandates, we have seen that happen. Two women died after being refused medical care because of these draconian laws.
A broader view of family—not specifically detailed in Project 2025—has been clumsily articulated by Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance, who has proclaimed that couples with children should be given more privileges than those without. He has specifically stated that families with children—and they must be biological children—should pay less in taxes and even have more votes than singles or childless couples. These ideas, lifted straight from Christian nationalist doctrine, are eerily reminiscent of the dystopian vision of authoritarian theocracy The Handmaid’s Tale.
Project 2025 also recommends getting rid of strategies to eliminate greenhouse gases, nullifying President Biden’s executive orders to mitigate climate change, downsizing the EPA and abolishing the NOAA. Not surprisingly, 2025 encourages gas and oil industries to increase production. It also try to reverse the classification of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. In short, Project 2025 is an oilman’s dream. Drill, baby, drill!
This is only the tip of a very large and very dangerous iceberg.
Although Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have disavowed any knowledge and have attempted to distance themselves from Project 2025, they are inextricably and unconditionally linked to it. J.D. Vance knows Kevin Roberts, the author of 2025, and has publicly praised him. He also wrote the foreword to Project 2025, using violent language like “circling the wagons” and “loading the muskets”. He and Trump are both shoulder-deep in this warped vision of an all-white, all-Christian, and male-dominated America.
The Anarchist Cookbook was a manual for kitchen revolutionaries. While it made the sixties anti-war activists seem just a little more frightening, it was nothing compared to the comprehensive, far-reaching, and draconian aspirations of Project 2025. The hippies just wanted the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam (which was, incidentally, the smart thing to do) while Project 2025 is a masterplan to destroy our democracy and replace it with a cohort of self-serving, self-righteous, and self-important extremists. They refuse to see what America is; all they see is what they think it used to be, and—in their fear and loathing of diversity and choice—want to make this perverted vision a reality for all of us.
Make no mistake. If Trump wins in 2024, there will be no more elections. He and the forces behind Project 2025 will make sure of that. He’s already talked about being a dictator, imprisoning his enemies, and getting rid of elections.
Take him seriously. Vote.