Eliminating the Middle Man

I returned from my annual vacation at the lake up north two weeks ago.  After unpacking and getting back into the routine I decided I needed to catch up on some of the television I had missed.  One of my regular watches is Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and I had two episodes to binge.

The first episode was a stark eye-opening expose on Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's manifesto for changing the US government substantially while nearly ensuring Republicans never step down from power ever again.  The second episode was a preview of what happened in England on the 4th of July.  The Conservatives/Tories, the right-leaning mainstream party in England (at that point), was on the verge of a historic drubbing, a massive loss at the polls. This was due to the public completely losing faith in them for changing the country dramatically for the worse.

The episode for Project 2025 was terrifying.  Project 2025 is a culmination of various extremist policies from the far-right Heritage Foundation mashed into a tyrannical manifesto, something many in Trump's circle have said will be initiated on Day 1 of his next term.  It's part Christian Nationalist takeover (no abortion nationwide, no contraception, removal of LGBTQIA+ rights, forced Christian education, killing no-fault divorce, installing a Christiananity über alles society), part MAGA buzzword policy (Getting rid of all DEI programs, eleimating African American and Gender studies at all level of education, no teaching of slavery in America, nationwide book banning), an extreme far right policy wish list (eliminate all unions and worker's rights, elimination of all climate change policies, immediate opening of all America to fossil fuel drilling, ending public education in America, no taxes on the wealthy, while massive tax increases on the middle and lower class, raising retirement age, killing Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, the EPA, FDA, the NOAA, and more), and totalitarian regime installation (streamline death penalites, banning Muslims from even entering the US, ordering troops into American communities as an extreme police force, getting rid of the FBI, concentration camps to deport millions of people including established American citizens). As bad as all that sounds, it's not even scratching the surface.  You need to read up on it.  It is terrifying.  Google 'Project 2025' and then realize the extent of Trump's authoritarian power takeover and destruction of the American economy. (Read: https://www.axios.com/2024/07/02/trump-2025-imperial-us-presidency and https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/can-trump-replace-income-taxes-tariffs#:~:text=For%20starters%2C%20it%20would%20cost,the%20poor%20and%20middle%20class.)

The episode on the foreseen upheaval of the Tories was just as interesting.  After 14 years of Trump/GOP/MAGA-like promises, the floor had finally fallen out underneath Britain.  The Conservatives did two things that eventually doomed them.  The first was Brexit, the UK leaving the European Union with promises that everything would be the same as it was before but better.  I'm not sure if the Conservatives really were stupid enough to think the EU would give England the same rights as a member, or if they thought they could strong-arm the EU, but neither happened.  Britain's economy is in shambles as they are losing 100 BILLION pounds a year to lost business.  As bad as the fallout is from that, the austerity measures the Tories put into place are actually much worse.  They have taken a country with a fairly reliable social safety net system and what used to be one of the better government-run medical systems in the world and gutted them, leaving the citizens of Britain in a bleak crisis. The benefactor of all of these cuts has been England's super-rich, who have seen their wealth skyrocket, while the average Brit is making 10,000 pounds per year less than when the Conservatives took over.  The ensuing beatdown at the polls on July 4th was pretty astounding, their worst loss of all time, going from 371 seats to a paltry 121.

It was very interesting to see these two episodes back to back. On one side you saw the outrageous conservative policies the US Right is bragging about installing.  On the other side were the eventual consequences of those Far Right policies, exposed for the lies and fraud that they always were, leading to a public rejection of them, on par with the turnover from Republicans to Democrats in 1930 and 1932. 

It made me ask this question:  Can we just eliminate the middle man and prevent from the US collapsing, preventing us from having to get to the point of the Right's willfully belligerent Republican voters come to the realization the people they were voting for were never on their side? 

The problem is making the standard Trump voter understand they are being lied to openly.  Let's take one of the issues from Project 2025/the Trump campaign: the elimination of public schools as we know it. 

The Republican voter applauds this because of a very simple delusion; "Clearly the Trump Republicans are not going to take away MY kid's public school."  Republican voters, when they hear a Republican politician say we'll eliminate public education hear "We're going to shut down those inner city schools where the minority kids waste my taxpayer dollars, but not my kids nearly all white wholesome rural school." No doubt the Republicans are going to shut the metro schools down (maybe not the wealthier suburban high schools which are quite popular, the schools where the majority of the GOP donations come from), but all the rural schools will be on the chopping block too. When the reality starts to hit, Republicans will tell their voters "Well we can't shut down the minority schools without shutting down your school.  Even though it's not ideal, we think it's the best option." This is a variation on the already blue-collar Republican voter accepted "Well your taxes have to go up but the wealthy people get a tax cut because they're the 'job creators.'" 

Let's just eliminate the middleman, preventing the suffering that will ensue when these outrageous Project 2025 policies destroy us.  Not only do I not want people to suffer needlessly, while all their money is filtered up to the handful of wealthy Republican kingmakers, but look at the Project 2025 agenda.  This will hurt and kill a lot of people!  There is a real question of whether America will ever get another chance to pick the people who represent them.  But that's kind of the whole point of Project 2025.  After 30 years of Jimmy-rigging the system to allow the minority Republicans to maintain power, they're still losing base and can't win even with the unfair advantages they've given themselves.  This whole Project 2025/Trump agenda is about seizing power and never relinquishing it. 

We can avoid all of that by making sure Trump loses in November.  It's the only way we can save America.