American Putsch

In Donald Trump's American Putsch, it's hard to tell the police from the terrorists.

by Shawn K. Inlow Putsch: (noun) - a plotted revolt or attempt to overthrow a government, especially one that depends upon suddenness and speed.

You can watch President Trump, seen HERE in a 2022 speech before the Heritage Foundation, thanking conservative plotters for their work on Project 2025, a 1,000 page blueprint for establishing fascism in the United States. "The critical job of Heritage is to lay the groundwork. And Heritage does an incredible job at that," said Trump. "They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do ... when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America and that's coming. That's coming." When the PLAN became public during the 2024 general election, it became widely reviled and seemed a live political hand grenade that Trump had to distance himself from.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” said Trump in a post on his social media site, the laughably named Truth Social. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Listen. When a person tells you two opposite things, you add that person to your list of liars. We all know Trump is a liar of magnificent proportions. But the lie is not the story. The story is how perfectly prescient THIS post is in describing what Project 2025 would do if it was implemented. Let's have a look, shall we?

It has been widely predicted that the implementation of Project 2025 would erode protections of the LGBTQ+ community. Trump has issued a sweeping set of executive orders and directives that amount to one of the most extenisve rollbacks of LGBTQ+ and DEI rights in history by ordering binary-only identity on things like passports and banning terms like "gender identity." Trump has halted federal funding for gender affirming care and directed agencies to scrub LGBTQ+ content from websites. Humorously and stupidly, as a result, the U.S. Department of Defense removed mention of the famous B-29 that dropped the first nuclear bomb, the "Enola Gay," simply because it had the word "gay" in it. Never mind that it was the name of the pilot's mother. It got even stupider when the D.O.D. scrubbed pages about Jackie Robinson's military career claiming that such pages advanced diversity, equity and inclusion. Jackie fucking Robinson. Trump also banned transgender people from military service and removed legal protections, the effect of which would be to allow federal contractors, shelters and schools to discriminate.

Project 2025 would limit abortion access.

While abortion itself was not outlawed federally, (I mean, who knows when Trump or one of his cronies will need to pay for one.) Trump has passed many federal actions that have narrowed coverage, intensified legal uncertainty and strengthened state-level bans, making it difficult to get an abortion, especially in medical emergencies, particularly in rural areas and in underserved populations. Project 2025 would stop efforts to mitigate climate change.

Trump has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement twice, in 2017 and now in 2025. Trump's EPA has revoked climate and pollution rules with 31 deregulatory actions and over 100 policy changes, undoing decades of climate and health protections.

Project 2025 would dismantle democracy as we know it. Trump has engaged in a policy war inside the government and out. He has enacted policies to bring law enforcement agencies, like the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, under his control and used them to begin prosecutions of his percieved political enemies. Trump has used the federal government to attack institutions of higher learning by cutting federal funding for research and attempting to force universities to restrict certain kinds of instruction and favor others. The administration has even tried to ban universities from admitting foreign students, thus eliminating one of the most massive "trade imbalances" that the U.S. enjoys on the global stage: That of higher learning, which brings $44 Billion to U.S. shores per year. Clearly, an American education is among the best in the world and as such, it brings innovators to our shores, many of whom begin businesses and technologies of their own that become "American" companies. Trumpists want the dumbing down of the U.S., I believe, the better to control the proles. A less educated voter is less likely to balk at the bullshit they're selling.

Trump wants to know how government employees feel. It's a simple question and you'd better know the correct answer!

Trump has turned the government against law firms which represented clients he doesn't like, undermining a key tenet of both justice and the rule of law. The administration has also railed against the many sitting judges who have ruled against his many efforts to "rule by fiat;" that is, his attempts to change laws by executive order rather than doing it the constitutional way, by having Congress enact changes to the law.

Trump has issued orders to change the definition of civil service jobs to make them political appointments. This means instead of having, say, a scientist in charge of the Centers for Disease Control, you might instead get someone who is not an expert, but who is loyal to the President. Example: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the secretary of Health and Human Services; Pam Bondi as our country's top law enforcement officer, the Attorney General at the Department of Justice; Kash Patel at the F.B.I. and at least half the U.S. Supreme Court. The list of stooges and yes-men goes on and on and on.

Project 2025 calls for proposals that will separate women from their children.

True again. And these are not isolated incidents. Nationwide, ICE is conducting aggressive sweeps in homes, workplaces, churches and schools, detaining individuals without warrant and without criminal histories and jailing them without filing charges. There are many documented cases of families being split apart leaving children with no parents.

These attacks by ICE and Homeland Security Investigations have recently been buttressed by the federal deployment of National Guardsmen and even the U.S. Marines. These are shocking violations of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the use of the U.S. military to enforce domestic law.

It isn't like Trump hasn't tried this before. In 2018, under his "zero tolerance" policy, thousands of children were taken from their parents by the U.S. Border Patrol and sent to detention centers around the country with no reliable system to track the detained kids or to reunite them with their families. This resulted in the mass traumatization of the kids in question, who were often housed in cages like dogs. A federal judge described the "family separation policy" as "lacking due process and called the administration's tracking capability "startling" and "chaotic." Talk about damning with faint praise? How about "cruel" and "inhumane"? But this is the policy of the Trumpers. A hateful, sad response to people fleeing their home countries and trying for a better life.

Crucially here, in the overall play of dusting up the issue of "immigration reform" into one that requires a military response, Jeffrey Clark, a former Trump official who attempted to usurp control of the Justice Department in a failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election, is back again. He's leading an effort that would allow the President to use the military against U.S. citizens. And, despite the Heritage Foundation denying this effort then, here we are today, with U.S. Marines deployed in Los Angeles to put down American protest.

So what is a citizen to do in the middle of an American Putsch? Trump and his skulkers know they have to act fast, with a kind of democratic shock and awe, to systematically damage the support structures that actually make America great. Trump wants relief, and has gotten it from the corrupt Supreme Court, from accountability to the law. His corporate billionaire bros want more federal contracts and less government regulation so they can rape the public treasury that we support with our tax dollars. They THINK, and they always have believed, that they owned the world. But to ACTUALLY get the deed to the world, they needed Project 2025. Damage enough pillars, and maybe the government collapses. Make law enforcement not only your lap dog but also your attack dog. Take over the courts so that you can get favorable rulings when you need them. And ignore the rulings you don't like. Damage the legal profession by making lawyers afraid to represent your enemies. Ravage higher education so that your political ideology becomes core curriculum. Undermine journalism with a fake news network of your own design and then scream "fake news" at everyone else so that the very nature of an objective truth becomes slippery; so that people can no longer tell truth from untruth; so that "alternative facts" become something other than lies.

Cow Congress and make representatives bow down to your fascist ideology. Elect morally flexible yes-men who will do as you say so that they can get a bite of the fascist pie. Wrest control of the military and use it to put down dissent and eventually political opposition.

Federal agents forcibly removed Sen. Alex Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, from a news conference down the hall from his own office.

Friends, there is coming a time worse than Kent State. The Marines, for the first time ever, have detained a U.S. citizen in Los Angeles. Never mind that Marcos Leao, 27, was an Army veteran (who happens to be black) going to the V.A. on an errand. Never mind it was in the very same building where F.B.I. agents on Thursday forcibly removed Senator Alex Padilla (who is of Latino heritage) from a news conference down the hall from his own office. Now for a bit of opinion. If you think Donald Trump is leaving in four years, you've got another think coming. Trump tried to use violence to stay in power last time when nothing else worked. This time, he's salting the ground for a complete takeover. Trump has three and a half years to go. Our democracy, as predicted by critics of Project 2025, is under seige. Mass protest is a good start. But more is needed. Americans who have republican yes-men, toadies and stooges for representation need to find ways to convince their representatives to stand up for what's right. All it would take is one or two U.S. Representatives to change their affiliation to either democrat or independent and the levers of control would begin to slip from Trump's hands. The mid-term elections have to be overwhelming defeats for such representatives. Because after that, I'm not sure voters are going to matter anymore. Trump has said so, himself, at a July 26, 2024 speech at Turning Point Action's "Believers Summit." “Christians," he said, "Get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it anymore. Four more years … you won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians.” In the end, Trump is a full grown mutate of the corporate ideology of Nixon and Reagan. He uses misinformation, greed, fear, bullying and force to amp up a hateful rhetoric that appeals to a minority of voters. Just enough support to take over a minority party in these United States. Then he uses that minority to gain a slim control of a gerrymandered Congress, where democrats have to work 1/3 harder to gain the same representation as the minority. Then he uses that slim minority power to convince you that he has true power. This is how dictatorships are born. Then, my friends, all it takes is a plan and some big balls, a Supreme Court nominee here, a toady at the helm of the Justice Department there, and when it all breaks down...

The military will start shooting.

And that's game over. ________________________________________________________________________

Thanks for reading today. I'd like to invite you to join me on several other platforms. I've got a free serialized sci-fi novel over on Substack. It's called "Solid," and it deals with a not too distant world that's sliding into climate change chaos and how an unusual young girl unknowingly has the key to the future. A new chapter publishes every Tuesday. I write every Thursday on objective truth and critical thinking over on X+Y Blog. Articles so far have included "Mental Hygiene, Intellectual Character and the Bullshit Artist," and, "Fox News: The Crux of What Divides Us," and most recently, "The Truth of the Matter - Sources." Weekends at this space here on Culture and Criticism, I'm usually dealing with politics and my particular nightmare reflections on our society. I promise you it isn't always so grim as today's reading. Sometimes, you can read the journal I found that my father kept in 1979. Other times you can go to a Tesla Takedown with me. Anyway, much love to you. Thank you for dropping by. And until next time, Enjoy!