Project 2025 is the Blueprint of the #GOPDystopia and Milgram Predicts our Response

SUMMARY: Since the Republicans aren’t even trying to hide their designs for #GOPDystopia in which they squeeze every cent out of the middle class. In the recently revealed and reported on Project 2025 and the resounding silence of the establishment Republicans, we can safely assume that they are all in. We can use Stanley Milgram’s obedience study to determine that most of us will respond with a resounding, Meh! That means that there is only one thing that we can do to prevent the impending disaster is…?

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KEYWORDS: Project 2025, #GOPDystopia Stanley Milgram Obedience Study Authoritarianism Democracy Republican Oligarchs

The news of Project 2025 was so shocking and surprising it reverberated even across the rolling Tuscany Hills to the 19th century villa where Ye Olde Blogge decamped for the summer. Even the crusty old Italian baker where we stop for pastries and wine for breakfast was muttering about it under his breath. In short, (a) the conservatives are no longer trying to keep their plans a secret and are now boldly shouting the quiet parts out loud to the rank and vile, reporters, the electorate, god, and everybody. And (b) that faint ringing sound isn’t your tinnitis acting up, it the deafening silence from the Republican establishment giving their tacit approval to the plan.

Project 2025: Implementing the #GOPDystopia

Project 2025 Summarized

For those of you just emerging from your annual summer vacation hangover and have yet to read a gifted New York Times article or catch up to the pontificating pundits on all of the cable TVs and Interwebs talking heads shows, we’ll make a quick summary of the claims.

• END THE INDEPENDENCE OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS like the Department of Justice so that he can ORDER investigations of those on his enemies list. This freedom from political interference extends to other agencies, like the Federal Communications Commission so he can silence media critics Viktor Orban style, and the Federal Trade Commission so that he can build giant trusts and end consumer protection so we all have the joy of living in Cancer Alley, renting from megalandlords, drinking Flint water, using Texas utilities, and dying quickly and quietly when we are no longer able to transfer wealth to the one percent. They mean that all of the federal agencies will implement the Republican Party 2024 platform: what the fuck makes the richest people richer.
• IMPOUNDING Congressional funding like a common Trump not distributing funds to Ukraine until we get a favor. It’s a quaint Nixon tactic that earned him the long-sense forgotten moniker, the Imperial Presidency. What’s that about forgetting history? Can you forget what you were never taught? Just because a Democratically controlled congress passed a budget, overrode a Republican president’s veto, and allocated money for free lunch programs for poor kids, just for example, doesn’t mean the Executive branch has to do it, just ask SCOTUS, especially if it offends Amy Coathanger Barrett’s sincerely held religious beliefs, amirite?
• ENDING CIVIL SERVICE EMPLOYMENT PROTECTIONS so that those who are too bent on doing their jobs like ACCURATELY PREDICTING the path of a hurricane instead of changing its path to clean up the statement the squatter in the Oval Office made because his notes were soaking in the puddle of piss left by the pee-hookers he’d been paying to piss on the Resolute Desk, Constitution, and American freedoms can be fired immediately and any survivors can be intimidated and brow beaten into conforming with what ever whim the old windbag manages to fart that day.

They have a guiding principle for their personnel and staffing decisions:

“Our current executive branch,” Mr. McEntee added, “was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. There is no way to make the existing structure function in a conservative manner. It’s not enough to get the personnel right. What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025

This statement buggers the question, What is a conservative manner? The answer, of course, is whatever makes the oligarchs more money.

Conservative Manner: Of the Oligarchs, by the Oligarchs, for the Oligarchs

Remember the 2020 Republican Party platform? Whatever Trump wants. The 2024 platform will be whatever makes the oligarchs more money. In the coming GOP Dystopia, we will be allied with the two great oligarchical powers, Russia and China. Everyone will fall quickly into line and the Republicans will have achieved what they’ve always professed to be against, a one-world government of the hundred billionaires while the planet can still support human life, which will be just long enough for the few thousand to construct an abode that will allow them to live out their lives in the luxury they’ve become accustomed.

If the Democrats lose the White House or even the Senate in 2024, authoritarianism will reign not only across the US, but the world. It will just take a little bit longer to get here if the Dems manage to hold onto one or the other houses of Congress or the White House.

Once the GOP gets into office, there will be no getting them out. How do we know this? Stanley Milgram.

Milgram’s Obedience Experiment Predicts the #GOPDystopia

Milgram Summarized

Everyone who’s take an intro to psy class at uni knows the infamous obedience experiment. What most of us don’t know is that it has been replicated — albeit humanely — several times and the findings hold up. For those of us who may not have had the privilege, I’ll outline the study and its findings here.

• Ostensibly, the study was examining the effect of punishment on learning. The teacher was to administer an electric shock to the learner every time they got an answer wrong.
• With each wrong answer, the electric shock got more severe until it reached a deadly level.
• The panel with the electric shock switches were conveniently labeled with the voltage, and words like intense, very intense, extremely intense, dangerous, and then three ominous x’s. Just in case the hapless teacher had any doubts.
• There was an administrator in a lab coat who monitored the teacher and encouraged them to continue should they voice concerns.
• The learner and the administrator were both cohorts in the experiment following scripts. In fact, after the learner was strapped into the machine — in another room so that they would be out of sight; all communication was via intercom — they released themselves and simply operated a recorded response for each question.
• Similarly, the administrator followed a script. They said things like, “The experiment requires that you continue,” when the teacher objected. If the teacher objected a fourth time, the administrator relented.
• The learner started crying out in pain when the shocks reached 150 volts. To really make sure that the teachers understood what was happening, Milgram did a couple of things:
  • He had the learner explain about a heart condition in front of the teacher.
  • He let the teacher feel the mildest shock.
  • He had the learner complain about his heart.
  • The teacher heard a loud thump over the intercom and the learner never responded after that strongly suggesting that the learner had died.
• Eighty percent of Milgram’s teachers went all the way to 450 volts. To be sure, they voiced concerns and were clearly disturbed by what they were doing, but they did it anyway.
• In the replication, the experiment stopped at 150 volts and the first complaints of pain because in Milgram’s study the participants that went to 150 went all the way, they reasoned, what’s the point of fake killing the fake learner?
• A third of the participants stopped at or before 150 volts.
• BONUS content: Can you imagine being a participant and finding out that the real point of the study was to see if you’d kill someone just be dude in a lab coat told you to, and you did!? You’d feel real good about your contributions to science, wouldn’t you?

Two-Thirds Go Meh!

What does Milgram have to do with the GOP’s attempt to hijack our democracy so that one hundred billionaires can become five-hundred billionaires before the climate finally exits the bottom of the toilet? Two-thirds of us will shrug and go Meh as we cut down the last tree in the rainforest and name our latest tumor because that’s the social media trend of the moment and somebody in a fancy uniform told us to.

We cannot do the following to save us:

• Corporations no matter how much or often we boycott them.
• Government institutions no matter how often we protest or even riot.
• The courts no matter what th Constitution, the law, or any other legal norms or traditions we have.
• Meming on social media no matter how good of a meme it is.
• Protest marches no matter how many millions attend.
• Third party candidates no matter how righteous their cause or flawed the Democratic candidate is.
• Other voters no matter how high an issue is polling.

Only YOU Can Save Our Democracy

There is only one thing that will save our democracy an save our habitat: YOUR VOTE for the straight Democratic ticket.

Image Attribution

“Dystopia” by shelmac is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.