Decoding Trump's Project 2025, Part 6

Even across disparate agencies and policies, the common theme is that the cruelty and destruction are not side effects -- they are the objective.

As we continue grinding through the monstrosity of Project 2025, another big-picture theme emerges.

What is the point of this entire document? Why does it exist? Yes, yes, it’s a blueprint for exercising power (a “Mandate for Leadership” in their parlance), etc., etc. But that’s the what. What about the why? What’s it all for?

We’ve already talked about the Kremlinization: the overarching goal of dismantling the federal government’s functions, not to eliminate them, but to privatize them, to co-opt them, to own them and exploit them, by a cadre of American oligarchs. (If we want to see what that looks like, look no further than Elon Musk. Now imagine a dozen or two Musks, running the entire country as untouchables above the law and beyond accountability, in a symbiotic relationship with a supreme leader in charge of dividing up the spoils.)

Yet there is another why in Project 2025. It’s disenfranchisement on a massive scale, to completely reboot the definition of “American,” stripping it from millions of people — so that the crumbling right wing might actually reclaim the mantle of “majority.” And one of their primary weapons in that disenfranchisement is cruelty.

Stochastic terrorism in action - though if Trump had had his way, it would have been the military firing bullets into the crowd.

It’s the “shock and awe” of the Iraq War, applied domestically. Separate families, tear children away from their parents, lock the children in cages, and it will “send a message.” That was literally the policy of the Trump administration. “Send a message” among immigrants so that they would think twice about trying to come to America.

Or consider Trump ordering the military to open fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians protesting in Lafayette Square in front of the White House.

It is terrorism, literally. Random — or to use the nerdy term, stochastic — violence, meant to disorient targets, to scramble their brains, to cow them into submission and silence. The goal is to break people psychologically.

These wanton acts of cruelty may take many forms: physical violence, physical displacement, emotional violence, destruction of property or of things we hold dear. All the better to expel or oppress undesirable populations — and to exhaust the will to resist among us all.

When we view Project 2025 through this lens, seemingly disparate policies start to make a lot more sense.

Terrorism through policy

Take, for example, one proposal that’s been a bit obscure so far, buried in the section on the Department of Housing and Urban Development. There, Ben Carson (yes, that Ben Carson, who was HUD Secretary under Trump) proposes expelling non-citizens, including all mixed-status families, from living in any federally assisted housing.

This is another case of the boredom-fascism sandwich: on the surface, a very dry policy point, but one that would mean a massive assault on millions.

Under this proposal, even legal immigrants with visas or even with green cards, would be evicted from their homes — and not just what we think of as “public housing.” It would also encompass what’s known as “Section 8” housing, under the federal program that provides partial subsidies for low-income tenants to be able to afford their rent. Together with publicly-owned housing, a total of over 5 million Americans live in some kind of federally assisted housing.

So, even if a household contains native-born citizen children, with visa-holding or green-card-holding parents or other relatives, the entire family would be evicted — and then could struggle to find another home. Or perhaps they could find alternate housing, but it would mean longer commutes, lost jobs, ripping children from their schools, ripping seniors from their communities.

This is a lower-key version of the family separation policy — an act of cruelty meant to send a message to immigrant families: “You are not welcome here: go back where you came from.”

And when you combine this with the proposals regarding Homeland Security, regarding “denaturalization,” and with the statements from Trump proposing the deportation of legal immigrants, it is crystal clear that immigrants — again, critically, even legal, documented immigrants, and even potentially permanent residents (i.e. green card holders) and naturalized citizens — will not only be kicked out of their homes but also kicked out of the country.

Appetite for destruction

Or consider the proposals for wanton destruction of our nation’s natural heritage, our wilderness areas, our national parks and national monuments. Project 2025’s section on the Department of the Interior simply views America as a place where fossil fuels are stored — and are waiting to be drilled, strip-mined, deforested, destroyed. And if that hurts those of us who treasure those natural wonders, if it breaks our spirits, all the better from their perspective.

Or consider the proposed perversion of the Department of Justice, which already is hampered by a culture of caution, a fear of taking on the most difficult cases. Under Project 2025, Trump would have the complete control to review — and to kill — any cases he does not like (including, of course, against himself and his cronies, including everyone involved with January 6, who would likely also receive pardons), and the FBI would lose its historic independence, being placed under control of the attorney general and thus the president. And the FBI would be defunded.

Worthy operations against foreign intelligence operations — think: bots and other ops from Russia or China — would be shut down. So would the Civil Rights Division as we know it. Instead, DOJ’s resources would be redirected toward prosecuting anyone engaging in diversity efforts — as well as patients taking abortion medications and the pharmacists who prescribe them.

All of these efforts are meant to “shock and awe” us. Have the threat of a criminal prosecution directed at you, and you will likely be paralyzed. This is what happened to the providers who should have saved the life of Amber Thurman in Georgia — but under Georgia’s criminalization of healthcare, the doctors and nurses were shocked and awed into inaction. When they finally brought Thurman into the operating room a day later, it was too late, and she died of sepsis and massive organ failure.

Not every act of terrorism requires a bomb or an order to open fire. Many of them simply require an eviction notice, a knock on the door and an implied threat of violence for noncompliance, or even the veiled threat of an indictment. Yet the intended result — and the actual result — is the same. Obedience. And silence. Including silence as other people are displaced, detained, dragged away, or left to die.

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Next, we’ll look at how Trump’s blueprint for the Department of Labor makes Project 2025 the most anti-worker policy document in decades — along with their planned attacks on Transportation, Veterans’ Affairs, and Commerce.