It’s not even been a year. Give it time. The destruction hasn’t had time enough to filter through the system to have the extreme effects that are coming. Recall, Project 2025 had only vetted 50,000 goons to take the place of the more than 211,000 federal employees who have been forced out of their jobs since Chump took office in January 2025 and they’re still goons. The outright lies to federal judges now being admitted to by the DOJ are just surfacing. The private sector statistics on the economy no longer being compiled or reported by the government are just now being published. The SNAP benefits being cut off are just now going into effect. The insurance premiums increasing is just now hitting. The concentration camps are not yet fully online. The war with Venezuela hasn’t yet gone hot. The anti-war movement hasn’t yet started so the rapid deployment of the military units Chump and Kegsbreath are training haven’t been deployed in response yet. Just wait, my friend: the shits and giggles aren’t even full bore yet.
I keep saying, if there's an election in '26, it will be happening in a different political world than anyone has ever seen in the US, at least in the last 100 years. As for '28...
We are way off the map and nobody's prognostications are even set in the same world as the one that is coming.
To throw in 2 cents: I have often doubted that the presidential term limit is a good idea. My understanding from high school has been that the GOP rammed it through as a kind of revenge on FDR. I have often noticed presidents in year 6 are essentially handed emeritus status by the press -- all your opponents know they just have to ride it out now, no need to deal with you anymore. Would FDR have accomplished so much in his second term had he not loomed every day as a man who might win a third? I also believe no one would actually have run for a third until Clinton, who would likely have crushed Bush II and been infinitely better at handling 9/11. So maybe that term limit is bad! But my point is: The term limit turns out to have a secret feature. If you want to go fascist, you almost have to rush it, which leads (I am hoping) to exactly what you're outlining today. Too obvious, too soon. It's a safeguard that almost guarantees the frog jumps out of the pot before it boils.
This excellent post got me talking to Paul Lerner about how violently we both fluctuate between "We are definitely on our way out of this mess" and "We are getting deeper into this mess" — an oscillation that we always attribute either to the effects of the day's news (meaning, the movement that the news seems to illustrate, in either direction) or just to moods; how we feel at any given moment based on the vagaries of psychology; paying attention or not paying attention to politics; etc.
But maybe there's more to it — maybe it connects to Fraenkel's idea, as you're suggesting. If we were to draw up lists of "reasons things are getting better" and "reasons things are getting worse" and then organized them, what would we see? It would all hinge, definitely, on awareness (have the MAGAs caught on? No, they never will...except maybe now they are; they're joining the marches) but also on whom you're referring to (Fraenkel's point about how most people have the luxury of tuning politics out, even during elections).
But I don't know. Could things be getting better and worse at the same time? A historian covering this period wouldn't accept that; he or she would want to show solid trends, cumulatively, over time, right? Or maybe that's just high-school-level history and the real stuff is much more steeped in the complexity of baffling and contradictory periods. I'm curious what you think.
Project 2025 certainly hit the ground running hard.
I think part of their problem is that they expected all that stuff to work, in the sense of making things cheaper and opening up jobs, and had no Plan B for when the opposite happened.
Both Miller and Vought have marinated in conservative thought and jobs their entire careers. Vought has worked for the Heritage Foundation since he got his JD at George Washington Law, after graduating from Duke Miller worked for Jeff Sessions and Michele Bachman before joining the Trump 1.0 administration. They're not "moving fast and breaking things", they are implementing ideology they are convinced is correct and will work they way they've been taught it should, any evidence to the contrary will be dismissed as lies and propaganda.
I don’t think so. The DOGE shit was completely insane, for one thing, and I’m sure Vought was shocked by it himself and has certainly had to spend a lot of hard hours trying to repair it. Not the same for Miller, who was preparing a his moves on immigration more formally while he was working for Sessions, but his military moves have also been insane and his political acts are hysterical. Both are mentally ill. The worst problem for both of them is Trump, though, his impulsiveness and his nutty friends like Kennedy. Miller and Vought have to pretend everything Trump says makes sense and needs to be implemented right away. It makes their lives impossible.
Its all been insane from the start, but in different ways, all based on delusion. Miller has a goal of deporting a million people this year. Project 2025 wants to make porn illegal, abolish the Federal Reserve, and return to the gold standard.
DOGE was a Musk project I believe, starting with the joke name. Musk absolutely believes in moving fast and breaking things, and he did. He believes in his own ideology just as much as Vought and Miller believe theirs, and he's just as delusional. Musk's bloated ego prevented him from managing Trump the way Miller and Vought do, and it cost him his access. They probably consider it a small price to pay in exchange for power they will never come close to having again. Their ideology blinds them to the idea of consequences, and the Trump culture of believing there are no consequences for them doesn't help.
In addition to the total wrongness and evil of the policies — the awful ideas that they believe in — there's an additional problem (that may be our salvation), which is that their understanding of how things work; of how society works and how it can be changed, are totally delusional and naïve.
Trump may be the worst offender in this regard: as "a businessman" he's spent a lifetime effectively promoting himself but presiding over project after project that all fail, because basic commerce is too hard for him and because his overwhelming ego and childishness keep him from learning and growing.
But Miller, Vought and Musk have subtler versions of the same problem: they think they can fix what's wrong with society and government by imposing crude ideologically-based interferences that any reasonable person would immediately realize will never work (because reasonable people pay attention to reality; to studies and history and track records and the weaknesses of systems; they're not zealots or fanatics — or religious types for whom it's a point of pride that they are not thinking reasonably).
Thanks, also, to writers like you—people are catching on! Keep it up!!
Aw thanks
It’s not even been a year. Give it time. The destruction hasn’t had time enough to filter through the system to have the extreme effects that are coming. Recall, Project 2025 had only vetted 50,000 goons to take the place of the more than 211,000 federal employees who have been forced out of their jobs since Chump took office in January 2025 and they’re still goons. The outright lies to federal judges now being admitted to by the DOJ are just surfacing. The private sector statistics on the economy no longer being compiled or reported by the government are just now being published. The SNAP benefits being cut off are just now going into effect. The insurance premiums increasing is just now hitting. The concentration camps are not yet fully online. The war with Venezuela hasn’t yet gone hot. The anti-war movement hasn’t yet started so the rapid deployment of the military units Chump and Kegsbreath are training haven’t been deployed in response yet. Just wait, my friend: the shits and giggles aren’t even full bore yet.
I keep saying, if there's an election in '26, it will be happening in a different political world than anyone has ever seen in the US, at least in the last 100 years. As for '28...
We are way off the map and nobody's prognostications are even set in the same world as the one that is coming.
I'm not saying no on that but I need to see more signs
To throw in 2 cents: I have often doubted that the presidential term limit is a good idea. My understanding from high school has been that the GOP rammed it through as a kind of revenge on FDR. I have often noticed presidents in year 6 are essentially handed emeritus status by the press -- all your opponents know they just have to ride it out now, no need to deal with you anymore. Would FDR have accomplished so much in his second term had he not loomed every day as a man who might win a third? I also believe no one would actually have run for a third until Clinton, who would likely have crushed Bush II and been infinitely better at handling 9/11. So maybe that term limit is bad! But my point is: The term limit turns out to have a secret feature. If you want to go fascist, you almost have to rush it, which leads (I am hoping) to exactly what you're outlining today. Too obvious, too soon. It's a safeguard that almost guarantees the frog jumps out of the pot before it boils.
Huh. Will ponder. Thanks.
This excellent post got me talking to Paul Lerner about how violently we both fluctuate between "We are definitely on our way out of this mess" and "We are getting deeper into this mess" — an oscillation that we always attribute either to the effects of the day's news (meaning, the movement that the news seems to illustrate, in either direction) or just to moods; how we feel at any given moment based on the vagaries of psychology; paying attention or not paying attention to politics; etc.
But maybe there's more to it — maybe it connects to Fraenkel's idea, as you're suggesting. If we were to draw up lists of "reasons things are getting better" and "reasons things are getting worse" and then organized them, what would we see? It would all hinge, definitely, on awareness (have the MAGAs caught on? No, they never will...except maybe now they are; they're joining the marches) but also on whom you're referring to (Fraenkel's point about how most people have the luxury of tuning politics out, even during elections).
But I don't know. Could things be getting better and worse at the same time? A historian covering this period wouldn't accept that; he or she would want to show solid trends, cumulatively, over time, right? Or maybe that's just high-school-level history and the real stuff is much more steeped in the complexity of baffling and contradictory periods. I'm curious what you think.
> Move fast and break things
Project 2025 certainly hit the ground running hard.
I think part of their problem is that they expected all that stuff to work, in the sense of making things cheaper and opening up jobs, and had no Plan B for when the opposite happened.
Both Miller and Vought have marinated in conservative thought and jobs their entire careers. Vought has worked for the Heritage Foundation since he got his JD at George Washington Law, after graduating from Duke Miller worked for Jeff Sessions and Michele Bachman before joining the Trump 1.0 administration. They're not "moving fast and breaking things", they are implementing ideology they are convinced is correct and will work they way they've been taught it should, any evidence to the contrary will be dismissed as lies and propaganda.
I don’t think so. The DOGE shit was completely insane, for one thing, and I’m sure Vought was shocked by it himself and has certainly had to spend a lot of hard hours trying to repair it. Not the same for Miller, who was preparing a his moves on immigration more formally while he was working for Sessions, but his military moves have also been insane and his political acts are hysterical. Both are mentally ill. The worst problem for both of them is Trump, though, his impulsiveness and his nutty friends like Kennedy. Miller and Vought have to pretend everything Trump says makes sense and needs to be implemented right away. It makes their lives impossible.
IDK if you're reading Krugman's newsletter but today he has thoughts along these lines
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/too-cruel-too-soon
Great post
Its all been insane from the start, but in different ways, all based on delusion. Miller has a goal of deporting a million people this year. Project 2025 wants to make porn illegal, abolish the Federal Reserve, and return to the gold standard.
DOGE was a Musk project I believe, starting with the joke name. Musk absolutely believes in moving fast and breaking things, and he did. He believes in his own ideology just as much as Vought and Miller believe theirs, and he's just as delusional. Musk's bloated ego prevented him from managing Trump the way Miller and Vought do, and it cost him his access. They probably consider it a small price to pay in exchange for power they will never come close to having again. Their ideology blinds them to the idea of consequences, and the Trump culture of believing there are no consequences for them doesn't help.
In addition to the total wrongness and evil of the policies — the awful ideas that they believe in — there's an additional problem (that may be our salvation), which is that their understanding of how things work; of how society works and how it can be changed, are totally delusional and naïve.
Trump may be the worst offender in this regard: as "a businessman" he's spent a lifetime effectively promoting himself but presiding over project after project that all fail, because basic commerce is too hard for him and because his overwhelming ego and childishness keep him from learning and growing.
But Miller, Vought and Musk have subtler versions of the same problem: they think they can fix what's wrong with society and government by imposing crude ideologically-based interferences that any reasonable person would immediately realize will never work (because reasonable people pay attention to reality; to studies and history and track records and the weaknesses of systems; they're not zealots or fanatics — or religious types for whom it's a point of pride that they are not thinking reasonably).