Apocalypse Now - Take Two
Feeling exhausted? Powerless? Overwhelmed? It’s not surprising. That’s been the plan since day one.
In the 1979 epic war film Apocalypse Now, a deranged, narcissistic Special Forces Colonel who sees himself as a god is hellbent on destroying everything in his path.
Of course, that was fiction. This is a fact. Welcome to the Project 2025 blitzkrieg.
“You are meant to feel powerless. That is what a strongman wants: to make you feel as if nothing can stop the takeover of your country.
The richest man in the world is destroying parts of the government. A former weekend Fox News host runs the Pentagon. There is the potential for corruption on a huge scale. The global order is being deconstructed. Allies are being humiliated and dictators embraced. Threats of territorial expansion are repeated until they are no longer funny or fanciful. Everything feels extreme.” -Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes.
The rule of law is being usurped, the truth is being twisted, and essential portions of our history are being erased. We are starting trade wars with our allies, embracing despots and dictators, threatening to take over neighboring countries.
Every day, we are hit with a DOGE blitzkrieg of agency closures, mass firings, and major disruptions of critical services and protections for our veterans, senior citizens, farmers, public schools, the environment, and communities hit by floods, fires, hurricanes, and tornadoes.
Critical agencies on the chopping block include Health and Human Services, Veteran’s Affairs, Social Security, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Science Foundation.
Project 2025
As we now know, it was all laid out in Project 2025, a radical political putsch to replace our democracy with an autocracy funded by billionaire oligarchs and cheered on by Christian Nationalists who want to destroy the separation of church and state while forcing their fundamentalist views upon our nation.
These daily, dramatic attacks on our institutions are deliberate “shock and awe” designed to keep us so stunned, overwhelmed, and immobilized that we lay down in surrender, too exhausted to gather our wits and stand up for the principles upon which our nation was founded. (Read: America Wages “Shock and Awe” Against America)
Hope in the Hardest of Times?
In 1933, as Adolf Hitler was consolidating power in Germany, America was reeling from the Great Depression and wondering if democracy would survive. In Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inaugural address that year, he uttered the famous words, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
This was the dawning of the New Deal, designed to provide economic relief, create jobs, and implement financial reforms during the most desperate times. It saved America and set the stage for an unprecedented economic boom that would become the envy of the world.
And the New Deal is precisely what Project 2025, Elon Musk, and the Trump administration are dedicated to destroying.
What would FDR say to us today?
Were he with us, I think FDR would urge us again to put fear aside, rise up, and meet the moment. To unite and forge a path forward that preserves our greatness now and for generations to come.
It’s already working. Concerned citizens across the nation are turning up in droves to oppose the Project 2025 agenda, forcing DOGE to back down from some of its dirty work… for now. But the “shock and awe” continues to hit us every day, and the struggle has just begun.
Show up. Speak out. Stand strong for America.
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Resources:
Internal White House document details layoff plans across U.S. agencies
America Wages “Shock and Awe” Against America
Elon Musk-ovites, Christo-Fascism & the Specter of End Times
Historian Heather Cox Richardson nails it: "The craziness going on around us in the first two months of the second Trump administration makes a lot more sense if you remember that the goal of those currently in power was never simply to change the policies or the personnel of the U.S. government. Their goal is to dismantle the central pillars of the United States of America—government, law, business, education, culture, and so on—because they believe the very shape of those institutions serves what they call “the Left.”
Their definition of “the Left” includes all Americans, Republicans and Independents as well as Democrats, who believe the government has a role to play in regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, promoting infrastructure, and protecting civil rights and who support the institutional structures Americans have built since World War II."
Thanks for your particularly insightful description of Project 2025, Shock, and Awe, and the truth of what Trump, Musk, and their acolytes want for our surprisingly vulnerable republic. Keep up the great work!