Project 2025 and Trumpism: Our Civilized World is Killing US

What is happening in our country, the United States, right now is not simply another political election cycle that we can tolerate and wait, then, for another ballot box.

Please read on!

Te-Nehisi Coates (The Message, 2024) writes this:

“My name was an artifact of a forgotten world, and an aspiration for one yet to come. But what exactly are those worlds? My name is not meant simply to evoke a historical entity but to conjure the idea of a Black civilization – which is to say human beings filed away in a hierarchy of boles, seers, commoners and slaves who through their construction of monuments, recording of literature and waging of war can rightly be considered full human beings. But I think human dignity is in the mind and body and not in stone. And I think the moment we root our worth in castes and kingdoms, in ‘civilization,’ we have accepted the precepts of those whose whole entire legacy is the burning and flooding of a planet. And then we have already lost.”

This is Coates’ reflecting on his given name and how his personal identity was given in order to claim a larger community if not racial and national identity. Many of us (all of us?) normally fight against dehumanization, oppression, belittlement and marginalization by doing this: raising of our own banner of the same. We fight the civilization that builds itself on dehumanization (caste and slavery at the extreme end) by rising up and laying claim to our own civilization that dehumanizes right back. As far as I can see, Coates appreciates and respects and carries his name with pride, but rejects it’s possible premise. We do not raise ourselves up by putting others down or entering into systems that put others down. Doing so will only “burn and flood” the planet more.  That being said, we also do not tolerate being trodden.

 We resist. We insist. We persist.

 Jesus, in telling Pilate that Jesus’ “kingdom is not of this world,” (John 18) is saying exactly this.  God’s reign, God’s way in the world, is not a “Pax Romana” where peace is gained through dominance over others using violence. God’s Way is a peace through justice for all using non-violence [for a deep dive on this see John Dominic Crossan’s How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Divine Violence From Genesis to Revelation (2015) and Paul the Pharisee: A Vision Beyond the Violence of Civilization (2024)].

What is happening in our country, the United States, right now is not simply another political cycle that we can tolerate and wait then for another ballot box.

Trumpism’s end game is the decimation of the government of our Republic so that the Private Sector, with its motive being the Profit of the Individual (and not the Good of All), will provide all the goods and services. The good of the people will be determined by those few with money and capital and not by the people with voice and vote. Since the Ballot Box of 2024 gave us a mindless narcissist guided by the Think Tanks that produced Project 2025 where “peace is gained through dominance over others with violence,” we must not wait another day or for another day to resist.

Keep calm. Be non-violent. But find a way each day, each day, to speak to leadership, locally, state-wide and federally. Most especially now, the U. S. Congress. Make phone calls (the most effective, we are told) to your U.S. House Representative and U.S. Senators, write letters (emails), request a visit in your Legislator’s local office during Recess or go to D.C. if you can, call for a Town Hall. Look for local street rallies or street protests you can join. Or start your own. Organize in your own Voting Precinct to create Dialog and Conversation Gatherings amongst your fellow citizens and/or with your Local civic and governmental leaders (including State, even Federal!). In other words, set up conversations. Listen. Talk. Listen. Talk. Act.

Please, do something. Our civilized world is killing us.