Robert Haslag
| Springfield News-Leader
As the election approaches, we must decide what truly matters to us and vote accordingly.
Significant American majorities support reasonable restrictions on guns; protecting a woman’s right to choose; restoring child care support after Republicans denied extension; support Ukraine’s long struggle against Russian invasion; strongly support protecting Social Security and Medicare; have rational concerns about the damage being done to our air and water; fear the long-term impacts if we do not address CO2 emissions; support taxing the rich and corporations who consistently escape paying their share of income taxes; want to rebuild the middle class and expand opportunities for Americans still locked into the bottom; are in favor of paid family leave; and are dedicated to the republic our forefathers created. Further, there was a positive response to the Democratic convention expressing joy and hope for our future.
In contrast, the guiding principles of Donald Trump are rage, hate, revenge, dismissal of any who dare to disagree, and a commitment only to the wealthy and corporations.
Donald’s policies truly differentiate the two parties. Project 2025 defines those distinctions. Power will be concentrated in a politicized presidency. To achieve this, Trump must remove the systemic restraints on politics in governing. The Civil Service Act, passed in 1883, had the stated purpose to fill the multitude of government positions based on merit alone and to ensure race, religion, politics, and national origin were not factors. Prior to 1883, thousands of government offices were filled with political appointees as Project 2025 envisions. Bluntly, the corruption of the late 19th Century would make our current corruption resemble a rounding error. The more political the appointments, the greater the chance for ethical lapses and the more taxpayer money will be corrupted. Merit as the defining qualifier dies in Project 2025. Devotion to Donald is the new qualifier.
In Project 2025, the DOJ will be a political weapon whose sole responsibility would be to jail opponents, donors and media personalities who are not among Donald’s select. The ethical protections instituted after Nixon would end. DOJ would become the ultimate weapon to silence voices of dissent. Our budget would reward donors, states, and media figures who are among that select. As in 1881, America would offer donors opportunities to buy a multi-billion-dollar payback. Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid would be privatized, putting the billions we paid into the systems in the hands of banks that have repeatedly proven unable to act as fiduciaries. Surprise billing would be restored.
The policy toward immigrants would be a xenophobic nightmare. Donald has promised to deport 11 million undocumented including DACA recipients. With local police being given special power, it would be naïve to think any brown American would be exempt from police roundups and deportation. Our consciences would be battered by this daily crime against humanity and, of course, the entire idea of asylum, a simple idea that has made America special, would disappear. Trump’s judiciary would be delighted to authorize these crimes against humanity or they would be ignored by Donald’s DOJ.
Regulations restricting the business world would be eliminated, removing consumer protections from various toxins and pollutants in our food, water, and air. Plastics in baby formula, metal fragments in frozen dinners, feces in our produce, and listeria as in Boar’s Head meats would just not be reported. Big oil would have complete access to any land where they sought to drill with no responsibility for the environmental disasters left behind. Budgetary assistance for the least among us would be zeroed out and we would see a rebirth of Dickensian England and taxes for the rich and corporations would continue to decline.
Forget freedom of religion. Christianity would be the national religion contrary to our Constitution and Trump’s radical Evangelicals would dictate what is permissible. Books would be banned at all levels and censoring before publication would not be impossible. The Department of Education would disappear. Our education system would shrivel and free thought would see the same fate as among those who dared to hide books in Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” a book already on the banned list. Hatred of diversity would create a cookie-cutter nation of white evangelicals. The radicals in the Trump administration would ensure questionable books are not printed. History classes would be propaganda courses with no mention of slavery, our genocidal war against Native Americans, or anything to our embarrassment. Truth would die in our classrooms.
Under Project 2025, women would be degraded to birthing wombs. Abortion, birth control, IVF, would very likely die under a reinvigorated Comstock Law, a 19th Century prohibition against abortion. Insurance companies would be relieved of any responsibility to cover abortifacients such as mifepristone or the morning-after pill. Stem cell and fetal cell research would likely cease, destroying much of our research into diseases killing Americans. Pregnancy would be a pre-existing condition.
Donald is desperate to separate himself from Project 2025, but Donald plus hundreds of his supporters devised it. Every election is a choice and this is our choice in 2024. A non-white, Democratic woman cannot be used as an excuse to allow Donald’s Project 2025 to redefine our republic. A reader who loves America, as I do, whose throat tightens at Taps, as mine does, who appreciates our magnificent Constitution, as I do, and whose heart swells at our national anthem, as mine does, cannot vote for Donald, Senator Hawley, Congressman Burlison, or any Missouri Republican, since most support the principles in Project 2025.
Robert Haslag lives in Nixa.
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Publish date : 2024-09-21 21:36:00
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