Dark Horizon: A Hypothetical Glimpse into 2025's Political Landscape
The centre is not holding at home or abroad, and Project 2025 is close to becoming America's future political nightmare
We are living in a unique moment in history. In the US Presidential debate last night, we saw proof positive that as things stand the centre will not hold against far-rightist populism. And in Europe, the EU parliamentary elections saw the centre crumbling in France and struggling badly in Germany as the old cordon sanitaire no longer holds back the political extremes of the left and right.
I am left filled with a dread, but what might the future hold? To answer that, I’ve decided to paint hypothetical scenario of January 2025.
There is still a faint hope to avoid the nightmare scenario I paint below from becoming reality, but it’s an increasingly frail hope - much like President Joe Biden’s debate performance last night.
JANUARY 2025 is a typically brisk yet invigorating affair as the seasonal chilly breeze brushes gently across the elevated dais where the 47th President will be sworn into office.
Yet to the outgoing administration staff, exiting their former offices, arms filled with boxes, they see an overcast sky. The cold temperatures and heavy police presence leave the streets of the capital eerily empty, contributing to the gloomy feel.
But not too far away others are filled with a sense of elation. Stephen Miller, credited with crafting the hardest of Trump’s draconian immigration policies is smiling. For his tribe, the bright, clear skies promise an abundance of hope. Miller is close to the 45th and now 47th President Donald J. Trump and is eager to resume his work imposing zero tolerance mandates, forced family separation.
Only this time Stephen Miller and his acolytes have an updated game plan. They call it ‘Project 2025’ and they plan on taking no prisoners. Nearby wrapped up in heavy coat and gloves is the other Miller, Jason Miller. A long-time Trump backer, Jason Senior Adviser to the Trump 2020 re-election campaign before leaving to become a talking head on far-right NewsMax. Although he had left his position as Trump's spokesman by June 2021 to become the CEO of Gettr, he returned ahead of the successful 2024 election campaign. No stranger to Washington D.C swamp culture, Jason Miller is eager to exact his own revenge. In 2016 he was supposed to become White House Communications Director during the presidential transition. But that went south after it turned out he had been having an extramarital relationship with a staffer two months before the 2016 election. But he’s back in 2025, this time ready to actually take that White House job. Both the Millers’ know that the 47th President Donald J. Trump has all the morals of an alley cat, he doesn’t give a damn about cheating on wives…so long as they are unquestioning loyal to him.
Invited to view events near the dais for Trump’s swearing in ceremony is also Paul Dans. Director of ‘Project 2025’, he has been tasked on behalf of the lobbyist ‘think-tank’ group Heritage Foundation to oversee the Transition back to power. His responsibilities include organizing policy and personnel recommendations and training for appointees in the next presidential administration.
Prior to joining Heritage, Dans served in the Trump Administration as Chief of Staff at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Back then, he managed the federal agency in charge of human resources policy for the more than two million federal workers. This time the plan is different. Dans has been primed by Steve Bannon and others to draw up the lists of US federal employees who need to be purged. Dans already has an idea who can be counted on to obey orders and who cannot. That’s why his ‘Project 2025’ aims to reclassifying tens of thousands of merit-based federal civil servant jobs as political appointees. That way his master President Trump can issue simple orders to replace them with loyal conservatives to further the MAGA 2.0 agenda.
Dans, Steve Bannon, Jason Miller and Stephen Miller all share the fundamental goal of Project 2025. The imposition of a maximalist version of the unitary executive theory. Their interpretation of Article II of the US Constitution maintains that their President enjoys absolute power over the executive branch upon inauguration.
The waiting audience shivers as sleet and snow begin to fall. The National Mall and monuments, dusted with snow, offer a picturesque and serene scene.
Watching on his live-stream online from his home is John Doe, proud working class American, Michigan. Although he’s indoors, he still wears his sweater to keep warm. The weather is cold, the inflation the last few years have exhausted his savings. John has zero cash in case of an emergency, but has worked his whole life. Late last year his wife of 40 years began to fall ill, they couldn’t afford the medicine so have to resort to chopping up the tablets they can occasionally afford.
John used to be a life long Democrat. Voted Obama twice, Trump once in 2016 before returning to the Democrats in 2020. But the last four years have been too tough, and although he is sturdy and uncomplaining he just can’t cope with things anymore. The wife is getting sicker, the house roofing needing fixing and damp seeping into the bathroom walls. He - like millions of ordinary Americans - feel left behind, ignored and mocked as ‘deplorables’.
Watching the internet stream, John clutches his Corona beer tightly (he stopped drinking Budweiser after the Dylan Mulvaney branding debacle April 2023). John Doe doesn’t need anyone to tell him things are bad. Everybody he knows in rustbelt, USA knows it’s bad. For his community, every day since the 2008 financial crisis has felt like a depression. Everyone he knows is either scared of losing their jobs or making so little money it’s akin to being out of work. His dollar buys a nickels worth, but the banks have never had it so good.
He knew Trump was morally dissolute, that’s why he had voted Democrat in 2020, but then came inflation. Then came ‘defund the police’ and AOC and the far-left squad who mocked his more traditional outlook on family, morals and faith. John feels scared at night, keeps a gun under his bed and feels the young are running wild.
He feels there is nobody with a plan, nobody who knows what to do. There is no end to this nightmare. John swallows another beer before rolling a cigarette. He’s stopped buying his regular brand, can’t afford it anymore.
Sitting watching the 2025 inauguration John frowns determinedly. Sure, he knows Trump’s character sucks but he feels only The Donald can return things to how they once were. How things were supposed to be.
Say what you like about Trump - he things to himself - but at least Trump knows things are bad. Worse than bad, crazy. Drug addiction, work that doesn’t pay, factories shutting and heading to Asia and in-work poverty. And the newscasters each night just sit there jibbering about how well the stock market is doing, how low unemployment is…as if this life is how it’s supposed to be in Michigan, USA.
Pronouns, new-fangled language and this politically correct thing has only further alienated John from his traditional working class Democrat party home. All he can think about know when he sees New York liberals like AOC bleating about ‘latinx’ and ‘institutional racism’ on CNN is ‘please please can’t you just leave me alone in my own house?’
Well something in November snapped in John Doe. When he watched Donald Trump on the campaign trail, he tentatively went to one of his rallies. Trump didn’t want to leave him alone. Trump wanted him to get mad.
Trump told him, don’t protest, don’t write to your congressman. ‘I don’t know what you should write. I don’t know what to tell you about the inflation or the drug addiction’, The Don had joked to guffawing laughter at the rally.
“All I know is first you got to get mad!” Trump had insisted.
Well now John was mad. Mad as hell and wasn’t going to take it anymore.
His daughter no longer talks to him, disgusted over his supporting Trump. But John doesn’t care anymore, he has been abandoned, left behind and ridiculed for too long. He is mad as hell and isn’t going to take it anymore.
Trump promises to return things to how they once were. All he asks is to be allowed to fix things. John Doe isn’t sure if Trump will be a Cincinnatus, ruling with supreme power only for so long as the crisis exists and the corrupt are purged and the republic saved. Or if Trump will be Caesar?
John Doe shrugs to himself…‘Democracy is on the line’ his estranged daughter had pleaded with him months ago, but what does that even mean to men like John? He was a good father, he’s worked hard all his life and now nothing to show for it. ‘Saving Democracy’ means less than shit when you are the working poor fighting just to avoid drowning.
The music from Washington DC starts to play and the 47th President arrives on the dais to receive full executive power.
“My fellow Americans…” Trump begins, “today American anarchy ends and the rapists and murderers flooding into our country from Mexico will be stopped…”
…
Across the Atlantic ocean, also watching events unfolding in the USA is French Prime Minister Jordan Bardella.
In Paris, Le Pen's toy-boy far-rightist Bardella has already started ending birthright citizenship & is attacking minorities in the French 5th republic. He smiles, soon his master Madam Le Pen will win the keys to the Elysee Palace. Then a new axis will form, and the old moderate centre can finally go to hell. He picks up his phone and sends the new leader of the opposition in the UK, Nigel Farage, a joking text.
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