The right-wing Republicans — the Christian nationalists — have hoisted their flag: Project 2025, aka Project Hell on Earth, and it’s coming to a future near you. Or so they believe (and hope).
But the Democrats are on our side! They won’t let it happen, right? While the deep right puts forth its stalwart vision of a recreated world, the moderate center stands cautiously and awkwardly for the status quo of the moment: only some war, mixed with social spending and even a minimal awareness of the problems posed by climate change. God forbid, however, that a counter-vision of the global future — a vision of a world that transcends war and militarism — should be part of mainstream politics. That would be pushing things too far, which is to say, defying the corporate donors who keep the political process going.
So, as the presidential election looms, we have to look at what’s at stake, as outlined in Project 2025: “The nearly 900-page document,” Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes write at TomDispatch, “outlines a plan to ramp up U.S. military might, slash social welfare programs, and prioritize ‘traditional marriage.’”
Military might — yeah, that’s the political key. They add: “Nor is this new. Every year, the Pentagon budget invariably passes with widespread bipartisan support, even if a few representatives vote otherwise. Since the 9/11 attacks, in fact, $21 trillion has been funneled into war, surveillance, policing, border control, and incarceration. In Fiscal Year 2023, nearly two-thirds of the federal discretionary budget funded the military-industrial complex and militarized spending.”
Militarism is more than the flow of blood. It’s also the flow of money. War is taught, historically, as a simple and precise matter: good and evil go at each other, one side (usually the good guys, the “righteous” side) wins, and life simply moves on. There are no further consequences. The takeaway is only this: If you want to be safe and secure, you have to be well-armed and ever-prepared for battle. War, in other words, is permanent — and always on the horizon. At least this is the world of today, the world that “civilized humanity” has bequeathed itself.
Project 2025 simply eliminates all doubt: Peace is not the way — at least not the lefty version of it. The unquestioned worship of militarism must be our future, and will be if Trump wins, at least according to Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025. He called it the “second American Revolution” but assured us it will be bloodless, uh … “if the left allows it to be.”
What fascinating wordplay. Those who disagree with our Project had better keep their mouths shut. If they don’t, we’ll have to respond violently, but it will be their fault. That’s how the system works.
Here’s another way to look at it: “The end of World War II was not the beginning of an era dominated by a devotion to peace,” Serdar M. Değirmencioğlu writes at Community Psychology. “Instead, the defining mindset of the period was militarism with no moral limits. Nuclear war was now possible and more was on the way. … It is now [more] clear than ever that militarism is morally bankrupt. It can justify everything: Nuclear massacres, nuclear weapons, hundreds of military bases around the world, toppling regimes in Guatemala, Chile, Grenada, or any other country for that matter. Add an undeclared war on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Add napalm and Agent Orange. And no, it did not stop when the Cold War ended. Militarism justified the invasion of Iraq and of Afghanistan, black sites, Guantanamo, and so on. Militarism has always served and justified injustice — at home and away from home.”
Let me repeat: Militarism has no moral limits — which, seemingly, turns the term “war crime” into an absurdity. Once you start killing people, it’s hard to stop. You kill innocent civilians. You kill children. You commit genocide. But, oh gosh, doing that is a crime. Well, so what? That means nothing.
Militarism “can justify everything.” And the terrain of justification keeps expanding. In the wake of World War I, one of the horrors wreaked upon the world was poison gas. Less than three decades later, we had the atomic bomb to ponder, fret over and, of course, continue developing. Oh, but “mutually assured destruction” has kept us safe! Except for all the non-nuclear wars the world has managed to squeeze in (during my lifetime).
So Project 2025 seems like nothing more than Project Same Old, Same Old, amplified with political arrogance (social spending is bad) and the belief that we need a good dictator. That’ll keep us safe! All I can do is spray a little poison gas onto this viewpoint, that is to say, quote the ending to Wilfred Owen’s poem about World War I — specifically, about the horror of a poison gas attack and the soldier who failed to get his gas mask on in time. Titled “Dulce et Decorum Est,” the poem ends with a Latin phrase that means: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
. . . If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Robert Koehler (koehlercw@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is a Chicago-based award-winning journalist and editor. He is the author of Courage Grows Strong at the Wound, and his newly released album of recorded poetry and art work, Soul Fragments.
