Everyone who follows politics from any sort of middle ground suffered comprehensive dread after Donald Trump's second election. We knew of Project 2025 and its "in your face" drive toward totalitarianism. It was baked in — a guarantee.
The nightmare unspooled as it became all too clear that Trump's new administration wouldn't tolerate minders, deep thinkers, the conscientious. There would be no adults in the room. Trump presented a cabinet of laughably unqualified "loyalists" and America pretended it was normal. Expected as it was, the foreboding was no less real.
However, the last 10 days have taken matters to a new level — one even more extreme, perhaps planned all along, but now most definitely here.
Charlie Kirk's murder, along with some admittedly heartless responses, ushered in a new phase, one for which Trumpworld may have been planning all along, but now set upon us over days. In so doing, they ushered in near zoo-level incompetence from a cabinet picked for loyalty despite abject incompetence. The "in your face" aggression, coupled with newfound confidence, brought about the most dangerous week yet in Trump 2.0.
The White House is emboldened, using Kirk's assassination to unapologetically twist the dial, more aggressively crazed than ever. This is dangerous.
The most obvious newly evolving move is the labeling of the entire left as a terrorist movement that threatens American stability. This is gaslighting so pure as to be almost elegant, coming as it does from terrorists who attacked our Capitol. Opposition to Trump has become that much more dangerous. And if one listens closely, they almost took joy in the killing as leaving them finally "freed." What an opportunity.
Stephen Miller, never more self-righteous and raw, the most openly authoritarian-racist member of the administration, recently said:
"With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks, and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name."
Sorry, but that sounds less like grief than relief.
There are no left-wing networks. As a member of the Democratic Party, I'd say we probably need more and better-defined networks to spread an anti-Trump message, but they don't yet exist. Not as Miller meant.
No matter, Miller wants an excuse to "attack" the left, wanting to spring loose the semi-fascist brownshirts in Homeland Security and National Guard on anyone they don't like. Breathtaking in its boldness, one can feel his rush to rage-filled hatred, ready for an open-field run.
Watch out.
But Miller is only following the example set at the top. Trump has been all over the place, spitting vitriol at the left, using Kirk's death to go next-level. Post-Kirk, he has a treasured launching pad toward Orwellian control, example "A" being Jimmy Kimmel. Emboldened, Trump went after even bigger game — network news, as evidenced by recent interactions with the media, as reported by Politico:
President Donald Trump on Friday reiterated his claim that critical television coverage of him is “illegal” and pushed back on criticisms that his administration was taking actions that chill free speech.
The administration quickly established the fact-free narrative that the left metaphysically groomed the suspect in the Kirk killing, Tyler Robinson, despite all evidence pointing to an isolated, uniquely sick loner, practically apolitical, a young man who simply hated Kirk's intolerance toward LGBTQ Americans. Hardly a political leftist.
But the idea took hold on the right, an excuse to attack all opposition as terrorists threatening Americans. This is as dangerous as it is self-serving.
Meanwhile, the cabinet seemed newly confident, and with increased energy came new evidence of jaw-dropping incompetence. None is in over their head more than FBI Director Kash Patel. Little more than a flame-throwing podcaster, he appeared in front of Congress backed by a new level of anti-left rage, and promptly humiliated himself as the most hapless, fully politicized, and laughable FBI director in history. As noted by USA Today:
During his equally contentious Sept. 16 hearing before a Senate committee, Patel went off the rails, labeling [Sen. Adam] Schiff “a political buffoon at best” and saying, “You are the biggest fraud to ever sit in the United States Senate.”
Try to imagine Fox News's reaction to a Democratic administration, or simply a normal FBI director, trying that. Despite almost non-existent expectations, Patel managed to still surprise as a newly freed, shameless, hapless, moron. This, of course, after erroneously announcing the arrest of a “subject” in the Kirk killing.
It goes on, even down to the Department of Health and Human Services and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s absurd crusade against vaccines — the single most powerful public health tool in history, short perhaps of proper sewerage. But conspiracy freaks are going to freak, and the "post-science experts" at a key CDC meeting devolved into clueless chaos.
Per a report in The New York Times:
“Thursday’s session ended with the panel members at odds. A hot microphone caught one panelist calling another committee member 'an idiot,' although it was unclear who was speaking.”
Take your pick.
True, the administration was always vicious, uncaring, and self-satisfied, but it went to a new and dangerous level prior to even Charlie Kirk's memorial service at an NFL stadium in Phoenix. State control and censorship reached late-night comedy, leaving those left on air quivering. All over mildly disrespectful talk — but only talk.
It is likely that the plotters in Project 2025 counted on some seminal moments all along, using each to tighten their grip. They surely envisioned protests, some perhaps descending into violence as their launch pad to the next level. Instead, they are rallying around two grotesque but extremely isolated killings: Kirk as "proof" that political violence is the province of the left, and the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian immigrant, as "proof" that white people are under attack. That incident in Charlotte, North Carolina lubricated a shift to more surface-level racism — always useful to the right.
It all worked better than they could have hoped, and they're showing it with barely suppressed excitement.
The pattern was set in January. Perhaps even ahead of schedule, it is now viciously in your face — a government that is authoritarian, post-law, post-decency, post-unity, in what were the United States. They always fantasized about a war within. Now they get to move, seeing themselves as blameless, responding to a first shot, one taken by "all" Trump opposition. How useful.
MAGA provides its voters self-identity. It's not what they believe. It is shared hatred, never more acute, thus never more united, never more willing to quash all that previously made America great. Those charged with leadership don't need to be good, only "committed."
Unfortunately, the impact will be felt as they move with a greater sense of mission, greater hatred, less confusion, and more dopamine. Never forget: they hate you more than any international faction on earth, more than all of them put together.
Now, though, they have a theme — they're under attack by a violent resistance as a whole. Tragic as one young man's senseless killing may be, they seem more fulfilled, even relieved to have a tragedy transition to a precious tool, never on clearer display than the last week.
And it is just so f–––––– dangerous.
Don't believe me? Listen to them.
“Stephen Miller understands the assignment,” Laura Loomer wrote on Sunday. “Many others don’t. Crush. The. Left. So they never rise again.”
- Jason Miciak is a former Associate Editor at Occupy Democrats, author, and American attorney. He can also regularly be found on Politizoom.
