I just read David A. Graham’s Atlantic piece, “President for Life,” and I cannot help but feel like I have been living in a different timeline from the people now acting surprised. The article sounds the alarm about Trump’s slide into authoritarianism and the idea that he might try to stay in office beyond two terms. Fair enough. But it reads like someone who just woke up to find the house on fire and forgot that half the neighborhood was already shouting about the smoke seven years ago.
The first term was the alarm bell. Trump’s use of “acting” officials, his purges of the civil service, the “deep state” rhetoric, and the early moves to centralize executive power were all trial runs. The Heritage Foundation and its allies were already putting together the plan that would later become Project 2025. Anyone who was paying attention knew what was happening. So why does The Atlantic act like this is a fresh discovery?
Project 2025 is not a rumor or a conspiracy theory. It is a public document that explains, in detail, how to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists and bring the entire bureaucracy under direct presidential control. It also lays out plans to politicize the Justice Department and inject “biblical values” into public policy. It is a blueprint for authoritarian rule written in polite think-tank language. Yet Graham’s article barely mentions it. He focuses on Trump’s personality rather than the machinery built to keep him in power.
What frustrates me most is the media cycle around all this. Every time Trump pushes a boundary, outlets like The Atlantic react as if democracy is dying for the first time. They publish the same moral panic, everyone nods along, and then a month later it fades away until the next “crisis.” That cycle has been going on since 2016. It gives readers emotional relief instead of political understanding. It also lets liberal institutions pretend they are the resistance when they are really just late to the fight.
The truth is that none of this is new. Authoritarianism in the United States has been developing in the open, one administrative decision at a time. Trump is not the cause so much as the symptom of a system that values profit and control over democracy. Project 2025 just puts that instinct into writing. It is the manual that turns grievance into government. You cannot fight this by pretending it started yesterday.
If we want to stop what is coming, we have to stop acting shocked every time the obvious happens. Trump’s power grab is not an accident. It is the continuation of a project that was planned, funded, and rehearsed during his first term. The alarm did not just start ringing. Some of us never stopped hearing it.
The Atlantic wrote an article shaming Americans for their feelings about Luigi Mangione last December. I will never read that neoliberal facist enabling garbage ever again
I just read David A. Graham’s Atlantic piece, “President for Life,” and I cannot help but feel like I have been living in a different timeline from the people now acting surprised. The article sounds the alarm about Trump’s slide into authoritarianism and the idea that he might try to stay in office beyond two terms. Fair enough. But it reads like someone who just woke up to find the house on fire and forgot that half the neighborhood was already shouting about the smoke seven years ago.
The first term was the alarm bell. Trump’s use of “acting” officials, his purges of the civil service, the “deep state” rhetoric, and the early moves to centralize executive power were all trial runs. The Heritage Foundation and its allies were already putting together the plan that would later become Project 2025. Anyone who was paying attention knew what was happening. So why does The Atlantic act like this is a fresh discovery?
Project 2025 is not a rumor or a conspiracy theory. It is a public document that explains, in detail, how to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists and bring the entire bureaucracy under direct presidential control. It also lays out plans to politicize the Justice Department and inject “biblical values” into public policy. It is a blueprint for authoritarian rule written in polite think-tank language. Yet Graham’s article barely mentions it. He focuses on Trump’s personality rather than the machinery built to keep him in power.
What frustrates me most is the media cycle around all this. Every time Trump pushes a boundary, outlets like The Atlantic react as if democracy is dying for the first time. They publish the same moral panic, everyone nods along, and then a month later it fades away until the next “crisis.” That cycle has been going on since 2016. It gives readers emotional relief instead of political understanding. It also lets liberal institutions pretend they are the resistance when they are really just late to the fight.
The truth is that none of this is new. Authoritarianism in the United States has been developing in the open, one administrative decision at a time. Trump is not the cause so much as the symptom of a system that values profit and control over democracy. Project 2025 just puts that instinct into writing. It is the manual that turns grievance into government. You cannot fight this by pretending it started yesterday.
If we want to stop what is coming, we have to stop acting shocked every time the obvious happens. Trump’s power grab is not an accident. It is the continuation of a project that was planned, funded, and rehearsed during his first term. The alarm did not just start ringing. Some of us never stopped hearing it.
The Atlantic wrote an article shaming Americans for their feelings about Luigi Mangione last December. I will never read that neoliberal facist enabling garbage ever again