longer.blue

Where are we going? In the history of the United States, we have been privileged to witness the leadership of truly great figures, visionaries who helped shape and guide the nation through its most formative and trying times. Leaders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. have stood as beacons of courage, principle, and progress. Their legacies remind us of the ideals upon which America was built: liberty, justice, and the pursuit of a more perfect union. Today, however, we find ourselves in a deeply troubling chapter of our national story. The rise of Donald J. Trump represents not merely a shift in political ideology but a profound threat to the democratic institutions and values that have underpinned American society for more than two centuries. Yet it would be a mistake to lay the blame solely at his feet. The problem runs deeper, embedded in the very fabric of the modern Republican Party, its leadership, its policies, and the millions who continue to support and enable this dangerous trajectory. This is not the Republican Party of Alexander Hamilton, a party once rooted in the ideals of constitutional governance and civic responsibility. Instead, it has become something unrecognizable, co-opted by extremism and consolidated power. At the center of this transformation is Project 2025, a detailed blueprint for authoritarian control disguised as a political strategy. Donald Trump may serve as its public face, but he is not its architect. He is merely the mouthpiece for a movement intent on reshaping America in ways that undermine democratic norms and concentrate power in the executive branch. Perhaps we should no longer call it the Republican Party, but rather the Procan Party, a hybrid of propaganda and control. The tragic irony is that this entire crisis could have been avoided if the American electorate had taken the time to read and understand Project 2025. The document lays bare an agenda to dismantle over 250 years of democratic progress and replace it with autocratic rule. Trump himself admitted he hadn’t read it, and tragically, many of his supporters didn’t either. The consequences of that willful ignorance are now before us. Now, there is real concern that the military could be used to suppress dissent and silence protest, actions that would erode the final bulwarks of a free society. While I remain hopeful that we will never reach the point where service members are ordered to carry out unlawful or immoral commands, history teaches us that hope alone is not enough. If that day ever comes, if America reaches the precipice of authoritarianism, we will need courageous men and women in uniform to stand not for a person or a party, but for the Constitution and the rule of law. They must choose the path of justice over fear, principle over power. Our democracy depends on it.