In a post on his ironically named Truth Social platform, he wrote, “I
know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree
with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying
are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but
I have nothing to do with them.” Yeah,
right. The overwhelming majority of the
screed was written by former Trump administration staffers; if he doesn’t know
that much, it’s not Joe Biden who’s more in need of cognitive testing.
Curmie also confesses to being a little confused as to how
Trump can “know nothing” about Project 2025 but also “disagree with some of the
things they’re saying.” The man has
always been incoherent, but it’s getting worse.
On the other hand, he does seem to be sufficiently in control of his
faculties to avoid saying which parts of the document are “absolutely
ridiculous,” as that would alienate the yahoos of his base. As it is, they know he’s lying, and they’re
OK with that: all for a good cause, after all, same as the SCOTUS nominees
lying about Roe v. Wade as “settled law.” Indeed, everyone knows he’s lying, but few Democrats are willing to say so in so
many words, and conservatives, even the otherwise intelligent ones, pass it off
as everyday “exaggeration.” Boys will be
boys, after all.
Curmie is not at all interested in reading the entire 900ish
pages of the Mandate for Leadership; he’s seen quite enough, thank you. But a
Friend of Curmie posted the meme you see above on her Facebook page, and Meta
proceeded to label it “partly false” because “independent fact-checkers” had
deemed it so.
The “independent” lads and lasses in question are in fact a single (as in not plural, rather than unmarried) dude named Alex Demas, who writes for a publication called The Dispatch, which describes itself as “conservative,” “center-right,” “unbiased,” and “fact-based”… yet describes the Democratic Party as endorsing “abortion-until-birth… [and] wholesale gun confiscation.” Curmie considers himself reasonably well aware of political perspectives, and he has literally never seen any significant Democrat argue for either, let alone both, of these things, nor does he know anyone personally who has championed either cause. So much for Meta censoring the right! (Well, to be fair, they did move Demas’s “mostly false” verdict to “partly false.”)
But just because The Dispatch straddles the line between “far
right” and “wackadoodle” while pretending to be otherwise doesn’t mean that
Demas’s commentary is inherently flawed.
And it’s not at all uncommon for some folks on the left to stray from
objectivity and truth. So let’s take a
look.
Curmie wants it known that he wrote all of the above without
comparing the assertions in the meme with the “Mandate.” He promised himself that he’d post his
findings irrespective of what he discovered.
As noted above, I’m not going to check all 900 pages to see if something
that appears in the meme is in the book.
I’m not going to take Demas’s word for it. But let’s look at two things: those that Demas
regards as accurate assessments and those for which the meme provides page
numbers. It’s easy enough to look at
page 691 to see if it includes what the meme says it does. (Well, since the meme-creator was so sloppy,
it gets a little harder to see if a passage exists anywhere in the document,
but there is a word-search function.)
So: Demas grants the accuracy of the assertions that the
Heritage Foundation (hereafter, the HF) is advocating the following: 1). providing
additional tax breaks for corporations and the 1 percent, 2). eliminating the
Department of Education, 3). using public taxpayer money for private religious
schools, 4). increasing Arctic drilling, 5). deregulating big business and the
oil industry, 6). promoting and expediting capital punishment, and 7). banning
transgender service in the military. There’s
plenty on this list already (especially the odd-numbered ones) that makes
Curmie certain to vote against anyone who supports these initiatives, but let’s
look at the other stuff.
Let’s shorten this post by noting that Curmie agrees with
Demas that the following claims in the meme are indeed false: 1). Cut Social
Security, 2). Cut Medicare, 3). End birthright citizenship.
And Curmie agrees that the following are mostly false: 1). End
the Affordable Care Act, 2). End civil rights and DEI protections in government,
3). Use the military to break up domestic protests.
There are also two “partly false” ratings that seem
reasonable to Curmie: 1). Mass deportation of immigrants and incarceration in
‘camps,’ and 2). Eliminates federal agencies like the FDA, EPA, NOAA, and more. In the latter case, the problem is overreach:
the document is replete with commentary on what the FDA should be doing, for
example. There is a suggestion to
eliminate NOAA, however. The storm that
passed through town a few days ago had been downgraded to a tropical storm by
the time it got here, but it was still powerful enough to rip the roof off a
modular home two blocks from Chez Curmie and plonk it down in those folks’
front yard. Given the utter incompetence
of GOP so-called leaders in Texas, Curmie would really like to keep NOAA around
to know what’s coming.
It should be noted that Curmie is looking at this specific
document. Some of the meme’s allegations
are true of Donald Trump, or of what it has been reported the HF is considering. Others have been advanced by other conservative
organizations or politicians. But if it’s
not in the Project 2025 tome, it’s not in the Project 2025 tome.
So, let’s look at where Demas and Curmie disagree, even if only
marginally. Demas lists all of the following
as “false.”
“Complete ban on abortions without exceptions.” Demas is splitting hairs. The document doesn’t use those words, but who
does Demas think he’s fooling? The
chapter defines human life as beginning at conception (because they say so),
argues that “abortion and euthanasia are not healthcare,” objects to the CDC
using fetal cell lines to search for a solution to the COVID-19 pandemic, outlaws
chemical abortifacients (Demas does acknowledge this one), and doesn’t seem to
even consider exceptions for rape or incest.
The folks that pretend to be in favor of small government and personal liberty
also lay out a series of bureaucratic intrusions into the lives of women who
seek or receive abortions where they are legal.
The proposal does stop just short of an outright ban, but it sure looks
like this is the thin edge of the wedge.
Curmie’s verdict: mostly true.
Ban contraceptives.
This time, it’s the meme that quibbles.
Yes, one particular contraceptive would be banned, but there’s no
comprehensive policy recommendation.
That said, if we’re going to take as given that human life begins at
conception, then the fact that a goodly number of contraceptives are designed
to prevent fertilization (which happens after conception) becomes
relevant. I don’t think that’s what they’re
going for, though, at least not yet. Mostly
false.
Elimination of unions and worker protections. Demas is pretty accurate on this one. There is nothing to suggest that unions
should be eliminated (and there’s nothing even vaguely relevant on page
581). There is, however, a push for “Non-Union
Worker Voice and Representation,” which certainly seems like an attempt to reduce
unions’ power. Curmie says mostly
false.
Teach Christian religious beliefs in public schools. The relevant chapter includes a couple of
interesting ideas and a plethora of utterly horrific ones, including, as Demas
acknowledges, using taxpayer money to support private religious schools. So it’s being just a little too cute to say
the document doesn’t advocate teaching Christian ideology in public schools,
because their little end run around the First Amendment makes religious schools
de facto public schools. Red
state pols have been trying to enact this crap for years, and it’s not
difficult to see the dominionists at the Heritage Foundation urging them
on. Curmie isn’t buying this charade,
and although tempted to moderate his stance and say “mostly true,” it’s a
full-throated true on this one.
Ban African American and gender studies in all levels of
education. Demas admits that Critical Race Theory would indeed be de
facto outlawed at all levels. Those
conservatives sure are champions of free speech… when they agree with it. The rest of Demas’s analysis is reasonable
enough, at least on the surface, since the HF is a little cagier than the Ron
DeSantises of the world. Mostly false.
Ending climate protections. True, some of what is being proposed here
amounts to little more than re-allocating resources, especially from the
federal level to regions and states. But
a good deal of it prioritizes short-term economic advantages to corporations over
the environment and the interests of the nation. If Demas honestly believes that “the changes
do not broadly curtail efforts at climate protection,” he needs to share what
he’s smoking. Mostly true.
End marriage equality. Oh, puh-leeze. As usual, the page numbers aren’t even close
to accurate. But the “Mandate” as a
whole hyperventilates over “Biblical” marriage, going so far as to encourage heterosexual
Christian couples (you know, the important ones) to marry even if they’re not
quite ready to do so. It argues that Healthy
Marriage and Relationship Education (HMRE) Grants should be available,
apparently exclusively, “to faith-based recipients who affirm that marriage is
between not just any two adults, but one man and one unrelated woman.” It advocates “policies that support the
formation of stable, married, nuclear families” with a father and a
mother. That’s defined elsewhere as “healthy
marriage.” There’s nothing to say that same-sex
marriages can’t happen, but the authors advocate a “biblically based, social
science-reinforced definition of marriage and family,” which is the only kind
that really matters to them. And “equality”
means more than just “legal.” Mostly
true.
Defund the FBI and Homeland Security. Another “it isn’t on the page the meme says
it is.” The lead proposal in the
relevant chapter is to “dismantle the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).” On the one hand, it’s clear that what the HF
seeks is a restructuring whereby the DHS’s responsibilities would be assigned
to other government agencies. It is more
than a little difficult, however, to reconcile Demas’s assertion that “There
are no calls to defund the FBI or Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in the
plan” with the document’s promise to “cut billions in spending” by enacting the
proposed changes to DHS. (Such a reassignment
of tasks may be a good idea, but that’s not the issue here.)
The document also recommends that “[t]he next conservative
Administration should eliminate any offices within the FBI that it has the
power to eliminate without any action from Congress.” It’s unclear whether those offices would be
assigned elsewhere (if not, then we’re definitely talking about “defunding”),
but it’s clear that the HF wants the FBI to be more subservient to the (politically
appointed) Attorney General, who, in a conservative administration, would be
answerable directly to the President. It
will be interesting to see how much the HF still advocates that policy should
President Biden be re-elected. Mostly
true.
OK, so where does this all leave us? Of the sixteen allegations Curmie checked
out, he found nine that were in his opinion mostly false or worse, and two
others that were partly false. That’s
not good. The meme-maker did us all a
profound disservice by being lazy, irresponsible, and, frankly, stupid. The legitimate objections to this abominable
and occasionally unconstitutional “Mandate” are severely undercut by its proponents’
ability to point to the manifold errors in the critique.
Unfortunately, this sloppiness is unsurprising. Nor should anyone be shocked by the fact that
Demas seeks to downplay the document’s privileging of rich cishet Christians (Jews
are borderline acceptable), preferably white males, or by Curmie’s desire to
highlight those very points. We all see
the world, and indeed what we believe to be objective truth, through the lens
of our own experience and political philosophy.
Facebook was ill-served by relying on a single, far from
neutral, fact-checker, but their ultimate conclusion that the meme is “partly
false” is difficult to dispute.
We need to be right on the facts, but we also need to be united in our criticism. The Mandate for Leadership is a nightmarish document. If nothing else, any text that includes the phrase “human resources onboarding operations” needs to be rejected immediately.
