Kendall Stanley: Fascist handbook

You know how the Republicans love to quote in a very negative way those who would take America to socialism and communism, you know, the writings of Saul Alinsky and his rules for radicals.

So now we have the Trump team’s Project 2025, which might as well be titled “How to be a fascist and autocratically ruin America.”

Yes, project 2025 outlines a vision for the United States if Donald J. Trump should manage to regain the presidency. The main point of the project is the president controls all the parts of government, from to all the federal agencies that provide services and protections for all citizens to powers not exclusively controlled by Congress or the courts.

As The New York Times first reported, “Their plans to centralize more power in the Oval Office stretch far beyond the former president’s recent remarks that he would order a criminal investigation into his political rival, President Biden, signaling his intent to end the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.

“Mr. Trump and his associates have a broader goal: to alter the balance of power by increasing the president’s authority over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House, according to a review of his campaign policy proposals and interviews with people close to him.

“Mr. Trump intends to bring independent agencies — like the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies, and the Federal Trade Commission, which enforces various antitrust and other consumer protection rules against businesses — under direct presidential control.”

If that sounds as if Trump feels he has the right to run the government his way, you’re reading it right.

Trump has long bridled at the limits of what he could or couldn’t do as president. Remember he asked and not facetiously, why we couldn’t use nuclear weapons. Just what the country needs, an itchy trigger finger.

Trump chafed at the ability of some federal agencies that operate without having to get his permission and he also was not a fan of the civil service which kept him from firing those he found disloyal.

Loyalty is important to Trump, but the ability to do what he wants is an even stronger motivator. What the unitary executive argument suggests is the president can control everything that is not either specific to Congress or to the court.

What are his overall intentions?

According to the Times, Mr. Trump himself has characterized his intentions rather differently — promising on his campaign website to “find and remove the radicals who have infiltrated the federal Department of Education” and listing a litany of targets at a rally last month.

“We will demolish the deep state,” Mr. Trump said at the rally in Michigan. “We will expel the warmongers from our government. We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists. And we will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.”

If you find that what he says sounding like a purge, you’re right.

The guardrails of what the president could or couldn’t do in office would be gone.

“I am president, and I shall rule” would theoretically be the law of the land.

Heaven help us.

When it’s hot, it’s hot

As a several months a year resident of Arizona, I know hot and dry. Just not as hot and dry as the Southwest is experiencing currently.

I have a picture on my phone of my weather station reporting 100 degrees and 12 percent humidity. We had a day over 100 this past spring before we left to come home the end of April.

But day after day of temperatures over 110 as Phoenix has been experiencing? Nothing even approaching living through that.

I relay to people that when it is 100 out you can feel the heat. You know it is HOT!

The real problem is anything that can absorb heat does and it becomes really, really hot. Car sheet metal, sidewalks, doors and their frames — you name it, if it can absorb heat it will.

The issue with Phoenix is normally things will cool off overnight. It’s not happening, so each day begins with high heat.

The good news? Most of you who are probably reading this aren’t in Phoenix!

— Kendall P. Stanley is retired editor of the News-Review. He can be contacted at kendallstanley@charter.net. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the writer and not necessarily of the Petoskey News-Review or its employees.

This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Kendall Stanley: Fascist handbook