Thanks for this. I had read up on it some time ago, and it seemed like par-for-the-course “paint the government our color once we’re in power” except for a couple concerning points, so when people around here were talking about it like it was literal fascism, I dismissed that as misunderstandings and exaggeration. I hadn’t realized that civil servants were hitherto untouched by the government switching colors.
So it sounds like it’s not literal fascism, but it’s more like… how in some fantasy worlds, higher powers will avoid getting involved in mortal affairs because doing so will give their enemies license to do the same and then the world becomes a mess. It sounds like if Project 2025 happens, then blue’s going to retaliate in kind when they get power back (because otherwise they’re at a major disadvantage,) and it keeps going, majorly hampering the government’s operations. Who wants to get a job that you’re gonna be fired from in 4 years? There’s a chance that blue’s just going to try to hit the undo button, but if red keeps knocking the block tower over and blue keeps rebuilding it, that’s still not going to go very well.
But at the same time… they’ve already stated their willingness to do this. So the damage to the unwritten contract between parties is already done, and the only way to avoid the consequences is to keep blue in power until red redacts, and hope blue doesn’t decide to do it first (which they probably won’t, unless they say something like “the only way to defend against red doing it is to make sure they don’t have their own people in there when they get the power.”)
I don’t like that, though. Sure, blue is generally more reasonable than red, but that’s because they have to be in order to secure votes from reasonable people. If all they need to be is more reasonable than the guys who are literally planning to destroy the government, that’s going to let them get away with some pretty undesirable things. I think a better move would be to try to address the deteriorating two-party dynamics we have. My money’s on Literally Anybody Else.