Trump has once again shown his mastery of muddying the waters and misdirection. The press is all aflutter, writing and talking about Trump claiming he will give every citizen a five-thousand-dollar check if Republicans win the midterm primaries. And the press, like mice who found the breadcrumb trail, ate it up and rushed to write about how impossible and unlikely it is to ever happen.
The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait writes:
“Donald Trump’s new promise to give a $5,000 check to every adult American citizen if Republicans win the midterm elections may be an effort to answer a variant of an age-old riddle: Can Trump devise so ill-conceived that even Trump’s intelligence is insulted?”
I have to admit I found Chait’s statement humorous. Of course Trump would conceive it, for a simple reason: It’s Trump, and he believes the majority of the American populace are, as he likes to say, ‘low IQ,’ and these are the ones who will believe whatever he tells them. Confirmed by the fact that they once again voted him into the highest office this country has to offer, even with visible and documented proof that he tried to nullify the election that displaced him; something that has never been done since the founding of our democracy.
What happened on that day was something no American citizen thought they would ever see. An actual attempt to overthrow an election, punctuated with the Confederate flag in the Rotunda, was the most insidious slap in the face of what many Americans bled and died for.
Yes, the insurrection was quelled, but the damage was done, and the signal the progenitors of Project 2025 were waiting for was given; all they needed was someone willing to enact their plan. They found their willing instrument in Trump, and with his defeat of Harris, they had their green light. And someone who is no longer with us would be extremely proud of what is taking place in Trump’s second bite of the apple. Trump’s promise isn’t about his intelligence; it’s about continuing the long con he’s been playing on the people since he was elected. This–idea of minority rule under the veneer of democracy–is not new. The United States has seen this logic before. That individual would be John C. Calhoun, who believed a permanent class of people should rule, which conflicts with how the founders structured our form of governance.
Interestingly, Calhoun’s view of governance isn’t as archaic as it may sound. Calhoun feared majority rule because it threatened the power of the elite class he believed should govern. His solution was to build structural barriers that prevented the majority from ever gaining control. Consider recent events: Republican states are rushing to redraw district lines that will place them in the position to govern in the manner Calhoun envisioned when he wrote the following:
“There is but one certain mode in which this result can be secured; and that is, by the adoption of some restriction or limitation, which shall so effectually prevent any one interest, or combination of interests, from obtaining the exclusive control of the government, as to render hopeless all attempts directed to that end.”
Today’s redistricting battles echo Calhoun’s logic: redesign the system so that a numerical majority cannot exercise political power.
Trump’s $5,000 promise is not policy—it is dependency creation. Dependency is a tool of minority rule, and minority rule is the architecture Calhoun articulated.
What result could Trump and the progenitors of Project 2025 possibly want from an architecture designed to devalue, dismantle, and destroy the government functions that serve American citizens?
If Calhoun were alive today, he would be smiling and ever so proud. Calhoun would be smiling. The rest of us should not be.”
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