PROJECT 2025: THE GASLIGHTING IS WELL UNDERWAY

Hi -- I'm traveling tomorrow, and I may be on a somewhat lighter blogging schedule for the next two weeks. I'll try to weigh in on President Biden's Lester Holt interview and the Republican convention, but I may not manage my usual daily posting schedule. Or I might! Who knows?

For now, I want to point out that it's clear Republicans are worried about the possible impact of Project 2025 on the November election because right-wing meme creators are working extremely hard to portray anyone who warns about Project 2025 as a paranoid crank. Here are some of the memes that are circulating, courtesy of posts at Reddit's r/forwardsfromgrandma:

A couple more, though I'm sorry that the person who posted these put an X through them:

Brakey, a Maine state senator and self-proclaimned "Renegade Statesman" and "Liberty Populist," has more:

CONFIRMED: Project 2025 has a plan to submerge humans into underground vaults to conduct psychological experiments on those who survive total atomic annihilation in the upcoming nuclear war between the U.S., Russia, and China.

— Sen. Eric Brakey 🌲🦔 (@SenatorBrakey) July 13, 2024

CONFIRMED: Project 2025 includes a plan for the vampire Angelus to open the Hellmouth under Sunnydale, California and unleash a hell on earth for all eternity.

— Sen. Eric Brakey 🌲🦔 (@SenatorBrakey) July 13, 2024

If they feel the need to push back this hard, the attention critics have directed to Project 2025 must be having some impact. On the other hand, Bret Stephens, in his most recent column, assures us that Trump just isn't the kind of guy on whose watch Project 2025 could be implemented:

I have excluded from this essay some of the parade of horribles that Trump’s critics on the left expect from a second term, from anxieties about the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025” scheme (which Trump has distanced himself from) to terror about the end of democracy itself. Those are fears I don’t share because, like many conservatives, I don’t think Trump is strong or smart enough to blow down the pillars of American institutional life.... I think those pillars will hold....

That plus the widely cited piece from The Dispatch ("Viral Claims About Project 2025 Are Mostly False") makes me wonder whether "Nothing to see here, move on" will become the standard elite-media message about Project 2025 -- which would be exactly the same message these meme makers are spreading.