So many of us feel helpless in the face of the onslaught of the daily attacks on our democracy. That’s a primary goal of the authoritarian playbook — push us into a fetal position where we hide away in fear. But there are small steps each of us can take to reverse that fear, and take action to confront tyranny in ways that change the dynamics of the current political climate. Protests, of course are one way, but the Protect Democracy project has a list with 29 actions that you can take right now. Actions that build on top of each other to help create a growing movement to support our democracy.

Republicans have spent nearly 50 years, since the election of Ronald Reagan, trying to undo FDR’s New Deal, and create a plutocratic America shaped for the benefit of the wealthiest. Reagan’s trickle-down economic theory tried to pass off the idea that cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans would ultimately benefit everyone because the crumbs falling from the tables of the plutocracy would find their way to those with lesser means. Though this proved to be a fallacy, and Reaganomics led to a crippling recession, Republicans kept trying to find new ways to sell their plan.

Under Democratic presidents the American economy has proven to be resilient. Following Reagan’s recession, Republican President George H.W. Bush failed to restore the economy, and was defeated in the 1992 election after serving one term. Bill Clinton served two terms in office and finally managed to help the United States break free of the economic malaise brought on by Reagan and Bush. In 2000 George W. Bush was elected and over the next 8 years set the stage for his own economic crisis in 2008. Electing Democrat Barack Obama in November of 2008 put the nation back on sound economic footing, until the 2016 election when Republican Donald Trump was elected for the first time, and again drove the economy to the brink of disaster. In 2020 the election of Democrat Joe Biden was necessary to again right the ship and bring the economy back after Trump’s failed handling of the Covid Pandemic.

Trump was elected again in 2024 and despite the restored and growing economy that the Biden administration built, within a little less than 90 days, Trump managed to wipe out trillions of dollars of market value, destroy the global alliances that have kept the nation safe and secure since WWII, and with the help of the world’s richest neo-nazi, Elon Musk, destroyed the institutions that provide much of the social safety net that was put in place by Democrats since the great Depression of the 1930s.

The blueprint for Trump’s dismantling of our constitutional order and the fabric of American society was articulated in the Republican agenda called “Project 2025.” This project took the seeds planted in the Reagan years and grew them into a fully fleshed plan to decapitate our democracy and replace it with an authoritarian figurehead who could be easily manipulated by a plutocratic cadre committed to their selfish ideals. A compliant Supreme Court was also willing to do away with any checks on the power of the president, making this authoritarian takeover even more achievable. Unchecked by Congress or the Courts, Trump has moved to mimic his heroes Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Kim Jong-un, and Adolph Hitler.

So we are at the crossroads, facing the end of the democratic republic that was imagined by our founders. Our Declaration of Independence rings hollow as we now have a president who is as much a tyrant as the king from whom we declared ourselves independent. The principles and ideals of our government as expressed in the Federalist Papers, in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are being tossed aside as the concepts of due process, the rule of law, and the guarantees of the First Amendment are being ignored by the Trump administration.

We need a revival of our founding principles, and a restoration of our ideals. And so we propose a new plan, a new document, based on those principles and ideals, that beats back the plutocracy and authoritarianism of the current administration and Republican Party. We propose Project 2026, to be written and forged in the hearts and minds of patriotic American citizens. It is our sincere hope that leaders of both parties will recognize the call for a renewed commitment to our highest ideals.

Join us. Send your ideas to publius97520@gmail.com.

The social media landscape is dominated by right wing ownership. Elon Musk and Mark Zukerberg are notably supportive of the Trump administration. Musk built X into a propaganda machine in support of Trump’s campaign, leveraging that support to gain control over the administration. Zuckerberg’s Meta (parent of Facebook, Threads, and Instagram) will officially end its fact checking system on Monday, April 7, 2025 likely leading to further erosion of an objective reality.

It’s odd that so many progressives still support those platforms. As an example, the Rogue Valley Indivisible page promoting the recent Hands Off protests shows links to Twitter and Facebook but provide no links to accounts on Bluesky (bsky.app). (At least the national Indivisible site links to Bluesky and Mastodon and eliminates X.) Perhaps their social media teams are not fully up-to-speed with newer platforms. It’s not just political groups that are still socializing in ways that profit Musk and Zuckerberg — I see that many arts organizations, too, are stuck in the old right-wing spaces. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival still favors Facebook, X, and Instagram. I know that they are faced with a challenge of reaching an audience in customary spaces, but increasingly those spaces (notably and particularly X) have grown so toxic that organizations like OSF may be tainted by association.

The Bluesky platform is a reference implementation of an open standard protocol. And the company, while privately held, is a B Corp:

Bluesky Social is a benefit corporation; as such, it is allowed to use its profits for the public good, and is not obligated to maximize shareholder value or return profits to its shareholders as dividends.
Wikipedia

Let’s work together to encourage organizations to stop helping these Trump supporting platforms: X, Facebook, Threads, and Instagram and instead move to a public benefit supported open standard platform like Bluesky.

Cliff Bentz is a devotee of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and has handed over to the Trump administration the responsibilities that rightfully fall to the Article 1 branch of government, Congress. He has shirked his constitutional duties and enabled a fascist takeover of the United States, preferring the devastation wreaked by Elon Musk’s firings and cuts to agencies and departments of government that provide services to citizens and the world. He also favors the massive tax increase on American citizens in the form of the crushing global tariffs imposed by Donald Trump. (Trump has been justifiably criticized by economists across the political spectrum for being disturbingly ignorant about how tariffs work. His administration couldn’t even come up with a meaningful method for determining the tariff rates to impose. And in an inexplicable act of stupidity, they also imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands and on US Military bases, while forgetting to impose any tariffs on Russia..)

Bentz has bragged about his unconditional support for Trump and Musk. He needs to go.

District 2 has been represented by a Republican since 1981, though some of those representatives have been moderates. Greg Walden, who was more of a center-right Republican than Bentz, served the district from 1999 to 2021. The time has come for either a moderate, sensible Republican or a moderate Democrat (like Democrat Al Ullman who was elected to represent the district 12 times from 1957 to 1981.)