Vichy America

Trump's takeover cannot succeed without collaborators.

They are all around us, and we don’t even know who they are there. Friends, neighbors, the police, judges, the clergy, teachers, doctors, journalists, and the owners of some of the biggest companies in the country — if not the world. These people, many nameless but just as many well-known players, are working diligently to reshape our nation so that it caters to the few and the powerful while denying the rest of us the protections guaranteed in the Constitution.

Project 25 was out there for all to see — in the same way Hitler’s Mein Kampf was out there. It was a lot of «document,» but there it was, a relatively detailed plan for dismantling the world’s biggest and seemingly loneliest superpower — the oldest democracy even. Caught with their pants down, the authors denied the plan was real. Trump did what he does best: He lied about knowing anything about it.

“Trump said he knows nothing about it and doesn’t know any of the authors. I believe him” was how many Americans justified casting votes for a felon promising to become the country’s first dictator.

And here we are, despite his lies that he didn’t know “any of those people.” Many of “those people” are working 24/7, and go through Project 25 page by page, and putting into action. The average American, and most Democrats, are shocked by the speed and breadth by which the federal government is being gutted. In addition, everything that Biden and other presidents enacted, for example, to combat climate change, is being reversed.

The purging of the federal bureaucracy is unprecedented for the U.S. but not the world. There are multiple examples of the status quo caving to the whims of a morally and criminally corrupt dictator. The degree of success of the Trump administration, like in other historical examples, could not have been realized without the participation of tens of collaborators.

To call these collaborators traitors is too easy. They aren’t traitors because that would suggest they once believed in the system that fostered our American uniqueness and then stopped believing in it. They are, though, collaborators. Rising from the ashes of Trump’s grievance-fueled destruction of American society is the America they always preferred, the one that is utterly antithetical to the America we all loved as children. These collaborators believe that the nation will be best served if it rejects equality for all and embraces hate and racism. A similar betrayal took place in Vichy, France, surprising even the Germans with the speed and enthusiasm that “official France” — the police, politicians, and key parts of the bureaucracy — took to the German-inspired authoritarianism and, eventually, the quashing of citizen’ rights and repression of French as well as foreign Jews.

Collaborators often tend to be fence-sitters. Precariously balancing themselves on the top, one leg on either side, they act as if scanning the playground to see the best action. Being sure never to commit until the time is right and chaotic enough so that they can always retreat to safety while later claiming they never came down from the fence, the collaborator offers support when he can maximize his own benefit. There is no genuine ideological motive driving the collaborator, they just find it thrilling to see others being harmed. Many collaborators were offended by someone at one time or another, often in childhood, and so, like Trump, imagined grievance becomes their fuel and revenge their raison d’etre.

The whole power of Project 25 is not the themes put forth or the calls to action one finds on each page. Psychologists undoubtedly worked on putting the document together because it calls for a complete dismantling of our system to fight unseen — and unverified — evil while giving anyone who helps cover from ever being held accountable. This is how these things succeed. It’s not the gun-wielding revolutionary or the Molotov-tossing student who brings about radical change. It is the tea-drinking, getting-up-early-and-going-to-work-everyday-weak-handshaking-always-averting-their-eyes-gray-suited collaborator who makes these things work.

Project 25 is exact enough and general enough to make itself the prime place for anyone taking part in this exercise of society-destroying hide-and-seek. We know they are hiding in the living room, but we don’t see that it has a false floor. The collaborators are there, all around us, but then they aren’t, and all the blame falls back on DOGE and Musk — or Trump’s who’s who of the worst cabinet ever assembled in the history of our nation.

To survive this moment, we need to keep records of who participated. The names of every person, especially at the lowest levels, because it will be easy to remember which officials at the top levels will be deserving of prison time post-Trump, needs to be recorded in a big book — both online and offline. These collaborators, the cowards being celebrated by enemy number one, Donald Trump, are the real warriors in this ending of American democracy. Without them, Trump cannot succeed. He is succeeding because they are doing what he hoped they would do. If, during Trump’s first term, the defenders of our democracy stopped him, today they are gone.

Their names must be emblazoned in our minds and spoken regularly so that they become as hated and despised as Trump himself. If you are collaborating, we will find out — and then we will come for you. And no, this is not a call for violence. There are many ways to shine a light on these collaborators. They do it to patriots by doxxing them, well, that’s a two-way street.