Local opinion: Two contrasting Project 2025s
Project 2025, originally written in 1992, has nothing to do with the Heritage Foundation version. It was written by the Institute for National Strategic Studies as a projection of changes for America's future success. It was a proposal for world peace and unity.
The analysts involved were asked to consider the future, unconstrained by traditional military thinking. In Phase I of the study, three independent, private analytical organizations and the Defense Intelligence Agency provided 13 different versions of what the world might be like in 2025. They studied notable long-term geopolitical, economic, demographic, technological, sociological, and ecological trends, ranging from the dire to the utopian.
On the darker, more violent side, they also conceived of a radical, more or less united pan-Islamic bloc waging a disruptive and deadly holy war against the West, as well as here in the U.S. as well.
In an entirely different vein, a group of academics created a "green" scenario in which the United States sets aside its arsenal altogether and devotes its energies exclusively to saving the planet from the enormous ecological damage it has suffered (this was written in 1990 and published in 1992).
As well as being a positive factor, the 1992 Project 2025 served as a warning to Americans to buckle down and "go to work" on securing our place in the world. Unfortunately, that will be challenging work under the new administration. They have accentuated the image of America as "Life is a Cabaret," where a media-dominated world (and celebrity) turns entertainment into "reality." Technology, especially AI, has enabled even more escapes from rising global troubles.
They have concentrated more on our troubles including military security problems, overwhelming debt (created by the newly elected in his previous term), energy depletion (false), ignoring global climate change and pollution, exaggerating rampant crime, and widespread child neglect. Two of the president-elect's first six nominees were contributors to 2023's PROJECT 2025, which Trump denies.
Finally, the sources of communication should be seized by people, not the government, to broadcast the truth and not false indoctrination. Problems must be identified and reasonable, although difficult, for solutions to be developed.
In 1992, the Defense Intelligence Agency's deck of plausible futures was built on a common set of core assumptions about 2025:
7. The world's population will have almost doubled (close — only 33%).
Sheldon Metz is a Tucson resident and a political and historical researcher.
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