“The only valid family is a working father married to a stay-at-home mother and their children.” This particularly toxic line comes right out of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 document that is a blueprint for how Trump and the GOP, if they regain the White House in November, aim to reshape our culture.

In the face of this, and its countless authoritarian implications, the only question going forward in this presidential election year is whether there is a sufficient will among a majority of the American voting public to avoid being tagged with the damning label of “good Germans” the way the public did under Hitler in the 1930s and through World War II.

The way the delirious, frenzied MAGA Republicans are advancing their cause at their convention in Milwaukee this week, the issue clearly becomes what the rest of us do about it.

To repeat, the only issue left in this campaign is not how bad Trump or J.D. Vance are, but whether sufficient energy and conviction can be aroused among reasonable and thinking American voters to crush this fascist movement at the polls in November.

In fact, there are more of us than there are of them. Their movement is based on deception and lies, a cacophony of twisted slogans and jerky motions fed to a segment of angry, aging, racist white males who imagine they can reconcile their desires for an all-white, all-straight fantasy world by clinging to Trump and Vance.

Whatever might or might not have been going on with that assassination attempt last weekend, a lesson from it for Trumpers is that their pathetic little demigod is wholly expendable as even more sinister, younger and more toxic replacements are lining up and ready to go, as exemplified by the choice of Vance as their V-P candidate.

Yes, the deceitful Vance, who rose to prominence with a fake book about life in Appalachia that deceived a lot of people, prostituting some very serious pain for a cynical, personal advancement, is a changeling child of serious fascist forces, including discredited Fox fanatic Tucker Carlson and Silicon Valley effluvial, Paypal founder Peter Thiel. This is according to a report posted online this week by serious “Never Trumper” Republican Steve Schmidt.

Quoting a memo assembled by Dave Chase, a Tim Ryan campaign manager (Ryan being the man Vance defeated in a 2022 primary election) and media consultant Brandon Hall, the essence of Vance lies in his belief that women should stay at home in violent marriages for the sake of the kids, that rape is “inconvenient” in justifying his radical opposition to women’s choice, and by his cynical exploitation of the opioid epidemic, starting what they called a fake charity for polling, campaign advisors and travel to launch a political career while illegally taking a tax write off. It asserts that “without a $40 million bailout from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s SuperPAC post-Labor Day in 2022, Vance would not be a U.S. Senator today.”

In the memo, he is described as “a complete fraud who has dangerous views toward women’s role in society.” He is also, not surprisingly, virulently anti-same sex marriage, and wants the criminalization of transgender health care and surgery on minors. He is also against U.S. involvement in the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression.

In other words, he is Trump without Trump’s baggage and in some important ways more sinister, even, than Trump. He says he would not have voted for the certification of the 2020 presidential election, playing into the Trump playbook that will likely be used again this November.

In the aforementioned memo, it is stated that Vance “fits into the growing New Right ideology along with his mentor Peter Thiel and biggest cheerleader Tucker Carlson. Vance and Carlson both share a personal disdain for Donald Trump that is not big enough to stop them from kissing Trump’s ass to move their agenda forward. They see Trump as a means to an end, piggybacking on Trump’s populist appeal to push for their New Right policies. They are MAGA committed, but not MAGA at their core. Ultimately, they have a more sophisticated, dangerous plan for changing the country.”