Stop Listening to Charlatans: The Blueprint Is Live

By Michael Smith - Reflective MVS 

You ever notice how the voices that told us “Don’t vote, don’t matter, both sides are the same” have gone missing now that the wrecking ball is swinging? They cashed the pardon, pocketed the platinum plan photo op, grabbed the Trump selfie, and left the rest of us to deal with raids at midnight and a government blueprint designed to erase us.

Project 2025 isn’t coming. It’s here.
And the folks who told you to sit out, to “teach Democrats a lesson,” to flirt with third parties like we had a luxury of options—they were wrong. Dead wrong. And their silence right now is betrayal.

The Celebrity Pipeline to Nowhere

Let’s name them. Ice Cube with his “Platinum Plan.” Where is it now? Because Black families in Chicago sure could’ve used some platinum protection when agents in helicopters and U-Hauls raided their homes, zip-tied their babies, and dragged people out naked in the cold. No press conference from Cube. No “plan” on the table. Just echoes.

Kodak Black? Lil Wayne? You stood next to Trump grinning like he was about to sign a record deal with your freedom. Now the receipts are paid in midnight raids. Your silence is louder than your verses.

Cornel West? Love your scholarship, but you knew damn well that a third-party presidential run in a two-party system only gifts the White House back to the wolves. History books are full of those “symbolic” runs that hand elections to the most dangerous man in the room. You knew better. You did it anyway.

And let’s not forget the chorus of “no tangibles, no vote” pundits. Where’s your tangible now? Because what’s tangible at this moment is zip ties, deportation vans, and a Supreme Court stacked 7–2 against anything that smells like civil rights.

Stop Falling for the Courtship Game

Voting ain’t romance. You don’t need to be “wooed.” You’re not waiting for flowers and candy. You’re hiring a manager for the most important job in your life: making sure your family isn’t targeted by policy written in Heritage Foundation conference rooms.

When you sit out because you don’t feel “courted,” you’re not protesting—you’re surrendering. And surrender looks like ICE at your door at 1 a.m. Surrender looks like losing Medicare while billionaires cash their tax cuts. Surrender looks like your local school board banning your kids from classrooms again because segregation is suddenly “back on the table.”

Receipts Don’t Expire

Project 2025 said they’d do this:

• Gut the EPA and Department of Education.
• Pack courts with loyalists.
• Reinstate abortion bans and trans bans.
• Strip civil rights enforcement down to the studs.
• Put political appointees in every agency, purge the rest.

Trump himself confirmed it: meeting with Russell Vought, quarterback of the plan, to decide which “Democrat agencies” to kill off first. That’s not theory. That’s his to-do list.

So if you once told people this was “fear-mongering”? Own it. If you told young Black voters to stay home? Repent or be remembered as a collaborator.

My Personal Call

I live in Atlanta, in a space so small my 100+  houseplants have better housing than some of my neighbors. I think about them when I read about Chicago raids—families who thought the night was safe until helicopters made it loud. And I can’t help but laugh bitterly at the same rappers and celebrities who played at politics, sold us false promises, and then disappeared, while the real bosses sat in boardrooms writing blueprints in ink.

I won’t sit quiet. And neither should you. Silence isn’t neutral. It’s betrayal.

What We Do Now

• Cut off the megaphone. Stop sharing political takes from celebrities with no organizing receipts. If they couldn’t produce a plan in 2020, they sure as hell don’t have one now.
• Hold your circle accountable. Don’t let folks skate on “both sides are the same.” Pull up the list of Project 2025 policies—check, check, check. That’s not theory. That’s reality.
• Organize locally. Join, build, repair. If you don’t like the org, change it. Sitting out isn’t protest—it’s suicide.
• Vote strategically, then agitate daily. Hire the candidate least likely to burn the house down, then camp outside their office until they fix the plumbing.

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For the Record

The people who told us Project 2025 was just hype were wrong. The celebrities who smiled for Trump’s cameras and then ghosted our communities were sellouts. And the neighbors who still want to act like this is abstract? They’ll be the first ones banging on your door when the raids come closer.

Don’t let them write our obituary while they count their checks. Call them out. Organize anyway. And when someone says “both sides are the same,” ask them which side is zip-tying Black children in the middle of the night.

Because I know my answer. And it ain’t neutral.