The “Pursuit of Blessedness” Is Running Out Of Time.

Posted on | May 19, 2025 | Comments Off on The “Pursuit of Blessedness” Is Running Out Of Time.

Mike Magee

Nine months ago, during the Presidential debate, Trump declared, when questioned directly about the Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership, “I know nothing about it.” Even for Trump, this was a strikingly bald-faced lie considering that the former President’s name was mentioned over 300 times in the 887 page document.

Described at the time by Pulitzer Prize winning economics columnist, Carlos Lozada, the work itself was an “off-the-shelf governing plan.” The carefully constructed manifesto was packed with conservative fan favorites, not simply “militarizing the southern border” and reversing what they call “climate fanaticism,” but also placing DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) efforts in the waste bin, banning abortion nationally, and pushing deregulation and tax cuts for the richest rich.

It is useful now to remind all freedom loving Americans, especially those who convinced themselves it was a good idea to vote for this guy, that we were warned – even if we were to ignore last week’s open-borders importation of white South Africans. Of course, if you have run into these characters on K street and beyond, none of this is surprising. This is who they are, and largely who they have always been.

This is political jiu-jitsu practiced at its highest level. Rather than dismantling the “deep state,” these operators are fast at work “capturing the administrative state” for their own self-serving purposes.

Understanding jiu-jitsu goes a long way toward understanding the Heritage Foundation and Federalist Society’s puppet masters. The word “Jū” means “gentle, soft, supple, flexible, pliable, or yielding.” It’s companion, “jutsu” is the “art or technique.” Combine the two, and you have the ”yielding-art.” The intent in bodily (or political) combat is to harness an opponent’s power against himself, rather that confronting him directly.

Political jiu-jitsu may be deceptive and confusing in the absence of visible weaponry, but it is anything but gentle. In the physical version, you are instructed in joint locks and chokeholds, but also biting, hair pulling, and gouging. Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation and editor of Project 2025, is a master of the political version. While he and Trump outwardly employed a “nothing to see here” stance, demographic realities were cued up in the document. How to win the election? “Voter efficiency.” Or in the Project’s words: “Strong political leadership is needed to increase efficiency and align the Census Bureau’s mission with conservative principles.”

Roberts’ language was soft, but its impact hard indeed. In the introduction he suggested that the Declaration of Independence’s words “pursuit of happiness” were better understood to be “the pursuit of blessedness” while at the same time providing corporations a market free hand “to flourish.” Career civil servants were recast as “holdovers” without “moral legitimacy.” And the Justice Department needed a reshaping to eliminate “a bloated bureaucracy with a critical core of personnel who are infatuated with the perpetuation of a radical liberal agenda.”

Majority rules and demographic changes being what they were, alternative facts and voter suppression were added to the tools of “political jiu-jitsu” artists. Kelly Anne Conway certainly did her part by launching and legitimizing the concept of “alternative facts” way back in January of 2017. Amplified throughout the first Trump term, MAGA supporters were locked and loaded when Fox News with the defeated President’s support, reeved up the insurrection four years later, and then rode the misinformation campaign back into the White House four years after that.

What was not fully revealed in the 2050 play book was the critical role of Elon Musk. And yet, in retrospect, he was there in the shadows all along. At the September 12, 2024 All-In Summit 2024 hosted by RealClear Politics he said, “We do have an opportunity to do kind of a once in a lifetime deregulation and reduction in the size of government. Because the other thing besides the regulations. America is also going bankrupt extremely quickly. And nobody seems to… everyone seems to be sort of whistling past the graveyard on this one.”

Four months into the Musk-funded technocratic dismantling of our federal government, the confusion and chaos from attacks on HHS funding, academic institutions, due process, and a FOX only cabinet has largely shielded the continued work of Kevin Roberts and his followers. Their “nothing to see here” curtains are fully drawn as they get closer and closer to their envisioned autocracy.

Is there room for hope? All signs signal, “Yes.” Here are three advanced indicators:

Local elections thus far have rewarded Democratic candidates primarily.
Trump’s Tariff Policy has few clean exit options for its’ leader who is content to persist as long as he owns the daily news cycle.
Professional incompetence and in-fighting are undermining Project 2025 milestones in a political environment where opportunity to dismantle our democracy is clearly “time-limited.”