A guy on Stacker News told me, “That’s what it takes to win,” then framed politics as a war against a conspiracy about “Jewish/Muslim/communist networks” (his wording; thread here #1373809). I asked the only honest question: win what? He answered plainly: “Ownership of the state… if we’re going to have a central authority then it has to be my guys in charge.”
That’s the premise: politics as state capture. Set aside the slogans and “values” branding and you’re left with a simple definition of “winning”: your side controls the institutions that write the rules and enforce them.
America is in what Axios calls the Great Unchurching: nearly 3 in 10 adults are religiously unaffiliated; 57% seldom or never attend services; and church closures are accelerating. When the pews empty, the demand for meaning doesn’t disappear. It migrates. And politics is always ready to supply a story that functions like religion: identity, enemies, purity, destiny.
That’s where Project Blitz fits: not just rhetoric, but infrastructure, model bills, legal strategy, and incremental normalization. The Project Blitz primer describes an explicit step-by-step approach: start with “In God We Trust” displays in public schools, then escalate toward laws that expand religion-based carve-outs and permit discrimination. It reports 130+ bills introduced across 35 states in two years.
Notice what changes once the goal becomes “ownership of the state”:
- Faith stops being primarily persuasion and starts leaning on coercive policy.
- “Religious freedom” shifts from freedom of conscience toward permission for the in-group to set the rules.
- Citizenship starts to feel like it comes with a creed, and pluralism fractures into insiders and outsiders.
If you distrust centralized power, left or right, why cheer when any movement treats the state like holy property? Church/state fusion is how you turn conviction into compliance. That’s not faith. That’s power with a halo.
Is “ownership of the state” really the win? Or is it just another way to lose?
Sources / reading