Trump is wrong about the "Deep State," but it is real

It is not simply the intelligence and law-enforcement sectors. The Deep State is a network of government agencies, major corporations, etc., all unelected, whose main concern is to maintain the present limits of the Overton Window and to preserve the Washington Consensus of economic neoliberalism and foreign-policy neoconservatism, effectively barring serious discussion or consideration of all alternatives, and which continues in power from election to election without being significantly affected by electoral outcomes. See Mike Lofgren's book The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Interview with him here.

How should we think about the deep state? Is it an elite conspiracy? A loosely defined social group? A network of specific institutions? How should we conceive of it?

Well, first of all, it is not a conspiracy. It is something that operates in broad daylight. It is not a conspiratorial cabal. These are simply people who have evolved [into] a kind of position. It is in their best interest to act in this way.

And given the fact that people would rather know about Kim Kardashian than what makes up the budget or what the government is doing in Mali or Sudan or other unknown places, this is what you get: a disconnected, self-serving bureaucracy that is … simply evolving to do what it’s doing now. That is, to maintain and enhance its own power.

When do you think the American deep state first started?

Probably, it started in WWII, when we had the Manhattan Project, which was a huge secret project that required tens of thousands of people to be working in complete secrecy — and we actually built enormous cities [for the project’s workers] … and no one knew they existed.

You also had the so-called Ultra and Magic secret [operations], the decoding of the Nazi and Japanese codes that required an enormous number of people to be doing absolutely top secret work that they did not reveal to anybody for decades. So, WWII created this kind of infrastructure of the deep state, which increased and consolidated during the Cold War.

What are the key institutions and players within the deep state?

The key institutions are exactly what people would think they are. The military-industrial complex; the Pentagon and all their contractors (but also, now, our entire homeland security apparatus); the Department of Treasury; the Justice Department; certain courts, like the southern district of Manhattan, and the eastern district of Virginia; the FISA courts. And you got this kind of rump Congress that consists of certain people in the leadership, defense and intelligence committees who kind of know what’s going on. The rest of Congress doesn’t really know or care; they’re too busy looking about the next election.

So that’s the governmental aspect. What about in the private sector?

You’ve got Wall Street. Many of these people — whether it is David Petraeus … or someone like [Bill] Daley, who is the former chief of staff to President Obama … or Hank Paulson, who came from Goldman Sachs to become Treasury Secretary and bailed out Wall Street in 2008; or the people that Obama chose to be Treasury secretary — like Tim Geithner. They all have that Wall Street connection.

And the third thing now is Silicon Valley.

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Considering that both major political parties in the US have taken turns with control of the presidency and congress, why are the Dems the deep state? Were Republicans not smart enough to find federal jobs for their supporters? Are Republicans pure civil servants who don't take advantage of power and simply wish to serve the people of the US?

LincolnDuncan said:

Considering that both major political parties in the US have taken turns with control of the presidency and congress, why are the Dems the deep state? Were Republicans not smart enough to find federal jobs for their supporters? Are Republicans pure civil servants who don't take advantage of power and simply wish to serve the people of the US?

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The Deep State appears to be nonpartisan or bipartisan -- but, as explained in the OP, not apolitical.

And in proof of the Deep State's power, how much has Trump, who came to Washington to "drain the swamp," actually accomplished in that regard, with a Republican Congress and a popular movement behind him? Nothing, save to drain the swamp directly into the West Wing. Nothing, save what lies within the power of executive orders, which the next president can just as easily reverse.

Trump brought the swamp with him and it's only getting worse. The Deep State is another figment of Trump's imagination to divert the public's attention from his screw ups.

Tigersman said:

Trump brought the swamp with him and it's only getting worse. The Deep State is another figment of Trump's imagination to divert the public's attention from his screw ups.

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Well, in fairness, he didn't come up with the idea; it originated in Turkey. Whether it actually applies there I don't know, but it definitely applies here.

LincolnDuncan said:

Considering that both major political parties in the US have taken turns with control of the presidency and congress, why are the Dems the deep state?

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I dunno, but it does seem to be the Pubs who mostly talk about it.

In the United States the term "deep state" is used in Republican and conservative political messaging to describe a conspiracy theory of a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.[1] The term is often used in a critical sense vis-à-vis the general electorate to refer to the lack of influence popular democracy has on these institutions and the decisions they make as a shadow government.[2][3] An April 2017 poll documented that 48% of Americans thought there was a "deep state".[4]

The term was originally coined in a somewhat pejorative sense to refer to similar relatively invisible state apparatus in Turkey and post-Soviet Russia, where the Turkish military colluded with drug traffickers.[5] With respect to the United States, the concept has been discussed in numerous published works by Marc Ambinder, David W. Brown, Peter Dale Scott, Mike Lofgren, Kevin Shipp (sv), Michael Tomasky and Michael Wolff.[citation needed]

While definitions vary, the term gained popularity among various groups, primarily supporters of Donald Trump and conspiracy theorists, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in opposition to establishment Republican and Democratic candidates. Following Trump's inauguration, the term was widely adopted among partisans alleging that there exists a deep-state conspiracy to delegitimize the presidency and thwart its policy goals.[6]

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But, that's not what Lofgren was talking about.

The longtime Republican aide, who worked for three decades on Capitol Hill, published The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government in January 2016. Its jacket copy touts Lofgren’s “gripping portrait of the dismal swamp on the Potomac and the revolution it will take to set us back on course.”

So you might think the 64-year-old Lofgren is gratified that barely two years later, the phrase he helped introduce into the American political lexicon is everywhere — used to describe a secret, anti-Trump power elite which has been blamed in recent days for everything from ordering Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson’s $31,000 dining room set, to running a human-trafficking ring made famous by Roseanne Barr, to briefly shutting down Sean Hannity’s Twitter account, to framing ex-GOP congressman Steve Stockman for abuse of campaign finance laws.

Well, not exactly.

“It’s like a virus,” Lofgren told BuzzFeed News. “Once it gets out into the environment and it mutates, you’ve totally lost control of it.”

From “fake news” to “bad faith,” the Trump administration and its boosters have proven fantastically adept at expropriating the slogans of the political zeitgeist and redefining them with brutal partisan efficiency. And for the past 15 months, Lofgren has had a front-row seat to one such refurbishment, as the bipartisan phenomenon he carefully documented became, as he put it in an email to BuzzFeed News, the “ultimate ‘dog ate my homework’ excuse” for “the Trump regime and its pinhead allies.” The transformation has been so thorough, it’s left Lofgren wondering if it’s possible to make a broad critique of power within America in 2018 without it being turned into a propagandistic caricature by the far right.

Though Lofgren’s “Deep State,” which he first described in a widely read 2014 essay for the website of longtime PBS host Bill Moyers, is influential, it bears little resemblance to the all-powerful cabal that the contemporary far-right has conjured. A former Fulbright scholar who studied contemporary European history, Lofgren spent 16 years as a senior analyst on the House and Senate budget committees, developing an expertise in the way the government pays for national security.

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Bumping this because there are still Litsters talking about the Deep State.

Is the deep state the reason there are still no term limits for congress-people?

Bullshit. Humans are not that capable.

The bureaucracy of administering a human enterprise of such immensity as the United States has the effect of preserving the status quo but there is no grand master plan or policy making that happen. It is, instead, the nature of the mindless beast that is a human hierarchy.

There is no shadow council of Fu Manchus or Zionists or Zurich Gnomes or Arch Civil Servants running it all.

Edit: I have never learned how to spell "bureaucracy." Before computers I just asked someone else. With spellcheck I just start with b and try various phonetic combinations until the spellchecker realizes what the fuck I'm trying to say.

think that's some sort of parable but I don't know exactly what it means.

Hal9000_ said:

Is the deep state the reason there are still no term limits for congress-people?

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No, that's because of a Supreme Court decision. There was a term-limits law, but they struck it down.

Oblimo said:

Bullshit. Humans are not that capable.

The beaucracy of administering a human enterprise of such immensity as the United States has the effect of preserving the status quo but there is no grand master plan or policy making that happen. It is, instead, the nature of the mindless beast that is a human hierarchy.

There is no shadow council of Fu Manchus or Zionists or Zurich Gnomes or Arch Civil Servants running it all.

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That's not Lofgren's theory. All the institutions he calls part of the Deep State are publicly known.

Kirkrapine said:

That's not Lofgren's theory. All the institutions he calls part of the Deep State are publicly known.

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But he attributes to them intent to preserve the Overton Window status quo, does he not?

That's what I am disagreeing with. There is no mindful intent there.

Oblimo said:

But he attributes to them intent to preserve the Overton Window status quo, does he not?

That's what I am disagreeing with. There is no mindful intent there.

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There doesn't need to be. It is an effect of what they are naturally inclined to do.

A professor of mine once told an anecdote that I haven't been able to confirm, but I haven't looked that hard.

Biologists were studying shoaling behavior in fish, trying to determine what mechanism it was that get fish to all swim in one direction, and then all simultaneously turn and swim another.

So they effectively lobotomized one fish, such that its motions were not based on reactions to its sensory perceptions, and were essential random. And they reintroduced that fish to its school.

And when the school shoaled, after a short while, it always, always started following the fish without A brain for every decision.

Turns out the mechanism is just, "do whatever the other fish do." The game being that maybe the fish at the front of the shoal saw the shark before you did.

And, while eveyone's copying the guy who first moves, thinking he must know something, the shoaling process inevitably follows a mad prophet.

That's how dolphins are able to herd shoals into murderballs, and how ant colonies sometimes enter suicide spirals.

There's no mindful intent guiding social groups that can recognize an error and debug it.

Kirkrapine said:

There doesn't need to be. It is an effect of what they are naturally inclined to do.

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Then I recommend you rephrase:

The Deep State is a network of government agencies, major corporations, etc., all unelected, whose main concern is to maintain the present limits of the Overton Window and to preserve the Washington Consensus of economic neoliberalism and foreign-policy neoconservatism, effectively barring serious discussion or

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instead of a main concern, it is an accidental side effect.

Oblimo said:

Then I recommend you rephrase:



instead of a main concern, it is an accidental side effect.

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What reason have you to doubt they have the conscious intent?

Kirkrapine said:

And in proof of the Deep State's power, how much has Trump, who came to Washington to "drain the swamp," actually accomplished in that regard, with a Republican Congress and a popular movement behind him? Nothing, save to drain the swamp directly into the West Wing. Nothing, save what lies within the power of executive orders, which the next president can just as easily reverse.

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You and Trump just have different ideas what "The Swamp" is. Most normal people's idea of "The Swamp" is the corporate-political revolving door. His is a general, purely political, somewhat partisan, antiestablishmentarianist fever dream pulled out of Alex Jones' ass. He said from the get-go that he'd make DC more corporate, and he did. An oil executive as Secretary of State, as just the most obvious example. Azar, Acosta, DeVos, Ross...

Also, Trump is weak and incompetent. So even that, he half-assed.

If you want to look at this in a partisan manner then you don't have a fucking clue as to what's going on.

The author of that book points to WWII as the start, it wasn't. It started long before then but WWII certainly saw an acceleration. You can go all the way back to Grant to see the seeds germinate. Big jumps under T. Roosevelt and then Wilson. FDR and Truman probably were responsible for the greatest incremental spurt. Every president has added to it to a greater or lesser extent ever since.

You can sit there and point to any one segment of government and say, "That's the problem." And the two parties take turns based on whether they're in or out of power doing so. But when they're in power they do precious little about it.

The problem IS the government. Not any particular sector or Dept. but the whole damn thing. There is this invisible line, perhaps a ratio, of government to private sector which when crossed points to an inevitable end. Once that line is crossed government begins to exist for it's own benefit and survival. What the populace thinks is no longer of any significance. Every single individual that is dependent on government largess, be that in the form of a paycheck or a hand out, has a vested interest in growing the government further and raiding the wallets of the private sector to an ever increasing degree. And if you bother to look back throughout history you'll find that it really doesn't matter what the form of that government is.

de Tocqueville had it right when he observed that the American Republic will only last until the politicians discover that they can bribe the public with the treasury. Other forms of governments fall for other reasons, but fall they do.

I offer up two current examples, Venezuela and France. Almost polar opposites and both on the verge of governmental collapse. One because of tyrannical oppression the other taxation oppression. What both have in common is governments that have basically attempted to regulate every facet of their citizens lives. That's what caused the fall of the Soviet Union and what will eventually lead to the collapse of China.

The more government you want, the more you're going to get and the faster the end will come.

Now, a clarification on the comment re. Trump and Corporate Government. At last count there are 50 +/- "Jobs Programs" administered by the US government. They are overlapping and wasteful. Monies carved out in amendments in order to buy the vote of support on larger issues of this congresscritter or that senator. Something they can take back to their constituents as proof of their 'doing something.' And everyone else ends up footing the cost of their 'doing something.' Corporations grow in the same way as government, they get big and bloated with considerable duplication of resource expenditure. The big difference is that Corporations periodically purge those dead weights from the corporate structure. Overall this is good for the health of the corporation. And that is what Trump is referring to, the ability to purge the wasteful and unproductive. But that's an uphill and fruitless effort unless it can be sustained for an extended period of time. 20 years, maybe even longer along with a serious turn around at the Supreme Court.

Reagan had the right of it when he observed that government programs are the closest things to perpetual life. The excise tax buried in your phone bill was enacted in 1898 to pay for the Spanish-American War. Have we paid for that yet? The excise tax on the tires you buy was enacted during WWII, have we paid for that one yet?

So again, picking at any one particular facet of government is just mental masturbation. The problem is government as a whole and at every level. The more you grow it the worse it's going to get and the faster it's going to collapse.

Oblimo said:

A professor of mine once told an anecdote that I haven't been able to confirm, but I haven't looked that hard.

Biologists were studying shoaling behavior in fish, trying to determine what mechanism it was that get fish to all swim in one direction, and then all simultaneously turn and swim another.

So they effectively lobotomized one fish, such that its motions were not based on reactions to its sensory perceptions, and were essential random. And they reintroduced that fish to its school.

And when the school shoaled, after a short while, it always, always started following the fish without A brain for every decision.

Turns out the mechanism is just, "do whatever the other fish do." The game being that maybe the fish at the front of the shoal saw the shark before you did.

And, while eveyone's copying the guy who first moves, thinking he must know something, the shoaling process inevitably follows a mad prophet.

That's how dolphins are able to herd shoals into murderballs, and how ant colonies sometimes enter suicide spirals.

There's no mindful intent guiding social groups that can recognize an error and debug it.

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Agent Kay: "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. .."


Comshaw

bellisarius said:

de Tocqueville had it right when he observed that the American Republic will only last until the politicians discover that they can bribe the public with the treasury.

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No republic in history has ever failed in that way.