Ulrich said:
SUag said:
Duckhook said:
Without getting into the partisan aspects of it, the fact is that it is a possibility that we could have a new president in 9 months. Is there no impetus to get the DS exposed in a hurry, just in case? Perp walks, military tribunals, etc.?
That should tell you all you need to know about how real the DS is.
There are two versions of the Deep State theory. I'll keep this short but I could write it out a lot more comprehensively.
The strong version says that there is an organized cabal executing plots to do a variety of things from advancing globalist interests to trafficking in child sex slaves, depending upon whom you ask.
The weak version says that in an organization as large and insulated as the federal government, a combination of moral hazards, family/personal ties, and thought bubbles/group-think can lead the organization and people in it to serve and protect itself/themselves more than the American people.
The strong version is malice and intention. The weak version is more like an emergent property*.
The Q followers tend to believe one version. I believe the other. I don't think the weak version of the Deep State theory is farfetched.
*It probably does mean that personal corruption (from both parties) is overlooked more than it ought to be. I'm deeply suspicious of how many congresspeople and other politicians end up with generational wealth on a middle class income in an expensive city.
What you have labeled as the "weak version of the Deep State" is exactly what 1960's hippies labeled as "the Man" and liberals & progressives have been labeling as "the system" for the past 60-70 years. Ken Kesey called it "the Combine" in his most successful novel, published in 1962. Harlan Ellison made a career of writing about it, as did many other American authors. It's the U.S. federal, state, and local govmt regulatory bureaucracy, i.e., "the modern state".
It's real, and yes, it has its own set of inherent problems and abuses (every system does). But let's not forget the lessons of American history, either: before the modern day federal regulatory bureaucracy was begun by TR and constructed over the next several decades, the US had been a plutocratic system which controlled the R & D party machines and had far worse and more extensive, pervasive corruption, scandals, bribery, and self dealiing inside both private enterprise and federal and state government than what we've seen in the modern regulatory state.
However, just because corruption and self dealing was far worse in the previous system doesn't mean we should be okay with what's occurred in the modern system. Wall Street + special interests + billionaires have figured out how to control this system, just like they always do.
Has the modern regulatory state failed? Not completely.
But it has been weakened, and it is steadily being undermined. Not surprising, considering that a substantial percentage of people in one major party (R) openly profess to hate it and desire its end, and a sizeable percentage of people in the other major party (D) apparently no longer know how to protect it from being undermined.
