'Deep State' Fact or Fiction

[AbruptSLR]

A great many posts in this folder assume that a 'Deep State' exists in the United States, and apparently according to Wikipedia about 74% of Americans believe that it is at least probable that this type of group exists.  Nevertheless, I doubt that a court of law would find the extant evidence convincing that such a relatively permanent group exists.  Therefore, I open this new thread to kick around the question of whether a 'Deep State' is fact or fiction, and I begin with a link to a Wikipedia article about this topic, which provides both background and definitions:

Title: "Deep state in the United States"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_state_in_the_United_States

Extract: "In the United States the term "deep state" is used within political science to describe influential decision-making bodies believed to be within government who are relatively permanent and whose policies and long-term plans are unaffected by changing administrations. 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. The term was originally coined in a somewhat pejorative sense to refer to similar relatively invisible state apparatus in Turkey and post-Soviet Russia. 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 and Michael Wolff.

While definitions vary, the term gained popularity among various groups, primarily supporters of Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and conspiracy theorists, during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, in opposition to establishment Republican and Democratic candidates. Since Trump's inauguration, the term has been used by some commentators, who argue that a "deep state" is aiming to delegitimize the Trump presidency and thwart its policy goals.

The term "deep state" was defined in 2014 by Mike Lofgren, a former Republican U.S. congressional aide, as "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."
…
The term "deep state" has been associated with the "military–industrial complex" by several of the authors on the subject. Potential risks from the military-industrial complex were raised in President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 farewell address: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." Mike Lofgren has claimed the military-industrial complex is the private part of the deep state. However, Marc Ambinder has suggested that a myth about the "deep state" is that it functions as one entity; rather, that parts of the "deep state" are "often at odds with one another.
…

According to a poll of Americans in April 2017, about half (48%) thought there was a "deep state", "meaning military, intelligence and government officials who try to secretly manipulate government." Of those who thought that, more than half (58%) said it was a major problem (net of 28% surveyed).

A March 2018 poll found most respondents (63%) were unfamiliar with the term "deep state", but a majority believe that a deep state likely exists in the United States when described as "a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy". Three-fourths (74%) of the respondents say that they believe this type of group definitely (27%) or probably (47%) exists in the federal government."

[AbruptSLR]

While accountability is always a laudable goal, is the current discussion about the 'Deep State' and 'Fake News', just a propaganda ploy by vested interests?

Title: "'Deep State' Fantasy Is Just as Dangerous as the 'Fake News' Myth"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-deep-state-is-the-new-fake-news

[AbruptSLR]

Ask yourself, what tests would you use to determine whether the 'Deep State' is actually what you think that it is:

Title: "The Deep State Is Real"

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/deep-state-real-cia-fbi-intelligence-215537

Extract: "But it might not be what you think."

[AbruptSLR]

Even if the 'Deep State' were/is real, ask yourself how could you avoid magical thinking about it?

Title: "Trump's Fear of a Deep State Coup Has Become Full-Blown Hysteria"

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/05/trump-deep-state-coup-hysteria

[TerryM]

Re:"J. Edgar Hoover" Fact or Fiction


A super majority of Americans, mainly made up of Trump supporters, Bernie supporters and conspiracy theorists, now believe in the J. Edgar Myth. The remaining 26% believe in Hillary Clinton, her Russian conspiracy and the benevolent goodness of the CIA, the FBI, and the MIC.


Terry
PS - I believe in Big Oil & King Coal too.

[AbruptSLR]

If you weren't satisfied by the Wikipedia discussion of the 'Deep State', then here is an article by Wikispook, with more discussion.

Title: "Deep state"

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Deep_state

Extract of a quote by Harry S. Truman: "“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government.... I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”"

P.S. While apparently Truman lamented his loss of control over the CIA, were his goals more admirable when he promoted maintaining conflict between Nazi Germany and Stalinist USSR for as long as practicable so that they could spill as much of each other's blood as practicable?

Title: "Bait and bleed"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bait_and_bleed

Extract: "Mearsheimer describes a similar strategy which he calls "Bloodletting" which does not involve incitement or baiting by a third party. When a state's rivals have gone to war independently, the aim is to encourage the conflict to continue as long as possible, in order to let the rival states weaken or "bleed" each other's military strength, while the bloodletting party stays out of the fighting.

This strategy is exemplified in then-U. S. Senator Harry Truman's statement in 1941 regarding the Nazi invasion of Russia, "If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.""

[Susan Anderson]

Masha Gessen is a personal favorite; she does not always toe the line with progressives/liberals (and please please stop equating liberal with neoliberal, they are not the same thing). She was raised by a rebel (grandmother?) in Russia (she's gay, though what that has to say to the fact that she is brilliant and a good writer I don't know). https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/in-the-trump-era-we-are-losing-the-ability-to-distinguish-reality-from-vacuum

I've put this here but it could have gone a number of other places, slightly but not entirely off topic:

For those who have so far decided to stay, whether in the Administration or in the Republican Party, small daily sacrifices of personal integrity become part of their sunk cost in the project of staying in; these people inevitably grow more committed and less critical. The landscape keeps shifting, the stakes keep changing, and the crises keep mounting.

The overstimulation of the age of Trump, meanwhile, makes us lose track of time and whatever small sense humans normally have of themselves in history. We forget what happened a month ago. If we look away for a day, we miss news that seems momentous to others—only to be forgotten, too, in a week. Living in a shared reality with our fellow-citizens is an endless triathlon of reading, talking, and panicking. It creates the worst possible frame of mind for answering vexing moral questions, especially ones that require a choice between two desperately unsatisfying options.

Thinking morally about the Trump era requires a different temporal frame. It requires a look at the present through the prism of the future. There will come a time after Trump, and we need to consider how we will enter it. What are we going to take with us into that time—what kind of politics, language, and culture? How will we recover from years of policy (if you can call it that) being made by tweet? How will we reclaim simple and essential words? Most important, how will we restart a political conversation? Political discourse was in crisis before Trump—no wonder Americans of all stripes have become accustomed to using the words “politics” and “political” to denote substance-free transactions in the electoral arena. But, under Trump, it is nearing complete destruction.

[TerryM]

Susan
She seems to espouse views shared by our host, Neven. His warnings of the post Trump period have been a regular feature of his musings since politics became a topic here.
Terry

[JimD]

ASLR

Nice topic

From my experience of having spent a career deep in the bowls of the military/intelligence machine I would state with total conviction that a 'Deep State' does exist.

But not as some imagine it.  For instance this from your first post..

"In the United States the term "deep state" is used within political science to describe influential decision-making bodies believed to be within government who are relatively permanent and whose policies and long-term plans are unaffected by changing administrations.

..absolutely does NOT exist.  This is conspiracy crazy stuff from spy books and movies.

But if you take this quote.

The term "deep state" was defined in 2014 by Mike Lofgren, a former Republican U.S. congressional aide, as "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."

I would say that pretty much hits the nail on the head.  With the addition of those of very substantial old money wealth also having significant influence.  But this term far predates Lofgren and 2014 as I used to use it and hear it in conversations at work back in the 1980's. It has been rattling around for ever.

The Deep State is not an secret organization sending little missives down to the President and Congress telling them what to do.  It does not work that way.  What it does is basically provide the strategy and direction of the country.  It works to maintain the Empire and grow it when possible, it sets the ideological parameters which govern the political parties, it chose the neo-liberal economic structure which the D's and R's adhere too, it chose globalization at the expense of the workers, and so on ad infinitum.

You can see the workings of the Deep State in its reaction to the reforms and govt structure put in place by FDR.  It lost control then and spent decades working its way back into full control.  Ideologies were reworked, goals towards deregulation set in place, resetting the tax structure to strongly favor the wealthy, using various forms of propaganda to steer the voters emotions towards voting against their own interests, maintaining a permanent state of war, taking over the free press so that we have corporate control over almost all media, deepening the surveillance state whenever possible, and so on.

You select your ideological precepts, find political scientists and economists to provide a paper basis for your goals, push candidates who will attempt to implement your desires via new laws or by revoking old ones, work hard to undercut the political power of your opponents, work to cripple the public school systems, create armies of lobbyists and thousands of 'think tanks' to push your agendas, stuff the courts with pliable judges (corporations are people for instance), and so on.  All stuff we have witnessed over the last 40 years. 

The US is a democratic country in name only.  Voters have virtually zero actual influence on policy, the voting of our officials, and, of course, we don't actually vote for the top 2 positions even though we pretend to.  Our directions are set by the 1%, the captains of industry, the leaders of the MIIC - the Deep State.

This is not to say that there is complete consensus among them.  There is always strife between humans and different ideas and power structures.  But there emerges, if not a full consensus, at least enough of one to enable movement in a general direction to take place.  Change comes slowly in such a system as the need for new approaches are identified and adaptations made.  Thus we have destroyed most of what enabled the working class and middle class to have decent lives over the last 40 years - and the mainstream D's and all the R's worked hard to make this happen as their masters wished them to do.

[AbruptSLR]

ASLR

Nice topic

From my experience of having spent a career deep in the bowls of the military/intelligence machine I would state with total conviction that a 'Deep State' does exist.

But not as some imagine it.
...
You can see the workings of the Deep State in its reaction to the reforms and govt structure put in place by FDR. 
…

JimD,

Thank you for another of your numerous thoughtful posts.  However, even though your post is well reasoned, I note that when working in the world of shadows even rigorous reasoning can lead to incorrect conclusions if based on incorrect input.  For example, you imply that FDR's reforms posed a roadblock for the 'Deep State'; however, one could just as easily make the case that FDR's (& Truman's) activities provided the underpinnings of the modern American 'Deep State'; if one question's their actions (indeed FDR admired many of Mussolini's re-war economic programs and used them as models for many of his New Deal programs):

Title: "How the Allied multinationals supplied Nazi Germany throughout World War II"

https://libcom.org/library/allied-multinationals-supply-nazi-germany-world-war-2

Extract from the book TRADING WITH THE ENEMY: An Exposé of The Nazi-American Money-Plot 1933-1949 by Charles Higham; Hale, London, 1983:

"Here is the extraordinary true story of the American businessmen and government officials who dealt with the Nazis for profit or through conviction throughout the Second World War: Ford. Standard Oil, Chase Bank and members of the State Department were among those who shared in the spoils. Meticulously documented and dispassionately told, this is an alarming story. At its centre is 'The Fraternity', an influential international group associated with the Rockefeller or Morgan banks and linked by the ideology of Business as Usual.
…
As for Roosevelt, the Sphinx still keeps his secrets. That supreme politician held all of the forces of collusion and betrayal in balance, publicly praising those executives whom he knew to be questionable. Before Pearl Harbor, he allowed such egregious executives as James D. Mooney of General Motors and William Rhodes Davis of the Davis Oil Company to enjoy pleasant tête-à-têtes with Hitler and Göring, while maintaining a careful record of what they were doing. During the war, J. Edgar Hoover, Adolf A. Berle, Henry Morgenthau, and Harold Ickes kept the President fully advised of all internal and external transgressions. With great skill, he never let the executives concerned know that he was on to them. By using the corporate leaders for his own war purposes as dollar-a-year men, keeping an eye on them and allowing them to indulge, under license or not, in their international tradings, he at once made winning the war a certainty and kept the public from knowing what it should not know.
…
Why did even the loyal figures of the American government allow these transactions to continue after Pearl Harbor? A logical deduction would be that not to have done so would have involved public disclosure: the procedure of legally disconnecting these alliances under the antitrust laws would have resulted in a public scandal that would have drastically affected public morale, caused widespread strikes, and perhaps provoked mutinies in the armed services. Moreover, as some corporate executives were never tired of reminding the government, their trial and imprisonment would have made it impossible for the corporate boards to help the American war effort. Therefore, the government was powerless to intervene. After 1945, the Cold War, which the executives had done so much to provoke, made it even more necessary that the truth of The Fraternity agreements should not be revealed."

[AbruptSLR]

Is what Trump calls the 'Deep State' actually just the state resisting his abuse of governance?

Title: "Trump and the “Deep State”"

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2017-08-15/trump-and-deep-state

Extract: "One of the strangest aspects of the current era is that the president of the United States seems to have little interest in running the country’s government. A political novice with no fixed ideology or policy agenda, Donald Trump took office as if orchestrating a hostile corporate takeover. In his first six-plus months as president, he has followed his own counsel, displaying open contempt for much of the federal work force he now leads, slashing budgets, rescinding regulatory rules, and refusing to follow standard operating procedures. This has cost him allies in the executive branch, helped spur creative (and increasingly effective) bureaucratic opposition, and, thanks to that opposition, triggered multiple investigations that threaten to sap party and congressional support.

Furious at what they consider treachery by internal saboteurs, the president and his surrogates have responded by borrowing a bit of political science jargon, claiming to be victims of the “deep state,” a conspiracy of powerful, unelected bureaucrats secretly pursuing their own agenda. The concept of a deep state is valuable in its original context, the study of developing countries such as Egypt, Pakistan, and Turkey, where shadowy elites in the military and government ministries have been known to countermand or simply defy democratic directives. Yet it has little relevance to the United States, where governmental power structures are almost entirely transparent, egalitarian, and rule-bound."

[AbruptSLR]

Since no one has yet clearly stated what a 'Deep State' might be in America, the linked Huffington Post article makes the case that it is actually the nonpolitical civil service, representing both a meritocracy and a technocracy, designed to keep the executive in check:

Title: "The Deep State Is A Very Real Thing"

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-deep-state_us_58c94a64e4b01d0d473bcfa3

Extract: " There is something ominous-sounding in the deep state. It implies that beneath constitutionally ordained systems and principles, there is a deeper and more potent power in control of the nation. It implies a unified force deeply embedded in the republic that has its own agenda and the means to undermine the decisions of elected presidents and members of Congress. Its power derives from control of the mechanisms of power and being invisible.

The deep state is, in fact, a very real thing. It is, however, neither a secret nor nearly as glamorous as the concept might indicate. It has been in place since 1871 and continues to represent the real mechanism beneath the federal government, controlling and frequently reshaping elected officials’ policies. This entity is called the civil service, and it was created to limit the power of the president.

Prior to 1871, the president could select federal employees. He naturally selected loyalists who would do his bidding. Occasionally, he also would hire people as a political favor to solidify his base. And on occasion, he or one of his staff would sell positions to those who wanted them for a host of reasons, frequently to make money from the positions they were given."

Carl Schurz, a German-born Union Army general, proposed the idea of a nonpolitical civil service. It would be both a meritocracy and a technocracy – not his words, but his idea. Civil servants would be selected by competitive exams measuring their skills for the job. And the job of civil servants would be to implement laws passed by Congress in the manner the president wanted them enforced."

[sidd]

How many people believe this ? That the deep state

"has little relevance to the United States, where governmental power structures are almost entirely transparent, egalitarian, and rule-bound."

sidd

[TerryM]

How many people believe this ? That The deep state

"has would have little relevance to the United States, where were governmental power structures are almost entirely transparent, egalitarian, and rule-bound."

sidd

With a few typos corrected it makes perfect sense. 
Terry

[SteveMDFP]

Since no one has yet clearly stated what a 'Deep State' might be in America

I think you're asking for too much from readers. How can people define what is not seen and cannot be touched?

The ref'd 'experts', journos and commentators are somewhat befuddled themselves and quite contradictory. These matters are very obnubilated for all. Even for JimD who has been on the 'inside' of much shenanigans. Were 'The Plumbers' and Oliver North the deep state or simply a team of loyal professionals who loved America to bits?

But do toss the Federal Reserve system into the pit. And Goldman Sachs and Exxon-Mobil at least. The there is Enron and Countrywide and Worldcom too. And the SoS of Florida durig the 2000 election. Where does one stop? At RussiaGate? 

Yes maybe Putin himself is part of the Deep State as well given orders to keep all those hippie progressives off the handles of power in DC. Such as the delusional Socialists like Hillary Clinton

Short answer I think is that no one can adequately clearly state a thing about the "Deep State" and be taken too seriously. Outing corruption, lies and criminal conspiracy however is a another matter.

Or to put it another way, perhaps, the term "Deep State" is too elastic to be meaningful.  The term conveys different organizations, interests, and purposes to different people.  I would suggest using more specific terminology.  In casual usage, it conveys to me sloppy, paranoid conspiracy theories.

[AbruptSLR]

AbruptSLR raising it is good thing. It is an "issue" in people's minds for many reasons. I'm curious about he opines about it as he seems quite astute on many issues. I truly like his conservative scientists contributions. I see that far more important and definitely more tangible.

If it is too much for readers to come to grips with such an elastic term as 'Deep State', perhaps putting it into the context of how Trump took/takes advantage of this elastic term to speak to his follower's populist story (mythology) of being the 'silent majority' (or pure-people) who have been let down by the technocrats within the US 'Deep State' who have empowered minorities (whether Mexican rapists, Chinese factory worker taking US factory jobs, or uppity liberals), and who need an authoritain savior (i.e. Team Trump) to save them.

In this sense Trump presents himself as a political entrepreneur (see note below) who fights to rigged 'Deep State' system represented by both the Bush and the Clinton Dynasties, in order to give the oppressed people (basket of deplorables) a voice.  Unfortunately, Trump is more of an incompetent opportunist than a true political entrepreneur (say like Bernie Sanders); but people like his Mussolini-like approach to fighting both liberals/socialists and corporate/capitalist excesses. 

In my dream-world Trump will have identified a short-coming in the US political response to his followers; and that true/competent political entrepreneurs will put forward new ways to increase upward social/economic mobility for the majority of voters so that we can have a sustainable blue-wave as we move into the 4th Industrial Revolution.



Note on the meaing of a 'political entrepreneur':

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_entrepreneur

Extract: "The term political entrepreneur may refer to any of the following:

- someone (usually active in the fields of either politics or business) who founds a new political project, group, or political party

- a businessman who seeks to gain profit through subsidies, protectionism, government contracts, or other such favorable arrangements with government(s) through political influence (also known as a rent-seeker).

- a political actor (not necessarily a politician) who seeks to further his or her own political career and popularity by pursuing the creation of policy that pleases the populace.
…
In the field of business, entrepreneurship involves people taking a risk in order to create new business ventures, to gain advantage over a competitor, and to maximize profits.
Traditionally entrepreneurs have been associated with the world of business, however the term is used in the political arena also. For example, Choi Taewook in 2004 wrote:

A political entrepreneur refers to a political player who seeks to gain certain political and social benefits in return for providing the common goods that can be shared by an unorganized general public. These common goods that political entrepreneurs attempt to provide to the populace generally include foreign- and domestic-related public policy, while the benefits they hope to gain involve voter support, public recognition, and personal popularity.
...
The political activism of American business as a class has surged and ebbed at various historical moments. Variations in both business and countervailing political mobilization should be approached as problems of collective interpretation and action. To explain the historical patterns of class-wide business activism, we need to look at the dynamics of partisan regimes in American politics. Partisan leaders, not businesses or other policy-seekers themselves, have the strongest incentives to absorb the transaction costs associated with either broad-scale business or countervailing collective action. When partisan entrepreneurs see an opportunity to alter the distribution of power at the national level, they engage in a discursive exercise to remold business or oppositional interests and undertake the mobilization of these interests.

An analytical framework for dealing with political entrepreneurship and reform is proposed which is based on some new combinations of Schumpeterian political economy, an extended version of Tullock's model of democracy as franchise-bidding for natural monopoly and some basic elements of New Institutional Economics. It is shown that problems of insufficient award criteria and incomplete contracts which may arise in economic bidding schemes, also – and even more so – characterise political competition. At the same time, these conditions create leeway for Schumpeterian political entrepreneurship. The same is true for various barriers to entry in politics. These barriers affect a trade-off between political stability and political contestability which will be discussed with special emphasis on incentives and opportunities for political entrepreneurship in the sense of risking long-term investments in basic political reforms."

[sidd]

Here's an international list of the people and companies who call the tune. It ain't even a secret.

http://projectcensored.org/financial-core-of-the-transnational-corporate-class/

opensecrets.org will tell you who on that list is buying your politicians.


sidd

[wili]

How about the deep corporate state?

Twitter seems to be in the midst of shutting down a number of accounts critical of trump:

http://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/ten-twitter-suspend-questions/10424/

[SteveMDFP]

How about the deep corporate state?

Twitter seems to be in the midst of shutting down a number of accounts critical of trump:

http://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/ten-twitter-suspend-questions/10424/

I think they're missing the obvious.  Twitter operates by computerized algorithms, with comparatively rare intervention by humans.  Since Trump can't block critics, an organized campaign is used to report any critic posting on Twitter.

If any post is flagged by 10,000 complainants, the relevant account is going to get suspended, with possibility of human intervention to sort things out in time, maybe.

Twitter is a *victim* in this pattern, not a perpetrator.  They surely don't have the staff to review more than a tiny fraction of automatic suspensions.

They're surely going to tweak their algorithm so that tweets mentioning Trump don't get suspended because of the number of complaints it gets.  Eventually.  They actually don't make that much money, and all this stuff takes manpower.

[AbruptSLR]

Essentially, Trump uses the mythology of the 'Deep State' to attack the world order of western liberal democracy set-up by Team FDR to prevent the recurrence of economic nationalism & authoritarian rule.  Since Ronald Reagan declared the end of the 'evil empire' in the 1980, liberal democracy has drifted to the extent that conmen like Trump can claim that they will protect the common man from the excesses of the 'Deep State'; when actual the conman himself is the greatest threat extant to liberal democracy:

Title: "So, the liberal order is in free fall? Not so fast"

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/so-the-liberal-order-is-in-free-fall-not-so-fast/article37566760/

Extract: "With illiberalism on the rise, there are fears that this could be the year the global liberal order dies. The order consists of a dense network of international agreements, trade arrangements and military alliances. Drawing on enlightenment era values of liberty and reason, it was constructed by U.S. President Roosevelt and the Western allies in 1945. Its express purpose was to prevent the recurrence of war and the economic nationalism that inspired conflict to begin with. While the order has come under criticism in the past, it has never experienced anything quite like the assault of the present.

At the centre of the global liberal order are a clutch of organizations designed to defend democratic governance, open economies and common security. Among them are the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank (all founded in 1945), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade that later became the World Trade Organization (in 1995), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (in 1949) and others. Taken together, their express goal is to generate positive sum, or win-win, solutions. While critics routinely grumbled about their legitimacy, effectiveness and overstretch, on balance, they have helped preserve stability, extend democracy and expand economic opportunity.
…
Looking to the future, will the global liberal order survive the onslaught from within and without? Steven Pinker believes that the historical forces underpinning the forward march of liberal democracy – mobility, urbanization, education and connectivity – are not ending any time soon. Nor are international pressures for greater gender, racial and social equality. Mr. Pinker and other defenders of the liberal project are adamant that they are on the winning side of history. After all, authoritarian populism is an old man's game. Its supporters tend to be male, religious, less educated and in the ethnic majority. They complain of being strangers in their own country, and often dislike immigration and global governance. New studies of the election of Mr. Trump, Brexit and the rise of nationalist parties in Europe suggest that support falls off in relation to age."

See also:

Title: "Liberal democracy"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_democracy

Extract: "Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called western democracy, it is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either formally written or uncodified, to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world.
…
Issues and criticism
…
Critics of the role of the media in liberal democracies allege that concentration of media ownership leads to major distortions of democratic processes. In Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky argue via their Propaganda Model that the corporate media limits the availability of contesting views and assert this creates a narrow spectrum of elite opinion. This is a natural consequence, they say, of the close ties between powerful corporations and the media and thus limited and restricted to the explicit views of those who can afford it.
…
The tyranny of the majority is the fear that a direct democratic government, reflecting the majority view, can take action that oppresses a particular minority. For instance, a minority holding wealth, property ownership or power (see Federalist No. 10), or a minority of a certain racial and ethnic origin, class or nationality. Theoretically, the majority is a majority of all citizens. If citizens are not compelled by law to vote, it is usually a majority of those who choose to vote. If such of group constitutes a minority, then it is possible that a minority could in theory oppress another minority in the name of the majority. However, such an argument could apply to both direct democracy or representative democracy. In comparison to a direct democracy where every citizen is forced to vote, under liberal democracies the wealth and power is usually concentrated in the hands of a small privileged class who have significant power over the political process (see inverted totalitarianism). Several de facto dictatorships also have compulsory, but not "free and fair" voting in order to try to increase the legitimacy of the regime, such as North Korea.[
…
One notable feature of liberal democracies is that their opponents (those groups who wish to abolish liberal democracy) rarely win elections. Advocates use this as an argument to support their view that liberal democracy is inherently stable and can usually only be overthrown by external force, while opponents argue that the system is inherently stacked against them despite its claims to impartiality. In the past, it was feared that democracy could be easily exploited by leaders with dictatorial aspirations, who could get themselves elected into power. However, the actual number of liberal democracies that have elected dictators into power is low. When it has occurred, it is usually after a major crisis has caused many people to doubt the system or in young/poorly functioning democracies. Some possible examples include Adolf Hitler during the Great Depression and Napoleon III, who became first President of the Second French Republic and later Emperor."

[Susan Anderson]

It's really very simple. I'm familiar with this from years of climate argumentation. Detractors don't bother to do any work. They just take words (if it has any traction, or is well put) and reverse their meaning.

The deep state is actually the list Sidd posted above, the Kochtopus described by Jane Mayer (Dark Money, New Yorker, etc.), and others like the Mercers, Adelson, the recent NRA, international arms manufacturers and merchants, etc. Then there are others like Putin's oligarch network representing other parts of a variation on the western "deep state".

What they did was take the words and apply it to liberals and democrats, and hey presto all their punters go along. Alex Jones Infowars, Rush Limbaugh, Breitbart, 4chan and the underoccupied young (mostly) men who promote chaos for fun and profit, they spread it abroad.

Fake news was reversed in meaning in Trump's early days.

All you have to do is assert that lies are truth, and though you can't fool all of the people all of the time, far too many have been persuaded that if the "right" people say it it must be true.

I used to criticize people for attacking religion (since it's a losing argument, and encouraging the religious to pursue goodness and inclusion and stewardship seems a better way), but early training in believing the unprovable has lifetime consequences.

[Buddy]

As Mark Twain said:  “It’s easier to con someone, than it is to convince him he has already been conned.”

And there are FAR too many gullible people that don’t take the time to look for the truth.

[TerryM]

^^^Ramen^^^
Terry

[AbruptSLR]

Historically speaking, in my opinion, in the 20th century authoritarianism was split between fascism (on the far right) and communism (on the far left), but in the modern world, communism is dead leaving only the authoritarianism of corporatism in both the vestiges of the USSR and China.  Also, I note that it was actually Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile who wrote the entry in the Encyclopedia Italiana that said: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Mussolini, however, affixed his name to the entry, and claimed credit for it. In 1938, Mussolini dissolved Parliament and replaced it with the Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni—the Chamber of the Fascist Corporations.

The following extract from the Wikipedia article discusses different types of 'corporatism' (with coordinated interactions between government labor and business) including fascist corporatism (with coerced coordination) and neocorporatism (with voluntary/nudged coordination.  Furthermore, historically the world order can be divided geopolitically into the right and left with the far right being: fascism/corporatism, the moderate right being neoliberalism/neocorporatism, the moderate left being social democracy/socialism, and the far left being (dead) communism.  Thus since the dead of communism (in the early 1990's) has shifted this balance so that the far right is now corporatism, the moderate right is now neoliberalism, the moderate left is neocorporatism (corporate democrats), and the far left is now social democracy/socialism.

This means that the various interpretations  of the term 'Deep State" has slowly changed since the 1990's so that now Trump has claimed the mantle of corporatism and accuses the neocorporatists (like Robert Reich) as representatives of the 'Deep State" while in reality the American oligarchy of Trump's corporatism represents a form of 'Deep State' 'American Fascism' that I will touch upon in my next post:

Title: "Corporatism"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

Corporatism is the organization of a society by corporate groups and agricultural, labour, military or scientific syndicates and guilds on the basis of their common interests.

Fascist corporatism
Fascism's theory of economic corporatism involved management of sectors of the economy by government or privately-controlled organizations (corporations). Each trade union or employer corporation would theoretically represent its professional concerns, especially by negotiation of labour contracts and the like. It was theorized that this method could result in harmony amongst social classes.
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This non-elected form of state officializing of every interest into the state was professed to reduce the marginalization of singular interests (as would allegedly happen by the unilateral end condition inherent in the democratic voting process). Corporatism would instead better recognize or "incorporate" every divergent interest into the state organically, according to its supporters, thus being the inspiration for their use of the term "totalitarian", perceivable to them as not meaning a coercive system but described distinctly as without coercion in the 1932 Doctrine of Fascism as thus:

When brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.[35]
[The state] is not simply a mechanism which limits the sphere of the supposed liberties of the individual... Neither has the Fascist conception of authority anything in common with that of a police ridden State... Far from crushing the individual, the Fascist State multiplies his energies, just as in a regiment a soldier is not diminished but multiplied by the number of his fellow soldiers.

A popular slogan of the Italian Fascists under Mussolini was "Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" ("everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state").
…
Fascists in non-Catholic countries also supported Italian Fascist corporatism, including Oswald Mosley of the British Union of Fascists, who commended corporatism and said that "it means a nation organized as the human body, with each organ performing its individual function but working in harmony with the whole". Mosley also considered corporatism as an attack on laissez-faire economics and "international finance".

Neo-corporatism
During the post-World War II reconstruction period in Europe, corporatism was favoured by Christian democrats (often under the influence of Catholic social teaching), national conservatives and social democrats in opposition to liberal capitalism. This type of corporatism became unfashionable but revived again in the 1960s and 1970s as "neo-corporatism" in response to the new economic threat of recession-inflation.
Neo-corporatism favoured economic tripartism which involved strong labour unions, employers' unions and governments that cooperated as "social partners" to negotiate and manage a national economy. Social corporatist systems instituted in Europe after World War II include the ordoliberal system of the social market economy in Germany, the social partnership in Ireland, the polder model in the Netherlands (although arguably the polder model already was present at the end of World War I, it was not until after World War II that a social service system gained foothold there), the concertation system in Italy, the Rhine model in Switzerland and the Benelux countries and the Nordic model in Scandinavia.
Attempts in the United States to create neo-corporatist capital-labor arrangements were unsuccessfully advocated by Gary Hart and Michael Dukakis in the 1980s. As Secretary of Labor during the Clinton administration, Robert Reich promoted neo-corporatist reforms.

Chinese corporatism
Chinese corporatism, as described by Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan in their essay China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model, is the following:
[A]t the national level the state recognizes one and only one organization (say, a national labour union, a business association, a farmers' association) as the sole representative of the sectoral interests of the individuals, enterprises or institutions that comprise that organization's assigned constituency. The state determines which organizations will be recognized as legitimate and forms an unequal partnership of sorts with such organizations. The associations sometimes even get channelled into the policy-making processes and often help implement state policy on the government's behalf.

Russian corporatism
On October 9, 2007, an article signed by Viktor Cherkesov, head of the Russian Drug Enforcement Administration, was published in Kommersant, where he used the term "corporativist state" in a positive way to describe the evolution of Russia. He claimed that the administration officials detained on criminal charges earlier that month are the exception rather than the rule and that the only development scenario for Russia that is both realistic enough and relatively favorable is to continue evolution into a corporativist state ruled by security service officials.[
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According to some researchers, all political powers and most important economic assets in the country are controlled by former state security officials ("siloviks"). The takeover of Russian state and economic assets has been allegedly accomplished by a clique of Putin's close associates and friends] who gradually became a leading group of Russian oligarchs and who "seized control over the financial, media and administrative resources of the Russian state" and restricted democratic freedoms and human rights.
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Analyst Andrei Piontkovsky also considers the present situation as "the highest and culminating stage of bandit capitalism in Russia". He believes that "Russia is not corrupt. Corruption is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people".

Edit: I note that both corporatism and neocorpatism support private property and competitive markets, but have different ideologies regarding coercion and voluntary coordination/cooperation.

[AbruptSLR]

In my last post, I indicated that in my opinion in the modern world Trump has adopted the mantle of authoritarian corporatism and while hiding behind the screen of populism accuses the Corporate Democrats/neocorporatists of representing the 'Deep State'; while in reality the authoritarian corporatists more truly represent the 'Deep State'.  In a historical context I opine that Harry S. Truman (following on FDR's work) developed the neocorporatist underpinnings of what Team Trump attack as the 'Deep State' including the nascent military-industrial complex and the US intelligence community.  However, before Truman became FDR's VP on January 20 1945, Henry A. Wallace was VP, and he was America's last true Progressive Democrat (whose legacy Bernie Sanders has inherited).  And, in the following extract from a April 9, 1944 article in the NYT, Wallace makes it clear that American Fascism is the greatest threat to the progressive world order, and in my opinion what he writes makes it clear that Team Trump represents American Fascism as the true hidden 'Deep State' of power hungry oligarchs:

Title: "Wallace Defines 'American Fascism'; The Vice President says it pollutes public opinion, encourages intolerance and presents a challenge to our democratic way of life."

https://www.nytimes.com/1944/04/09/archives/wallace-defines-american-fascism-the-vice-president-says-it.html

Extract: "ON returning from my trip to the West in February, I received a request from THE NEW YORK TIMES to write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?
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The really dangerous American fascists, are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
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If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. … They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
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Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion. American fascists of this stamp were clandestinely aligned with their German counterparts before the war, and are even now preparing to resume where they left off, after ‘the present unpleasantness’ ceases.
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Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise [companies]. In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
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The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power. It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice. It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination…
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The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote. “Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.
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They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

[SteveMDFP]

  Where he called a meeting of the primary Oligarch Bandits and laid down the new dawn in Russian priorities and rules of the game. The Cat instructed the Rats who was in charge and what was going to change. In doing this Putin reasserted the proper role of the State and Government as being the ultimate power of the Russian People as a whole. That the Rats were not longer in charge   

Putin says his wealth is modest. Critics say he is worth up to $70-billion
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-putins-declared-modest-wealth-not-in-line-with-critics-estimates/

The Cat is just the biggest Rat.

[sidd]

"The Cat is just the biggest Rat."

Quite. The biggest stick is monopoly of violence within the borders. With that all else is irrelevant. 

In Russia, Putin got that monopoly. And in the USA, the oligarchs got that monopoly.

sidd

[SteveMDFP]

If you have something meaningful to contribute to the topic of 'Deep State' Fact or Fiction please do so and stop posting Off-Topic nonsense please. Putin's wealth and the size of it is irrelevant to the discussions here.

I was quoting your words and responding to them, briefly.

[Pmt111500]

N/T

[Susan Anderson]

Here's John Oliver on the Deep State. As Oliver neatly explains, it's a Fox/Trump talking point in current news. [Yes, I know, US has done a lot of dubious and more than dubious things like installing the Shah of Iran in place of democratically elected Mossadegh on behalf of BP at the behest of the UK, more than half a century ago, and starting a war that destabilized the Middle East worse under Bush II. The list of my country's crimes is endless. Sadly, power and wealth are infinitely corrupting.]



And today, the Supreme Court ruled that voter suppression is just fine and dandy in Ohio. Now that's what I'd call corrupt. But we knew that: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/the-conservative-pipeline-to-the-supreme-court The Conservative Pipeline to the Supreme Court: With the Federalist Society, Leonard Leo has reared a generation of originalist élites. The selection of Neil Gorsuch is just his latest achievement

[FishOutofWater]

There is no single "Deep State". There has long been a military industrial complex - oil industry nexus that has dragged us into foreign interventions in Iran in the '50s that installed the tyrannical Shah after a coup against the elected government. Continuous war and instability has plagued the whole middle east region since then and the U.S. and U.K. have been involved overtly and covertly.

We see the internal aspect of the big oil faction in "Americans for Prosperity" and other Koch Bros - big oil (gas and coal) funded groups. It goes down to the state and local level where ALEC writes cookie-cutter legislation where states and localities just fill in the blanks for the names and places.

The finance/Wall Street (FIRE) businesses have their own large lobbying and influence peddling arms that are very effective at giving them a cut off the top from international trade and pretty much anything involving the movement of money. Global capitalism is under the thumbs of rentiers that hoard money and take a cut of financial transactions.

There are a bunch of other competing groups. There is no deep state, just civil servants following complex and sometimes conflicting rules and the laws to the best of their abilities. Often their best ability is covering their asses and taking a pay check, but you do what you have to do to survive when you're a public servant caught in the crossfire of political conflicts.

The irony of this situation is that people - see above - think that Trump is fighting for them. What utter foolishness. Trump is a very corrupt rentier. He inherited wealth and literally collects rent based on inherited wealth. He contributes nothing new to society. He is a con man. His greatest skill is sales. His plays a zero sum game where he wins and everyone of his marks loses.

The Trump-Russia connection was not made up. Russian oligarchs were the customers that bailed out Trump's failing business empire in the Great Recession. Trump is a crook in bed with the Russian mob.

[Susan Anderson]

@FishOoW: It's hopeless, they're determined to blame the better people who are handicapped by not having a voice in any of the branches of government. They think it's just dandy to blame those who are out of power, while ignoring the actual movers of evil you so aptly summarize. They appear not to wish to comprehend that kneecapping the opposition enables those in power. The "insiders" to this point of view on this forum are intransigeant, attacking Democrats and turning a blind eye to outright evil.

Trump, the Kochs, and hardliners who would not mind killing and deporting "those people" are happy to have them pinching from the left. They have no scruples; their goal is to win, and their allies on the left are doing a very good job of helping them. Evidence be damned; they don't want to hear it and there are plenty of resources on the world wide web to flesh out the fantasy that perfection is achievable and Trumpistan acceptable as a means to get their heroic myth. Only perfection will do; let the sky fall!