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The Deep State Is Real

But it might not be what you think.

By Michael Crowley | September/October 2017

POLITICO MAGAZINE — At a conference in mid-July [2017], Barack Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, remarked that executive branch officials have an “obligation … to refuse to carry out” outrageous or anti-democratic orders from President Donald Trump. The comment quickly caught the attention of Rush Limbaugh, who saw nothing short of a threat to the republic. “He practically called for a coup!” the radio host bellowed on the air a few days later, warning of a plot orchestrated by “embeds in the deep state at the Pentagon, State Department, various intelligence agencies.”

Embeds in the what? A year ago [2016], the term “deep state” was the province of Edward Snowden acolytes and fans of paperback espionage thrillers. Today, Limbaugh takes it for granted that his millions of listeners know what it meant.

The deep state entered America’s national discourse in 2017 with the feeling of an already familiar character, ready to assume a starring role as hero or villain — depending on how you feel about Trump. It’s easy to dismiss the idea as the breathless complaint of a frustrated president who hasn’t learned to work the system. But it’s not that simple: There really is a kind of cabal that operates independently of elected officials in Washington — even if it’s not quite what Trump or his conservative allies think it is.

Political scientists and foreign policy experts have used the term deep state for years to describe individuals and institutions who exercise power independent of — and sometimes over — civilian political leaders. They applied it mainly to developing countries like Algeria, Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey, where generals and spies called the real shots in nominally democratic societies and replaced elected leaders when they saw fit. (Turkey and Egypt have recently moved to more overt security-state dictatorships, in which the deep state is the only state.)

For a generation, the people who saw something like an American deep state — even if they rarely called it that — resided on the left, not the right. The 9/11 attacks triggered the rapid growth of an opaque security and intelligence machine often unaccountable to the civilian legal system. In the 2000s, the critique focused on a “war machine” of military and intelligence officials, defense contractors and neoconservative ideologues who, in some versions, took orders directly from Vice President Dick Cheney. In the Obama era, the focus shifted to the eerie precision of “targeted killings” by drones, and then the furor over Snowden, the ex-National Security Agency contractor whose 2013 leaks exposed the astonishing reach of the government’s surveillance. “There’s definitely a deep state,” Snowden told the Nation in 2014. “Trust me, I’ve been there.” […]

2 Comments on The Deep State Is Real

  1. OMG ..the deep state may go back to 1776 when the illuminati was formed and American did not really win its independence. The deep state is left and right THINK GHWBush (CIA) involved in killing JFK THINK jr Bush idiot and his evil brain Dickhead Cheney involved in 911 and (((((who))))) profited! No matter what puppet head is occupying the seat of pResident actwhore nothing gets better for real people JUST the cabalistic 1% SO it stands to reason the same ((((hidden hand))))) is in control no matter what

  2. @dsmdtutu: you said: “No matter what puppet head is occupying the seat of pResident actwhore nothing gets better for real people JUST the cabalistic 1% SO it stands to reason the same ((((hidden hand))))) is in control no matter what”
    Your comment makes some sense, but you insert the asinine assumption that jfk (1%er) was a good guy. He wasn’t. Nobody gangbangs mk ultra sex kittens like marilyn monho with their brother in the white house and is still a good guy. He was a part of the crime syndicate that lost to another part of it. There’s obviously infighting in the cabal, as all these people are exceedingly greedy psychopaths that are ever-vying for total control. Consider that divine intervention. They can never win because they’re constantly fighting each other. Also, the existence of the now defunct 1st and 2nd banks of the united states, as well as the anti masonic party, prove that the war wasn’t won by the adversary in 1776.

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