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US Politics How deep is the state (the deep state)

ions

ions

Mr. Fantasy
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I think the deep state whispered in Trumps ear, as they do every president, you do what we say or we'll shoot you dead. Why the sudden shift to warmongering instead of a peace president.

So what is the deep state. Well it starts with the FBI and CIA and the authoritarian bureaucratic officials, the likes of Fauci. During ol' Covid.

What can be done to dismantle the deep state. All the alphabet agencies as a hand me down of every past president. We saw DOGE trying to dismantle what was happening here. and it just didn't go through. Now we're on the brink of World War III because politicians in washington are hell bent on being entertained by war games. Like it's a movie. I say plants flowers instead of playing with explosives. The lost art of entertainment over impressing the Jones'es.

CIA admitted that they killed Kennedy so LBJ could take reign in the white house. It's the illusion of power, because all they really get is control. The power of the mind is limitless. And there are those that want to live their lives, and those that want to tell you what to do.

So how deep is the state. And what observations have you made regarding it?
 
OK - politicians don't know ANYTHING. In fact the original point was that they were not experts but would ask questions that the electorate want answered in a manner they can understand.

But nuclear safety insepectors, as an example, are people who first gain an education in the subject and then, over the decades of their careers, become the people who make often boring and yet still vitally important decisions. Think about any area of government and you will see the same thing. People train and persue careers that may not be fully understandable by the electorate, but absolutely are needed to keep a nation running.

So is that 'the deep state' or is it how every government on the planet has been doing for thousands of years? The Dutch have a quite impressively good set of hydraulic engineers who keep the entire nation above water. You will often see huge pumping stations but someone had to decide where the put said pumping stations, how it should be powered, what safety protocols should be in place and they plan for decades because large infrastructure projects take decades.

Nobody could possibly be elected and perform that role because they will almost certainly lack the education, certainly not have the experience and the problem with elected officials is that they rarely do what is best - they do what makes THEM look best.

But be it a democracy (of any flavour), a theocracy, dictatorship or monarchy - they all still have what some people choose to term 'the deep state'. The advantage of democracy IS that nobody can hang around for long enough to do too much hatm. The other forms of government are more subject to patronage and corruption. Restoration Britian was the cautionay example. The king handed out important jobs to his mates, men paid to become officers in the armed forces and every town and city had guilts to ensure a closed shop. It did not go well...

So never forget - whoever is elected now will be gone soon when you are considering the sheer scales and timespans of infrastructure.
 
A lot of it has to do with out of control spending and a central bank. As government becomes too big the deep state gets control and funds war.
 
ions said:
A lot of it has to do with out of control spending and a central bank. As government becomes too big the deep state gets control and funds war.
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Forgive me for seeming picky, but I felt I attempted to provide a rational explaination. Did you even read it? Because it's not unique to the US, it's not even unique to this year, decade, canury or indeed millenia. It's also not unique to democracy - although I agree with Winston Churchill who noted that 'democracy is the worst form of government known to man, apart from all the others that have been tried from time to time'.

Have you ever looked at where federal spending goes? Because I hate to break it to you, but even in a nation that spends an exceptionally high percentage of that budget on it's military, it still represents less than 20% of spending.

It's all the dull stuff like social securty - because the US has an aging population so that's why spending is going up.

And dull as that is, someone has to plan decades ahead on how to deal with demographic changes - that is why the orange gimp is seeking to make it more practical for couples to have more children. But do you see the issues that brings? It takes two decades for that to feed through to new taxpayers and someone has to plan how many schools there need to be, where to site them and of course, ensuring you have enough teachers.

It appears some people live in a society they simply don't even notice. Or, rather, they only notice when something goes wrong.

I'm sorry if the truth fails to align with your prejudice.
 
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What?
Central banks are a common problem in a lot of world governments. The century of perpetual war coincides with the century of the federal reserve bank. An empire is built on lies. and every empire eventually fails. For all purposes of corruption in our society, the root of it all is reckless spending and the deep state.
 
Again - there are 194 nations in the world that are NOT the USA.

So - is social security 'reckless spending'? Because that's the largest budget item.

I would argue that central banks have performed amazingly well even when black swan events have occurred. Because suddenly all of the careful planning goes out of the window. But why not look back at the history of nations BEFORE they introduced a central bank. I don't just mean the US, there are another 194 nations you can also read about and whose histories are equally valid.

I DO agree with you in that while the US has always maintained it's distain for empires, the US has managed to build an empire 'by other means'. I also agree that the sun is setting on the US empire and no dumb MAGA statment can ever change that. DEAL WITH IT.

Certainly not buy ensuring an unskilled labour force because in the US further education is now not given to the brightest and best, it's given to those who can afford it. But if you don't have a skilled labour force, where are you in 20 years time?

Why not look at the Chinese central bank or even the Russian central bank. A good contrast. The former is investing heavily in emerging technologies with a view to selling that technology to other nations, the latter because the economy of Russia is tiny and yet somehow they have managed to prevent Russia collapsing even after years of a war they started...
 
If you took social security over the years, and invested in gold, you'd be far better off than what the government did with it. pork barrel spending.
 
i think that the deep state is a myth.

but, i think the idea of a “deep state” resonates because it leans on a well-documented history of covert operations, institutional secrecy, and unaccountable power within the u.s. government, especially during the cold war.

revelations about cia interventions in guatemala, cuba, and vietnam, as well as domestic surveillance by the fbi, resulted in deep public mistrust. investigative reporting, whistleblowers like daniel ellsberg (the pentagon papers), and congressional inquiries exposed a pattern of government deception that made it quite plausible to question whether elected officials were truly in control.

books like the invisible government gave voice to these anxieties, arguing that clandestine agencies could sometimes shape or override public policy. this created a pretty fertile ground for cynicism and skepticism and in the belief that an invisible power structure operated behind the scenes of democratic government.

so, while the actions that inspired the deep state narrative are real, the notion of a monolithic, all-powerful cabal steering the nation’s fate is a myth.

what exists instead is a fragmented and often competing set of interests within the so-called "establishment"—career bureaucrats, intelligence officials, and institutional actors—who may act to preserve stability or their own agendas, but not as part of a unified conspiracy. the deep state narrative collapses complex bureaucratic dynamics into a simplistic story of good versus evil, which is more emotionally satisfying than accurate - perfect for the internet!

it is this emotional appeal, not empirical evidence, that has allowed the deep state myth to grow in popular culture and political rhetoric. i think that understanding the real history behind it helps explain the origins of distrust but without embracing the fantasy that democracy is a total illusion.

alasdair
 
alasdairm said:
i think that the deep state is a myth.
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I just think it's a scary term for how society has been organized for millenia.

I've given what I think is a reaonable if slightly simplified explaination but I sense nobody is actually reading it.

I guess that is the problem - people fear what they don't understand but if they make no effort to understand, they simply parrot the simple 'deep state = bad' whout even knowing what it is.
 
I pointed out the presence of the CIA and FBI as a hand me down of every past president being more controlling than any president be at this point.
 
ions said:
I pointed out the presence of the CIA and FBI as a hand me down of every past president being more controlling than any president be at this point.
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Again, those agencies do not exist in 194 of the 195 nations on this planet.
 
alasdairm said:
there's no evidence of a coordinated, centralized deep state. can you present some?
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alasdair
 
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