Assuming the "Deep State" exists, is Trump a threat or a blessing to it?

[KingOrfeo]

The concept further explained:

As controversy engulfed General Flynn, some people (like me) saw the workings of the “Deep State.” On the other hand, Ali Watkins of Buzzfeed confidently reported that the “deep state” does not exist. She interviewed top U.S. intelligence officials who were baffled. It was kind of like asking fish about the concept of water. They couldn’t undersand the question.

The Deep State concept is useful, but the term itself has come to have conspiratorial overtones that can detract from its functional reality. The fact is that the United States of America has a “double government,” as law professor Michael Glennon has dubbed it. That is to say, we have two governments: the Madisonian government (Congress, courts and the presidency) created by the Founding Fathers in 1789, and a national security regime, created by the National Security Act of 1947.

This second government may not be a “deep state,” but it is a secretive part of the U.S. government that is effectively beyond the control of the Madisonian wing of government. This isn’t a conspiracy theory, it is a fact Buzzfeed can confirm by the study of national security politics.

Consider the CIA’s drone program. President Obama, a lawyerly liberal, and Donald Rumsfeld, a blustery neoconservative, both sought to transfer the CIA drone program to the Department of Defense, on the understandable grounds that an intelligence agency does not need to have its own air force. Both Obama and Rumsfeld failed. The national security government prevailed over Madisonian government.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Ryan Bohl denies the Deep State exists.

 

[KingOrfeo]

Bob Cesca writes:

Last week, [former Congressman Steve] Stockman said that he had been framed by the “deep state.” It’s a commonly overheard conspiracy theory these days, one peddled by InfoWars radio host Alex Jones and quietly picked up by the Trump White House in response to the series of leaks from intelligence officials pertaining to Trump’s alleged collusion with Russian intelligence to stymie the 2016 campaign cycle with disinformation and hacked Democratic Party documents.

The deep state claim is potentially explosive, at least when marketed by Trump and his supporters. While the president hasn’t used that term in public, he’s certainly alluded to it when complaining about the “intelligence” community (his scare-quotes) and how it’s behaving like “Nazi Germany,” or when he’s whining about “fake news.” Combined, this is Trump playing the deep state card, insisting that his presidency is being undermined by operatives within the intelligence community who are actively passing national security documents to the press in pursuit of the “Russiagate” scandal.

The signal we’re intended to receive here is that Trump won’t go quietly. And if he goes down, it’s possible he’ll try to trigger as much chaos in Washington as possible. Worse, the damage could easily spread beyond the Beltway. First, as Trump feels more surrounded and suffocated by the endless conga line of overlapping scandals, he might engage a witch hunt of his own to target what he’ll surely describe as rotten, crooked chunks of the intelligence community, either by exposing dirty FBI, CIA or NSA secrets or by calling for mass firings that make his recent firings of U.S. attorneys seem pragmatic. In the process, he might foment a constitutional crisis and, potentially, try to undermine an investigation that seeks to expose dangerous interference in our elections and our political sovereignty by Vladimir Putin’s increasingly hostile regime.

Beyond Washington, though, the deep state conspiracy theory is plausible enough in the age of light-speed social media memes — thoughtlessly circulated, irrespective of any linkage to verifiable, factual information — that it manufactures an easy out for Trump supporters who, like their leader, feel increasingly cornered by the slow drip of the Russia story. Consequently, there will never be a consensus on Russiagate.

Most Trumpers will almost certainly consider the investigation into Russiagate to be the real coup d’état, even in the face of an actual attempted coup by the Kremlin. On top of that, public outcry about an alleged deep-state coup could spark unrest and violence by Trump supporters who feel as if the White House is being usurped by sinister or even criminal elements inside the government. As the evidence for collusion between Russia and the White House grows, the outcry against the deep-state conspiracy will also grow.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I note that while "the Deep State" is a phrase appearing more and more in public discourse, its meaning appears to have narrowed to just the federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies. What Lofgren identified in the OP is something far vaster than that, and not limited to government bodies, and its effects are far vaster than trying to mold certain aspects of foreign policy without Congressional input:

These paradoxes, both within the government and within the ostensibly private economy, are related. They are symptoms of a shadow government ruling the United States that pays little heed to the plain words of the Constitution. Its governing philosophy profoundly influences foreign and national security policy and such domestic matters as spending priorities, trade, investment, income inequality, privatization of government services, media presentation of news, and the whole meaning and worth of citizens’ participation in their government.

I have come to call this shadow government the Deep State. The term was actually coined in Turkey, and is said to be a system composed of high-level elements within the intelligence services, military, security, judiciary, and organized crime. In John le Carré’s recent novel, A Delicate Truth, a character in the book describes the Deep State as “the ever-expanding circle of non-governmental insiders from banking, industry and commerce who were cleared for highly classified information denied to large swathes of Whitehall and Westminster.” I use the term to mean a hybrid association of key elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States with only limited reference to the consent of the governed as normally expressed through elections.

The Deep State is the big story of our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism and the militarization of foreign policy, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure that has given us the most unequal society in almost a century, and the political dysfunction that has paralyzed day-to-day governance.

 

[Rightguide]

You're way behind the curve of awareness of current events.

 

[Lancecastor]

I think Ivanka's running the whole Deep State thing for Martians.

 

[KingOrfeo]

I think Ivanka's running the whole Deep State thing for Martians.

Bah! That's just typical Lizard People misdirection!