The same thing happens whenever you remove oversight from any organization that is engaged in military, paramilitary or spying activities; corruption and criminality. It never fails. You don't just have all the cases where CIA or FBI get caught doing very illegal things, you also have all the special forces (Delta, Seals, etc.) where there is zero oversight of any kind. For example, the new book "The Fort Bragg Cartel" details the extreme illegal activity, including many murders, that go on each year at the base. Take away oversight and the people you train to kill will start even killing each other over drug deals gone bad. I don't think that is what people are thinking about when they thank our troops for "their service".
Agree on "The Fort Bragg Cartel" - it's a very dark read that shows a good deal about the costs of the GWOT on those sent to fight, the community that came from - and the perversion of justice that comes from ignoring crimes committed by "our heroes".
"Threat inflation is a major component of these rising budgets; you’re not going to get a threat assessment from the IC that says, well, actually, America’s pretty safe, let’s spend money on infrastructure, education, and social uplift," and...
"Meanwhile, Edward Snowden’s revelations show a power structure that is more than willing to illegally spy on and surveil Americans."
Now note the overlaps between those two and their intersection with the plumbing - and plundering - of personal data by the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Planatir, all in an environment of weakened and weakening privacy protections, and you have more than Stasi on steroids.
I've come to believe the Deep State is not singular - after having listened to many of Larry Wilkerson's comments on Judge Napolitano. It's made up of the IC, the consulting industry, the lobbyists and the bomb makers they represent, the biggest banks, and the international drug trade. The long-standing relationships they have developed and control means that any change or reduction in the influence of any part is unlikely - as anything that threatens any part of them is existential to all of them.
Yes. There are many names for it. The Blob. The Swamp. The MICIMATT. The Deep State is perhaps the most memorable because it sounds nefarious and conspiratorial.
The Blob continues to grow. The Swamp goes undrained. The MICIMATT adds new letters (H for Hollywood; S for sports; maybe AI too).
And the Deep State? Both shrouded in secrecy and unaccountable to the plebes.
The problem is that the DOGE and similar reform efforts never get near it. The last time was 50 years ago with the Church Committee.
... and the last I heard (or read), those 18 agencies are in competition with each other for those Big Bucks, and don't exactly share information with the others, which pretty much puts the lie to any claims to being a community.
("Three Days of the Condor" still holds up story-wise, and Faye Dunaway peaking out on the woo-woo scale doesn't hurt, either. Robert Redford in a proto-Jeff Goldblum eco-friendly role.)
Sorry, coming to this post late with no time to read the already existing comments. So I'll be as concise as I can: the Deep State is real, no need to put it in quotation marks. Decades ago I read Philip Agee's "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" and haven't felt a need to dig for more details since on how the system operates, though the number of components in the "community" has grown since then. (Agee's main assignment while on CIA payroll was dirty work in Latin America.) If any additional proof was needed of the reality of the Deep State, note how dear Elon and his DOGE crew went quiet about increasing "efficiency" there by slashing the workforce. If anyone gets the ax there it will be because they're considered sympathetic to the Dems or give the slightest appearance of being "woke." I said this publicly ages ago: Trump's brave talk of dismantling the Deep State is just more of his hot air nonsense. If he seriously went after the DS, THEY would dismantle HIM!!
Too often, the law is what powerful people say it is. The most powerful people of all are basically above the law and have been for some time. They are "too big to jail."
The rule of law has already been degraded here. Meanwhile, Trump has never seen himself as a public servant, and I think he agrees with Nixon that "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal." So, yes, the final nail may well be coming, especially if SCOTUS and Congress continue to do little to challenge Trump.
As you said Bill, the rule of law is very, very selective in the US, always going after low level people and letting the big players off without a scratch. Laws are just another tool in the toolbox of government to keep the public in line, while letting the real criminals at the top get away with murder, literally.
I remember a time when we actually held a PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES responsible for breaking the law. Of course, someone in the R party then “pardoned” him, claiming it was to preserve the order and functionality of our overall system {when, actually, it had the opposite effect, and people saw the powerful being given a pass for doing things none of the rest of us would be allowed to do … which attitude infected and soured our society’s opinion of the role money and power in our government even more than ever}. If we don’t actually believe in our system and the structures and guardrails we were TRYING to use and make better, what is our strategy for NOT becoming the next Fascist State?
Trump is clearly an authoritarian with many around him who are outright fascists. But he's also a weak man who relies on constant adulation to stroke his insecurities and control him. I don't excuse anything he's said or done, but if the Deep State didn't approve of what he was doing - he'd be gone, one way or another.
“THE DEEP STATE” is a Trumpian fiction. YES, there are a great many individuals and groups that exert influence and pressure on what happens in our government, but the party IN POWER in Congress at any time … and those with the most voice on our courts, have IMMENSE power to follow “agendas” that may or may not comport with what THE PEOPLE want, or what the old guardrails had supported.
Nixon was dumped because even Republicans didn’t want a crook in th White House. Career public servants in government {they are NOT “the deep state,” they are people who — until Trump decided to fire them wholesale — thought they were serving our society!} kept Trump from pulling the crap he’s pulling now, by telling him certain of his ideas just would not fly, and people would resign en masse if he tried some of his shenanigans. THIS TIME AROUND, he has Congress by the short hairs and he PURGED those guard rails, wholesale style, with Musk and his DOGE cronies. It was like clear cutting a forest to make way for his Fascist Highway.
People talk about “the Deep State” as though it were “a thing.” In truth, it is whatever the guys in Washington can craft together to get away with whatever they want to do. Right now, The Deep State is Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and all the little puppets who do their bidding….
I suggest you search and find the many documents from Rand Corporation, the Hoover Institution, Brookings, and others that lay out plans for ensuring U.S. global hegemony - some going back to the 1990s.
They provide the continuity in foreign policy between administrations - whether the despised Trump (or GW Bush) or the "progressive" Democrats like Obama and Biden. That continuity is the Deep State, MICMATT, Blob - or whatever one wishes to call it and it benefits those who I call the owners.
Domestic issues are not the concern of those in power, as it does not challenge their power or prerogatives. Those domestic issues keep the plebes engaged and content to think that voting matters and that they live in a representative democracy.
I do not argue the Trump administration doesn't represent something dark and perhaps irreversible in the lives of many Americans. Only that if his actions were seen as a threat to the empire's rule, he would be stopped.
I asked Grok how many classified secret documents there were in D.C. No surprise, Grok replied that the number is not publicly known, for security reasons. Because you see the government's security would be compromised if the Chinese government found out that there were, for instance, 485 million such documents rather than the 360 million they suspected. You can see how that revelation would jeopardize security? Well can't you? I mean seriously now. Can't you? (sarc)
The Trump-Putin summit was all show with no good faith on the US-Trump part. Putin is right to insist on a Peace Treaty between the US and Russia 1st before any truce. Putin got burned with Minsk I & II German Chancellor Merkle and French President Hollande let it be known Minsk was only to buy TIME so Ukraine could be trained and armed by the US-NATO. Putin won't fall for that again with a Truce in the War Russia is winning so the the West could rearm Ukraine again.
For all Trump's ambivalence about NATO, I think it was all an act.
What Trump accomplished was have all the US-NATO vassal states agree to raise Defence spending to 5% of GDP to buy US weapons with BORROWED MONEY to give to Ukraine.
What slight of hand as the NATO leaders appease Trump more than Chamberlain appeased Hitler! That is not the prescription for a Future secure World.
Ray, at the same time, the CIA and MI6 are stirring up problems for Russia in the South Caucasus with Armenia and Azerbaijan. The war on Russia will never stop until it's broken up and prostrate at the feet of NATO- allowing for complete focus on China. I fear it will take collapse of the American empire to bring any changes.
Judge Nap, starting about the 16-minute mark, says this (paraphrased): "Pres. Woodrow Wilson used the Espionage Act to prosecute Princeton undergrads for reading what he deemed 'subversive material' outside a draft registration office to dissuade people from going in. The 'subversive material'? The Declaration of Independence." - https://youtu.be/pIpbddqe1Ks
I'm pretty sure the Declaration of Independence was "subversive" only to our British colonizers.
Bill, Russia offered a draft Treaty to the US in December 2021 that would have left the Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas within a neutral Ukraine.
The anti-Russian Ukraine government the US installed in 2014, immediately started shelling those Russian speaking Ukrainians bordering Russia. The US in it's arrogant hubris as the World hegemony, wouldn't even negotiate it as a starting point, dismissing it out of hand. If it wasn't for that delusional US thinking, the War would not have started.
God must be on the Russian side since any Peace Deal reached with the US-NATO Today, will be along the same lines of the Russian draft Treaty the US rejected in 2021. I see that as Divine Justice at work in this Material World.
Former ambassador Chas Freeman said that in a conversation early in Biden's administration, Putin told him that if the US insisted on pursuing NATO membership for Ukraine, Russia would have to take military action to stop it. Biden replied, "Bring it on, we'll sanction you to death."
Respectfully, I very much disagree with Judge Napolitano that Trump and his team have never heard the events from a Russian point of view. Case in point is David Sacks, his crypto Czar gave a speech exactly on that part of the Ukraine/proxy US-Russia war at the RNC in 2024.
Means become ends. The IC and deep state bureaucracies needs to grow due to the needs of the growing bureaucracy who's first need is to justify further growth not the actual needs of society.
The same thing happens whenever you remove oversight from any organization that is engaged in military, paramilitary or spying activities; corruption and criminality. It never fails. You don't just have all the cases where CIA or FBI get caught doing very illegal things, you also have all the special forces (Delta, Seals, etc.) where there is zero oversight of any kind. For example, the new book "The Fort Bragg Cartel" details the extreme illegal activity, including many murders, that go on each year at the base. Take away oversight and the people you train to kill will start even killing each other over drug deals gone bad. I don't think that is what people are thinking about when they thank our troops for "their service".
Agree on "The Fort Bragg Cartel" - it's a very dark read that shows a good deal about the costs of the GWOT on those sent to fight, the community that came from - and the perversion of justice that comes from ignoring crimes committed by "our heroes".
Two related points:
"Threat inflation is a major component of these rising budgets; you’re not going to get a threat assessment from the IC that says, well, actually, America’s pretty safe, let’s spend money on infrastructure, education, and social uplift," and...
"Meanwhile, Edward Snowden’s revelations show a power structure that is more than willing to illegally spy on and surveil Americans."
Now note the overlaps between those two and their intersection with the plumbing - and plundering - of personal data by the likes of Facebook, Amazon, Google, Planatir, all in an environment of weakened and weakening privacy protections, and you have more than Stasi on steroids.
50th anniversary of the Church Committee. Anyone remember that?
An historic anomaly.
Ain't it the (sad, sobering) truth...
I've come to believe the Deep State is not singular - after having listened to many of Larry Wilkerson's comments on Judge Napolitano. It's made up of the IC, the consulting industry, the lobbyists and the bomb makers they represent, the biggest banks, and the international drug trade. The long-standing relationships they have developed and control means that any change or reduction in the influence of any part is unlikely - as anything that threatens any part of them is existential to all of them.
Yes. There are many names for it. The Blob. The Swamp. The MICIMATT. The Deep State is perhaps the most memorable because it sounds nefarious and conspiratorial.
The Blob continues to grow. The Swamp goes undrained. The MICIMATT adds new letters (H for Hollywood; S for sports; maybe AI too).
And the Deep State? Both shrouded in secrecy and unaccountable to the plebes.
The problem is that the DOGE and similar reform efforts never get near it. The last time was 50 years ago with the Church Committee.
Don't forget the news media. The molders of "public opinion".
... and the last I heard (or read), those 18 agencies are in competition with each other for those Big Bucks, and don't exactly share information with the others, which pretty much puts the lie to any claims to being a community.
("Three Days of the Condor" still holds up story-wise, and Faye Dunaway peaking out on the woo-woo scale doesn't hurt, either. Robert Redford in a proto-Jeff Goldblum eco-friendly role.)
Good to see you on the Judge's show . Will be linking it @https://nothingnewunderthesun2016.com/
Your website is phenomenal! You need to expand your reach.
Thanks!
Sorry, coming to this post late with no time to read the already existing comments. So I'll be as concise as I can: the Deep State is real, no need to put it in quotation marks. Decades ago I read Philip Agee's "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" and haven't felt a need to dig for more details since on how the system operates, though the number of components in the "community" has grown since then. (Agee's main assignment while on CIA payroll was dirty work in Latin America.) If any additional proof was needed of the reality of the Deep State, note how dear Elon and his DOGE crew went quiet about increasing "efficiency" there by slashing the workforce. If anyone gets the ax there it will be because they're considered sympathetic to the Dems or give the slightest appearance of being "woke." I said this publicly ages ago: Trump's brave talk of dismantling the Deep State is just more of his hot air nonsense. If he seriously went after the DS, THEY would dismantle HIM!!
Do you think this administration is going to put the final nail in the coffin of The Rule of Law?
Too often, the law is what powerful people say it is. The most powerful people of all are basically above the law and have been for some time. They are "too big to jail."
The rule of law has already been degraded here. Meanwhile, Trump has never seen himself as a public servant, and I think he agrees with Nixon that "If the president does it, that means it's not illegal." So, yes, the final nail may well be coming, especially if SCOTUS and Congress continue to do little to challenge Trump.
As you said Bill, the rule of law is very, very selective in the US, always going after low level people and letting the big players off without a scratch. Laws are just another tool in the toolbox of government to keep the public in line, while letting the real criminals at the top get away with murder, literally.
I remember a time when we actually held a PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES responsible for breaking the law. Of course, someone in the R party then “pardoned” him, claiming it was to preserve the order and functionality of our overall system {when, actually, it had the opposite effect, and people saw the powerful being given a pass for doing things none of the rest of us would be allowed to do … which attitude infected and soured our society’s opinion of the role money and power in our government even more than ever}. If we don’t actually believe in our system and the structures and guardrails we were TRYING to use and make better, what is our strategy for NOT becoming the next Fascist State?
Trump is clearly an authoritarian with many around him who are outright fascists. But he's also a weak man who relies on constant adulation to stroke his insecurities and control him. I don't excuse anything he's said or done, but if the Deep State didn't approve of what he was doing - he'd be gone, one way or another.
“THE DEEP STATE” is a Trumpian fiction. YES, there are a great many individuals and groups that exert influence and pressure on what happens in our government, but the party IN POWER in Congress at any time … and those with the most voice on our courts, have IMMENSE power to follow “agendas” that may or may not comport with what THE PEOPLE want, or what the old guardrails had supported.
Nixon was dumped because even Republicans didn’t want a crook in th White House. Career public servants in government {they are NOT “the deep state,” they are people who — until Trump decided to fire them wholesale — thought they were serving our society!} kept Trump from pulling the crap he’s pulling now, by telling him certain of his ideas just would not fly, and people would resign en masse if he tried some of his shenanigans. THIS TIME AROUND, he has Congress by the short hairs and he PURGED those guard rails, wholesale style, with Musk and his DOGE cronies. It was like clear cutting a forest to make way for his Fascist Highway.
People talk about “the Deep State” as though it were “a thing.” In truth, it is whatever the guys in Washington can craft together to get away with whatever they want to do. Right now, The Deep State is Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, Pete Hegseth, Tulsi Gabbard, and all the little puppets who do their bidding….
The Deep State? Give me a break! …
I suggest you search and find the many documents from Rand Corporation, the Hoover Institution, Brookings, and others that lay out plans for ensuring U.S. global hegemony - some going back to the 1990s.
They provide the continuity in foreign policy between administrations - whether the despised Trump (or GW Bush) or the "progressive" Democrats like Obama and Biden. That continuity is the Deep State, MICMATT, Blob - or whatever one wishes to call it and it benefits those who I call the owners.
Domestic issues are not the concern of those in power, as it does not challenge their power or prerogatives. Those domestic issues keep the plebes engaged and content to think that voting matters and that they live in a representative democracy.
I do not argue the Trump administration doesn't represent something dark and perhaps irreversible in the lives of many Americans. Only that if his actions were seen as a threat to the empire's rule, he would be stopped.
"There are eighteen (18!) agencies that make up the IC with a combined yearly budget just north of $100 billion."
Gee. And I only need $5.6 million to make a movie promoting peace. Of course, I can't find anyone in the movie industry with the guts to produce it.
I asked Grok how many classified secret documents there were in D.C. No surprise, Grok replied that the number is not publicly known, for security reasons. Because you see the government's security would be compromised if the Chinese government found out that there were, for instance, 485 million such documents rather than the 360 million they suspected. You can see how that revelation would jeopardize security? Well can't you? I mean seriously now. Can't you? (sarc)
When in doubt, stamp it "secret." When seriously in doubt, stamp it "top secret."
The Trump-Putin summit was all show with no good faith on the US-Trump part. Putin is right to insist on a Peace Treaty between the US and Russia 1st before any truce. Putin got burned with Minsk I & II German Chancellor Merkle and French President Hollande let it be known Minsk was only to buy TIME so Ukraine could be trained and armed by the US-NATO. Putin won't fall for that again with a Truce in the War Russia is winning so the the West could rearm Ukraine again.
For all Trump's ambivalence about NATO, I think it was all an act.
What Trump accomplished was have all the US-NATO vassal states agree to raise Defence spending to 5% of GDP to buy US weapons with BORROWED MONEY to give to Ukraine.
What slight of hand as the NATO leaders appease Trump more than Chamberlain appeased Hitler! That is not the prescription for a Future secure World.
Ray, at the same time, the CIA and MI6 are stirring up problems for Russia in the South Caucasus with Armenia and Azerbaijan. The war on Russia will never stop until it's broken up and prostrate at the feet of NATO- allowing for complete focus on China. I fear it will take collapse of the American empire to bring any changes.
Judge Nap, starting about the 16-minute mark, says this (paraphrased): "Pres. Woodrow Wilson used the Espionage Act to prosecute Princeton undergrads for reading what he deemed 'subversive material' outside a draft registration office to dissuade people from going in. The 'subversive material'? The Declaration of Independence." - https://youtu.be/pIpbddqe1Ks
I'm pretty sure the Declaration of Independence was "subversive" only to our British colonizers.
Bill, Russia offered a draft Treaty to the US in December 2021 that would have left the Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas within a neutral Ukraine.
The anti-Russian Ukraine government the US installed in 2014, immediately started shelling those Russian speaking Ukrainians bordering Russia. The US in it's arrogant hubris as the World hegemony, wouldn't even negotiate it as a starting point, dismissing it out of hand. If it wasn't for that delusional US thinking, the War would not have started.
God must be on the Russian side since any Peace Deal reached with the US-NATO Today, will be along the same lines of the Russian draft Treaty the US rejected in 2021. I see that as Divine Justice at work in this Material World.
It can't be "Divine Justice," Ray, since God is always on America's side. :-)
Former ambassador Chas Freeman said that in a conversation early in Biden's administration, Putin told him that if the US insisted on pursuing NATO membership for Ukraine, Russia would have to take military action to stop it. Biden replied, "Bring it on, we'll sanction you to death."
Respectfully, I very much disagree with Judge Napolitano that Trump and his team have never heard the events from a Russian point of view. Case in point is David Sacks, his crypto Czar gave a speech exactly on that part of the Ukraine/proxy US-Russia war at the RNC in 2024.
GOOD job Bill!
Means become ends. The IC and deep state bureaucracies needs to grow due to the needs of the growing bureaucracy who's first need is to justify further growth not the actual needs of society.