The Deep State

Talking about conspiracy theories, I often reminded of the situation that existed here in the United States during the Cold War, when I was a State Department official. Very few people believed that there was such thing as communist ideology. You can't call something a conspiracy when it is happening in a plain sight, when something is out in the open and all the moving parts are there. But it seems that a very few people want to put two and two together and get four, and see what is actually going on.

When we talk about what one gentleman named Mike Lofgren has called the "Deep State", or what Jeff Sessions, a Senator from Alabama calls “the Oligarchy, or what others call simply the Establishment,” we're not talking about a conspiracy - were are talking about something that is happening in plain sight but people don't seem to interpret well. They look at the clash, for example, between the Republicans and the Democrats and say: "Ah, this is politics as normal!" But it's not really politics as normal when we see that this is almost a "Punch and Judy" show between two rivals within the same establishment. It's simply one side of scoundrels competing for privilege against another side of scoundrels, but on all the basics of policy, especially on questions of international affairs and war and peace, they all agree.

Some people say that this Deep State is simply Eisenhower's “Military Industrial Complex.” But actually it's far broader than that. The Eisenhower-era “Military Industrial Complex” actually provided the historical core of the Deep State as it exists today, but now it's a much broader entity. It incorporates the intelligence services and the financial aspects of the government, in complex with a large part of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, the information technology industry. And it's really multifaceted, it involves the financial system and what is called waging “lawfair” through an extraterritorial reach of the U.S.  Justice Department and Treasury Department, plus a huge part of private industry including the media themselves. It's a self-perpetuating nucleus of power with an awful lot of money involved. It also includes a lot of lobbyists, PR-specialists and other people, plus the "Demintern" (in analogy to the old communist Comintern) constituting the “democracy's promotion” and “regime change” aspects of the U.S. policy.

What is remarkable about this entity, the Deep State, is that it's really not amenable to democratic political control. Whether under Republicans or Democrats, policy continues to roll forward more or less unchanged.

When people elected Obama, they thought they were getting the “anti-Bush.” But instead, what they got was “Bush-lite.” So, now instead of torturing people we simply kill them with drones. It's essentially the same policy but simply adjusted in a very slight way.

I think the most significant thing that is going on this year, 2016, is that both parties, the Republicans and Democrats, experienced an insurgency. We saw Bernie Sanders within the Democratic Party and Donald Trump within the Republican Party. As we know from leaked emails, Bernie was actually cheated in favor of Hillary Clinton - the candidate of the Deep State. On the Republican side Donald Trump was able to beat the Deep State. That is why there is such terror on a part of the establishment that he might actually get elected. That is why so many Republican officials are endorsing Hillary in a hope that they can preserve the system. I think this is one of the rare political situations in the United States when voting may actually make a difference.