The Deeper State

It's real and it has taken sides.

If you ever believed there was no such thing as the Deep State, please make yourself aware of how deeply the bureaucracy was involved in "resisting" President Trump and how they directly influenced the 2020 election.

I wrote what follows in 2016.

Ronald Reagan said:

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!

No matter the reason for or goal of a group or organization, as it grows the members of that group or organization necessarily create, codify and implement rules that govern its actions. This is necessary to maintain order and to manage the activities of said group because as it gets larger, the number of decisions increase to the point the top leadership can no longer address all of them directly, especially the repetitive decisions that are made in the course of normal operations. These rules also aid those occupying lower positions of responsibility in making those repetitive decisions on behalf of the organization that are in line with the intent of those who established the organization in the first place.

Eventually, the detailed process of rulemaking and rule enforcing becomes less important to the leadership of the group or organization and a form of delegated self-governance evolves. When applied to the public sector, this process of internal governance is called “the bureaucracy” – a system of government in which most of the important decisions are made by non-elected state employed officials rather than by elected representatives. The bureaucracy soon realizes that it has the true power over government as the leadership relies more and more on it to fulfil the tactical rule-making to buttress the strategic intent of the laws it passes. These rules are known as “administrative law,” essentially rules promulgated by unelected bureaucrats with the full force of legislation passed by the actual governing body.

Then, like SkyNet of the Terminator movies, it becomes self-aware. It realizes that it needs to tend, not to its duty to the public it serves, but to its own need for survival. When it achieves the self-awareness, the bureaucracy becomes the “Deep State.”

The deep state has no interest in serving the public, nor are they accountable to the public in any way. They are not elected, appointed or subject to confirmation hearings. They are immune from all but the most public displays of idiocy and they are anonymous enough that when trouble does come, they are “reassigned” to live yet again in a perpetual, zombie like existence. The goal of any bureaucrat is to comply with the rules of the bureaucracy and assure that others do as well. They are rewarded for penalizing those who do not and this extends to every level of government from the Byzantine systems at your local DMV to the agency administrators in Washington D.C.

You don’t think that they have power over you? Just ask the Tea Party organizations that have had their momentum blocked, not by force of arms, but by the force of forms – forms submitted and not approved. Ask anyone who has applied to the EPA for any sort of permit to do something on your own land. Try to get a car tag or a driver’s license without the exact copies of the right paperwork. In these cases, the pen (or the approval stamp) is truly mightier than the sword.

Whistleblower laws? Ever wonder why there are seemingly few that speak out against a Democrat government as opposed to a Republican one? The pressure against speaking out inside the government structure is enough to make diamonds – because they know that the politicians at the top will blame “rogue employees in the Cincinnati office” for activities that they approved by not disapproving of them.

We tend to look at our political world as a series of events marked by election dates, as series of individual points on a graph – but that is terribly wrong. Our political world is a continuum, an unbroken line of change that is the result of the number of points to the right or left of center over time. The accurate view of this progression is to draw a regression line based on these individual points that predicts the ultimate destination of our journey. It is the change over 50 years we should be concerned about, not what happens in a given 4-year presidential term.

The truth is that politicians come and go but the deep state is forever. Presidents are like cowboys on the rodeo circuit trying not to be thrown by the same bull. It is no surprise that the deep state works to support whichever political ideology that feeds it and is why it works to please Democrats and RINO’s who believe in big government and “compassionate conservatism” (just another term for right leaning “progressivism”) and goes out of its way to frustrate conservative Republicans, classical liberals and libertarians. This is the reason that government keeps growing and the only difference between Republican and Democratic control of the federal government is the rate of growth - rapid under Democrat administrations, slower under Republican.

The deep state is a prime example of the mythical perpetual motion machine. The primary goal of this machine is to perpetuate itself by promoting any entity that seeks to feed its growth and to destroy any entity that seeks to control it or to shrink it.

That is what makes the mission of the Tea Party so difficult because it is not only fighting Democrats and RINOs but an entrenched organization with more enduring power than the transient elected officials that are mandated to stand for election every 2, 4 or 6 years. Just sit back a moment and appreciate the irony of organizations like the Tea Party groups, groups whose stated goals are the reduction of taxes and government, being forced to apply for the right to exist to a government they want to shrink and an agency that collects the taxes they object to.

In any reasonable test of impartiality, respect for the Constitution and the rule of law, the bureaucrats in IRS, the DOJ, the State Department and the NSA have failed miserably, abetted in this failure, of course, by the elected politicians and appointees at the top. Changing politicians at the top without attacking the bureaucracy underneath is like changing the locks on a whorehouse, it only changes who enjoys the benefits of what awaits inside.

The deep state can’t be repaired, reformed or improved. It is a weed that must be pulled, roots and all. Any candidate not willing to sign up for this mission is not worth consideration.