What is the Deep State?

What is the "Deep State"? No one exemplifies this reality more than Victoria Nuland. To understand and acknowledge the deep state is to recognize the primary tectonic plate of the US, the thing that drives our constant warmongering, our interference with the governance of other countries, our constance forceful confiscation of the natural recesses of other countries and the ubiquitous censorship that is preventing you for seeing all of this for what it is.

Jeffrey Sachs I think it's obvious there's basically one deep state party, and that is the party of Cheney Harris, Biden, Victoria Nuland,--my colleague at Columbia University now-- and Nuland is kind of the face of all of this, because she has been in every administration for the last 30 years. She was in the Clinton administration, wrecking our policies towards Russia in the 1990s. She was in the Bush Administration, Jr, with Cheney, wrecking our policies towards NATO enlargement. She was in then the Obama administration as Hillary's spokesperson first, and then making a coup in Ukraine in February 2014, not a Great move, started a war. Then she was Biden's Undersecretary of State. Now that's both parties. It's a colossal mess, and she's been Cheney's advisor. She's been Biden's adviser. Makes perfect sense ....

John Mearsheimer When we talk about the deep state, we're talking really about the administrative state. It's very important to understand that, starting in the late 19th, early 20th century, given developments in the American economy, it was imperative that we developed--and this was true of all Western countries--a very powerful central state that could run the country, and over time, that state has grown in power. And since World War Two, the United States, as you all know, has been involved in every nook and cranny of the world, fighting wars here, there and everywhere. And to do that, you need a very powerful administrative state that can help manage that foreign policy. But in the process, what happens is you get all of these high level bureaucrats, middle level and low level bureaucrats who become established in positions in the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence community, you name it, and they end up having a vested interest in pursuing a particular foreign policy. And the particular foreign policy that they like to pursue is the one that the Democrats and the Republicans are pushing. And that's why we talk about Tweedledee and Tweedledum, with regard to the two parties you could throw in the deep state as being on the same page as those other two institutions.

Jeffrey Sachs There's a very interesting interview of Putin in Figaro in 2017 and he says, I've dealt with three presidents now. They come into office with some ideas even. But then the men in the dark suits and the blue ties--and then he says, I wear red ties, but they wear blue ties--they come in and explain the way the world really is. And there go the ideas. And I think that's Putin's experience, that's our experience, that's my experience, which is that there's a deeply entrained foreign policy. It has been in place in my interpretation, for many decades, but arguably a variant of it has been in place since 1992. I got to watch some of it early on, because I was an advisor to Gorbachev and I was an advisor to Yeltsin, and so I saw early makings of this, though I didn't fully understand it, except in retrospect, but that policy has been mostly in place pretty consistently for 30 years, and it didn't really matter whether it was Bush Senior, whether it was Clinton, whether it was Bush Jr, whether it was Obama, whether it was Trump. After all, who did Trump hire? He hired John Bolton. Well, the pretty deep state. That was the end of they told, you know, he explained, this is the way it is. And by the way, Bolton explained also in his memoirs, when when Trump didn't agree, "we figured out ways to trick him."

Continue ReadingWhat is the Deep State?

Speech and Being Offended

Two of my favorite memes on speech. People who don't sometimes use words that cause others to be offended are failing to engage meaningfully with others. They are not having real conversations.

Once we realize that ALL of us are, some of the time, fonts of misinformation, it should put up big red flags to anyone who advocates for censorship. This goes both for formal and informal censorship. Both are dangerous, whether it is by operation of government or whether it comes from your well-meaning finger-wagging friends and acquaintances who are scolding you to stop saying 'offensive" things, falsely suggesting that it is possible for a respectable person to avoid offending others. Especially in this day and age of fragile adults and even more fragile young adults and teenagers. It is impossible to communicate meaningfully without sometimes contesting/challenging the facts and ideas of others, and that is quite often what growing numbers of people consider "offensive."

So let's all agree, shall we, that it is our civic duty as good-hearted people to sometimes offend others. Without the free-exchange of ideas, what makes us human is destroyed. And it is equally the our duty to hear each other out, at least some of the time, instead of tsk-taking each other, trying to cancel each other and pretending that words and ideas are the moral equivalent of physical harm. We need to take to heart the playground chant: "Sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will never hurt me." It's time for all of us to grow up, to get some thicker skin, and to courageously engage with others who think differently.

Only weak and lazy people refuse to do these things. If we fail to grow up, we will destroy what is left of human flourishing in this country. There will still be plenty of human animals roaming around, but we will no longer have a functional society.

Continue ReadingSpeech and Being Offended

Today’s Go-To Political Formula

Karl Rove said the quiet part out loud here. It is a very powerful strategy, especially when fortified with widespread censorship and sophisticated U.S. Security State Psyops. That's why it is the Democratic Party's bread and butter on all major issues today. Congratulations, Democrats. You have become that abhorrent thing that Republicans have been for decades!

RFK, Jr.:

I saw Kamala, you know, at the convention and she gave a speech that was very bellicose and belligerent. It was a kind of speech that was written by neocons and the CIA. The first time in history they had the CIA former director speaking right before, Leon Panetta, and military people speaking at the Democratic Convention. Democrats were the anti-war party. They were the pro-Constitution Party. They were the party that was against Wall Street and representing the little guys, the cops, the firefighters union and labor people. In the 2020 election, roughly 50% of the people in this country voted for Donald Trump. But that group that voted for Donald Trump represented 30% of the wealth in our country. The 50% of the people that voted for Joe Biden represented 70% of the wealth.

There's been an inversion now, where the Republican Party has become the party of the common man, of working people of the middle class, the Democratic Party has become the party of Wall Street, of the military industrial complex, a Big Pharma, Big Agriculture, Big Tech, the Big Banking systems and all of Donald Trump calls the deep state, which is this, this web of financial interest that not is unnecessarily a little conspiracy, but it's a conspiracy of self interest that functions together in tandem to shift wealth upward, to clamp down totalitarian controls and to transform this country and from the world's exemplary democracy into a corporate kleptocracy and A very, very oppressive oligarchical system, the kind of system we fought a revolution to overthrow in 1776.

Continue ReadingToday’s Go-To Political Formula