Sadly and sans surprise, as democrats three-legged-race toward the 2018 midterms they continue to behave like privileged schoolyard children. Directionless and loafers untied, democratic activists think “RESIST” will magically translate to policy direction and winning Congressional seats.
The juvenilely-righteous (and still pathetically obsessed with Bernie) “progressives” within the Democratic Party remain mirrors of 2010’s Tea Party within the GOP – wholly clueless of how their political obsession and inexperience hurt shared causes. (If they even have a clear idea what their cause is – I’ve met many who don’t – just like the 2010 Tea Party brigade. Whereas the Tea Partier shouted “Take Our Country Back!” with a glazed look in their eyes, so too does the trendy Progressive shout “Resist!” There is, in both cases, no substance.)
But that’s not why I now write…
Democrats’ inability to learn from opposite-aisle history aside, we’re here to talk about “The Deep State”. In short, that democrats need to embrace it. The Deep State is good, and democrats ought promote it – if for no other reason than no one else in government is capable of getting anything done.
Deep State Paranoia
We all know that paranoia and fear work best to motivate voters – particularly GOP voters who are better at resisting than democrats, because they’ve been resisting change their entire lives. GOP voters eat fear for breakfast, and snack on paranoia all day long. They fear Obama and were raised to hate “big government”. For the conservative-minded, The Deep State is a that magical combination of sugar and salt that makes us incapable of putting down the Sun Chips.
Incorrectly, Democrats have decided to counter The Deep State snack phenomenon in their usual way: brushing it off as a ridiculous conspiracy theory using the tenor of the most tenured professor. That only reinforces the GOP paranoia.
To feed paranoia is to starve convention, and so the effect of the Republican Party’s jihad against The Deep State and democrats’ failure to manage the narrative is the slow destruction of that which keeps democracies stable: institutional memory. More and more civil servants are leaving government. Entire departments are literally losing their History, and therefore, any reality-based foundation upon which to make decisions.
What Is The Deep State?
What is The Deep State? The Deep State is the historic knowledge, experience, and direction of a country. The Deep State is the guide that keeps ranting children from setting the House on fire. The Deep State is that which keeps a country from going off the rails.
The Deep State is much older than the right-wing origin story: a shadow government, controlled by Obama, that’s trying to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidency… no… that story is only a convenient fairytale designed to motivate GOP voters who’d rather die than accept a black man was president.
The truth about The Deep State? The Deep State is as old as the inauguration of John Adams, and as important as The Constitution.
Whereas the original intent of the Electoral College was to prevent idiots from getting elected President of the United States – when that safety net fails – The Deep State is the final protection we have against the permanent damage such elected morons can inflict upon the DNA of our country.
The Deep State is the collective experience of the hundreds of thousands of citizens who have worked for our country since its inception – and therefore actually know how this place works. The Deep State is well-trained, dedicated, deliberate, and makes decision based on experience and expertise – not emotion, false assumptions, or big donors.
At its heart, The Deep State is a government of the people, for the people, by the people – much more so than the elected representative government model that runs on capital and can’t escape politics.
The Deep State is something to acknowledge and embrace, not brush off as nonexistent. Is The Deep State trying to sabotage Donald Trump? No. But is The Deep State resisting Donald Trump? Hell, yes, it is – because much of what President Trump does is fundamentally against the marrow of our country. Whereas Trump is the infection, The Deep State is the immune system that keeps our lungs from collapsing.
America needs The Deep State. We need it because – quite clearly – our money-grubbing elected government is only ever of two states of being: impotent and meek about it, or impotent and enraged about it. When political government can’t achieve anything, then something has to ensure we still have a country after each swing of the political pendulum. And so what keeps a country going when its elected officials and political appointees are behaving like lobbyists in heat? The Deep State: the institutional memory that keeps countries from falling apart when Politics is too drunk on ego to realize there’s a country to govern.
Without a Deep State, there might not even be a United States of America – Democrats need to aggressively define what it really is and proudly embrace it – because The Deep State is the only thing holding this place together.
