Looking For The Deep State

CONVERSATIONS WITH CONSERVATIVE conspiracy theorists yield unexpected fruit. I am persuaded that many of them truly believe in what they call "the deep state", the exact nature of which must must extrapolate from available information, what little is available. Does it consist of real people, or are they also imaginary? Do they have secret symbols and gang signs like Klan members and white supremacists? they must be government employees, at least nominally, or they wouldn't have earned the designation"state". But where are they? Certainly not in any part of the executive branch. Most cabinet level agencies are seriously understaffed under Trump's policy of down sized governmental bureaucratic contraction. Buildings where deep staters might furtively lurk, creep, and conspire, places like the State Department and E.P.A., are more than half empty, making the verification of the loyalties of those who remain a virtual piece of cake. we are left with a boringly mundane conclusion. the "deep state", if anywhere, is right under our very noses, much to the surprise and probably disappointment of the conservative conspiratorial community. Even the most cursor examination of the flow chart of the United states federal government reveals a tangled, confusing, bureaucratic depth of two, or is it three million civil servants, without even mentioning the military. That's deep, and its state, socialism at its finest, right out there int he open, visible to all, hiding nothing, engaged in nothing more sinister and subversive than shoving trillions of dollars of public resources down the deep hole, never to return. The conservative conspiracy theorists, unimpeded by reason, reluctant to abandon the fun, next propose a secret coven of ultra elite ultra wealthy white men, secreted away somewhere in Switzerland, pulling strings, controlling everything from the world economy to the United nations, implementing a subversive globalist agenda, inimical to the sovereignty of the United States and detrimental to the American way, freedom, liberty, and a upwardly mobile dreams and aspirations of the common man. Again, the conspiracy theorists are actually on to something, but looking for it in the wrong place, seeing trees, as it were, but not the forest. Introducing the fortune five hundred, plain as the nose on your face, in plan view, not hiding anything or anyone, its agenda perfectly obvious to even the most superficial scrutiny. They have meetings in fancy accommodations, they purchase political loyalty and power, they contrive insidious schemes to plot power and money grabs under the guise of everyone's best interest; in short, they meet all the requisite criteria. If nothing else, they deserve the respect of acknowledgment. Why look beyond them, to something even more perfidious and insidious? Won't they suffice? The will, with a little embellishment, a few gated estates, helicopters, yachts, and, just for good measure, clandestine gatherings behind locked doors in Switzerland. Maybe the search for this level of allure and glamour is why we elected Donald Trump. The deep state, the fiction that there lurks hidden within the n the United States government an organized movement to overthrow Trump and seize power, was invented due to the unwillingness of conservatives to accept the reality that a large majority of the American people reject Trump's policies, his behavior, his presidency, a reality far less palatable than the notion of a much smaller but potentially potent anti trump force, deeply hidden, but ever lurking. The problem with conservatives, and their conspiracy theories, as well as all their paradigms, including the rare variety which harbors no thoughts of conspiracy, is that they get everything backwards. They put supply before demand, and solutions before problems. Hence their intent to arm the good people before ascertaining exactly who the good people are, which, in truth, can never be done. A conservative colleague recently told me that teh death penalty does nothing to deter a convicted murderer, but deters would be killers from acting on their worst impulses. Again, backwards. People sufficiently motivated to kill are not likely to pay heed to consequences they no more expect to experience than detection, capture, and conviction. But as for the captured, convicted, and executed murderer? He'll never harm another soul, and in terms of actual deterrents, it doesn't get any better than that.