The deep state exists whether you choose to believe or not. It is all around us and pervasive on every level of government from local to state to federal. You want proof? I once told a friend, who disbelieves that a deep state exists, that I am not sure if I really believe there is institutional racism. He said, “Come on Tom, it does exist, and I’ll prove it to you.” His proof was a hypothetical situation where if I did a U-turn in front of a police officer and a black man did a U-turn in front of an officer who would be more likely to be pulled over. I will use his same hypothetical situation and logic to prove the deep state exists and affects everything in your life.
Using my friend’s logic, the very same hypothetical situation can not only be used to prove institutional racism but the existence of the deep state as well. Isn’t a police officer who is an unelected deputized representative of the government and authorized to use force to enforce the law and able to enforce the law at their discretion the perfect example of the deep state? That officer in that scenario has complete discretion who they are going to pull over and why. Sure, there may be laws and regulations that in theory will guide or dictate who, when, and why he can pull someone over for a traffic offense, but the reality is that at that moment they are unsupervised and can make that judgement for themselves based upon their experience and personal bias.
Similar scenarios play out every day in the bureaucracy of local, state and Federal level countless times a day. Building permits are denied or approved because of friendship or bribes. State DNR’s routinely restrict how landowners can use their own land. A cop pulls over a friend for speeding and doesn’t write a ticket. Some good examples of bureaucrats overstepping their authority in 2020 are the permits being denied for protests by those groups deemed conservative but allowed for those whose causes are considered to be liberal or progressive. (I won’t bother to link examples, Google it. Examples are all over). Apparently, the right to free speech and assembly is applied subjectively in some states.
On the topic of 2020, the COVID pandemic has brought about an increase of the power of the deep state. Just read your local and state news to see all the ways elected and unelected officials have ignored laws and even violated the Constitution. I urge you to read this article by Charles Lipson about bureaucracy and the pandemic. Not convinced yet?
The Affordable Care Act passed in 2010. I cannot find one confirmation that even one Congressperson or Senator that voted for the ACA read the entire bill before it was signed into law. I know many will argue that many bills aren’t read by our elected representatives before they vote on them and are handed a synopsis by staffers summarizing the contents. Congressional staffers can easily downplay or highlight parts of bills they either want passed or defeated by writing biased summaries. There are others that will say that you cannot expect anyone to read the over 2000 pages of the original bill. Yes, yes you can expect our elected representatives to do just that. That is what they were elected to do. If the bill is too long to read that should be a clue it is bad legislation. The bill was written by congressional staffers, lobbyists, paid consultants and bureaucrats; some of whom had pockets to line (insurance companies originally against the ACA went quiet when told about the individual mandate), agendas to fill or ideology to imprint without any thought of how it would affect you or even if it was good legislation that would accomplish what it’s protagonists claimed it would: we can debate the constitutionality another time. As a result, the law has grown into mountain of regulations over 11,000 pages (some sources say closer to 20,000) all written by and enforced by an entrenched bureaucracy of unelected officials with their own agendas and bias. There is part of the deep state right there, and it is a big part, encompassing nearly 1/5 of our economy.
What about the FBI scandal with agents discussing how to influence a federal election? Deep state, anyone? How about this FBI mess? I won’t even go into voter fraud and ballots being thrown away as that may be another discussion, but it does happen, is an issue and can influence the the outcome of elections.
The deep state also has partners in crime. Facebook and Twitter have both blocked conversative posts with little or no cause sometimes ignoring their own guidelines. Again, Google examples yourself (or better yet us Bing, DuckDuckGo or another search engine, as Google sometimes mysteriously buries results.) A recent example is the Hunter Biden scandal. The MSM (mainstream media, for those who don’t know) also routinely bury or ignore stories that don’t fit their narratives that they want to present to the public. Again, I present as evidence the Hunter Biden scandal and CNN canceling an interview with Piers Morgan.
The sad truth is that the unelected deep state bureaucrats control and dictate almost every aspect of our daily lives from the food we eat, the cars we drive, what we teach our children, where we live, to the air we breathe. I refer you again to Charles Lipson’s excellent article. Both the MSM and the social networks are at the very least unconscious confederates of the deep state controlling the narrative by selectively dispensing or ignoring information to reflect their own bias.
I could go on and on, but there are just too many examples. Don’t believe me? Don’t listen to me, do your own due diligence and find out for yourself. And before you think I am biased by only showing examples of today’s “left” and that Democrats currently control the deep state, I will tell you that I am. I don’t believe there is a definitive left or right, but our perceptions of what the left is and what the right is changes back and forth over the years. Too often the general consensus is that Republicans represent the right and Democrats represent the left and that’s just not true. Anyone who lived during McCarthyism and the blacklists of Hollywood and business just might agree to that. Back then the “right” was censoring Hollywood and business leaders and made the “left” reluctant to speak out. Today the “right” in Hollywood, business and popular culture is being censored, or canceled, by the “left”. What is a more “right wing” thing to do then censorship? Lincoln was a Republican and would we consider him to be a right wing ideologue today? The Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party and is not socialism left wing and do we view Nazism as left wing today? Are there similarities between Hitler’s Brown Shirts (perceived as the right) and Antifa (perceived as the left) of today? A better way to view it is as libertarian and authoritarian. We just happen to live during a time when what is perceived to be the “left”, or better yet “authoritarians”, are in control of the deep state.
It is highly unlikely the deep state is a secret shadow government with a top down organization with one person, a committee or board calling the shots. But it does exist as individuals and even cells of like minded people who, consciously or unconsciously, impose their will on you and at times will go to extreme lengths to do so. This deep state tries to influence the outcome of elections to their liking, writes the laws and regulations we must live by and believes it knows better than we do on how we should live our lives. One thing we can be sure of is that if the example of who a cop is going to pull over first for doing a U-turn, a black man or a white man, can prove the existence of institutional racism we can damn well be sure that there is a deep state.
The Sapiens Society 