The Birth of the Deep State: A History — Peter C. Earle

This is an excellent backgrounder.

But where did the American deep state come from? Has it always been there?In fact, the evolution of the deep state (and this choice of term, “evolution” as opposed to “creation”, will be explained later) is — some might say ironically — found in a nearly 140-year old anti-corruption “reform” measure; one that was explicitly focused upon depoliticizing the civilian component of the United States government....

The architects of the reform also failed to recognize that individuals who are hired are no less likely to have political inclinations than those awarded the same position out of sheer patronage. And where those who held positions in the spoils system were washed out of office in four years, a corps of (essentially) permanent bureaucrats facing the prospect of pensions and positions of greater influence amid zero public accountability are likely to be outwardly demure while no less political than their forebears.

The tremendous edifice that is the US civil bureaucracy — currently numbering somewhere around 2.85 million individuals — is, like any other huge organization, subject to both imposed and emergent orders. There are explicitly assigned executives and managers, labyrinthine organizational charts, job descriptions, pay grades, areas of responsibility, manuals of every sort, and every other standardization that informs (and hinders) the modern workplace.

But as the size of the bureaucracy has swelled it has also acquired a dissociated but consistent “consciousness”: a spontaneously-ordered, unstructured but undoubtedly focused and effective mechanism. Its major functions are to thwart political measures it collectively deems unpalatable, and to vigilantly protect the existence of the greater body within which it thrives.

No orders are issued, and there is no chain of command. It communicates by example: leaks reported in the news beget more leaks, anonymous tips spawn a rash of new tipsters. No lofty conspiracy theories are necessary; a massive army of bureaucrats in an era of free/highly affordable burner phones, file sharing services, and document scanning apps are more than sufficient to gum up the wheels of executive action.

There are no secret codes, no dead drops, and no shadowy agents meeting in parking garages in the dead of night: perhaps more dauntingly, the deep state coalesces from among a seemingly incalculable number of nondescript men and women with families and homes in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. It receives a salary every two weeks, drawn upon the United States Treasury. Its atomic elements — individuals — coach Little League, go to Zumba classes, and generally have mainstream opinions. Many, no doubt, dismiss the very notion of a deep state. Even when they send an anonymous email, shred a document intended for other eyes, or impishly pass a tip to someone with a second- or third-hand relationship in the media, most of them probably see the deep state as something larger, above and beyond themselves.

Yet they are the deep state.

The "deep state" is a combination of the intelligence services and the bureaucracy, which was famous as the siloviki and nomenklatura in the USSR, with roots in Tsarist Russia and which persists under the Putin administration. These people have affiliations, some of which are political (party) and economic (program patronage). And everyone has an ideology that shapes the worldview that they take to be reality.

In present day Russia, following the Yeltsin years and neoliberal shock therapy under the direction of US advisors, the oligarchs emerged from "cowboy capitalism," who Putin has been able only to modest bridle. They have an analog in the US in the 0.01% that provide the bulk of political contributions to federal and state politicians. The result is a group of people that live in a different world from the rest and enjoy a double standard of justice, allowing them great freedom to act.

Conspiracy is not the driving force behind the deep state but rather interest and protecting investment. There is no conscious conspiracy behind the deep state, although individuals may conspire in some instances. Moreover, owing to different interests and affiliation, there are different factions vying for place and power.

In short, the so-called deep state is not some aberration but rather one of the outcomes of political institutionalization in liberal democracies, similar to the palace court in imperial times, along with the upper echelon of the different centers of power — intelligence, military, etc.

This doesn't mean that the deep state is not real ("oh, it's just bureaucracy) or that the deep state is a conspiracy theory, as often charged or spun in the conventional narrative. The existence of the deep state makes a difference and that difference can be detected and described....

A bigger question is whether the deep state is, even as an unintended consequence of the Pendleton Act, a “feature” or a “bug”. Do unelected government employees play a critical role in restoring equilibrium even in a nominal democracy, or do they represent an insidious, potentially worrisome repository of accidental power?...

For a very long time, Americans have had the odd feeling that elections don’t matter nearly as much as the media hoopla surrounding them would imply. It’s true, and one reason why has everything to do with fundamental changes in the way we hire and fire within the federal bureaucracy. The emergence of the deep state is by design a buffer on democracy itself, with the cost of a less adaptable regime and growing public cynicism concerning who really is in charge.

Activist Post
The Birth of the Deep State: A History

Peter C. Earle, MA in Applied Economics from American University, an MBA (Finance), and a BS in Engineering from the United States Military Academy at West Point

Rebecca L. Spang — MMT and Why Historians Need to Reclaim Studying Money

Good read! 

Controversy over money is nothing new in US history, since it has been a lively political issue. The arguments are not chiefly about money, although couched in terms of money, economics, and finance, but rather, politics, which involves winners and losers in the policy game. Historically, sound money advocated have been the wealthy, and functional finance people have been ordinary citizens aka "the little people" (h/t Alan Simpson).

History News Network
MMT and Why Historians Need to Reclaim Studying Money

Rebecca L. Spang | Professor of History at Indiana University where she directs the Liberal Arts and Management Program, and author of Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution (Harvard University Press, 2015)

Matt Davis — Remembering when bankers tried to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator

One of the bankers was Prescott Bush, later senator from Connecticut, father of President G. W. H. Bush, and grandfather of President G. W. Bush. The whistleblower was Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler.

Big Think
Remembering when bankers tried to overthrow FDR and install a fascist dictator

Matt Davis

William Hogeland — What Did the Founders Mean by “Democracy”?

The thing that almost all of the framers really agreed on is that a broad franchise for electing representatives makes things too responsive to the popular will; and that even where the franchise is appropriately, in their view, restricted to white men with sufficient property, with even more property required for standing for office, a legislature unchecked by a more elite upper house still makes things too responsive. New ideas were out there. They urged not direct democracy but access to the representative franchise for unpropertied men, as well as the establishment of representative legislatures unchecked by upper houses. The framers disparaged those ideas as “democracy,” along with the state legislatures in which those ideas found expression and the people pushing for them.

Hogeland posts here

What Did the Founders Mean by “Democracy”?
William Hogeland

Michael Vlahos — We Were Made for Civil War

Backgrounder. A historical view dissension, divisiveness and civil war in the US.

The American Conservative
We Were Made for Civil War

Michael Vlahos | professor in the Strategy and Policy Department at the US Naval War College, adjunct faculty member, Global Security Studies program at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Sciences , former Director of the Security Studies Program at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies, and formerly with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, the Center for Naval Analyses, the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency

Zero Hedge — Trump Weighs In On The Single Worst Mistake In American History

In a wide ranging interview with The Hill on Tuesday conducted in the Oval Office, President Trump was asked to give his take on the biggest mistake in American history.

Considering just how open-ended a question that is, it's perhaps surprising that he merely went back less than a couple decades into the Bush presidency, though Trump's base will certainly welcome it as it hearkens back to his "America First" foreign policy vision of the campaign trail.

“The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country: going into the Middle East, by President Bush,” the president during his interview with Hill.TV.
“Obama may have gotten them (U.S. soldiers) out wrong, but going in is to me the biggest single mistake made in the history of our country,” he said.
Trump explained the reasoning behind this choice, and why it wasn't something like the civil war or another defining and devastating event reaching far into American History.

“Because we spent $7 trillion in the Middle East. Now if you wanna fix a window some place they say, 'oh gee, let’s not do it. Seven trillion, and millions of lives — you know, ‘cause I like to count both sides. Millions of lives,” the president explained....

Well, he got that much right anyway.

Zero Hedge
Trump Weighs In On The Single Worst Mistake In American History

Tyler Durden

Brett Wilkins — A Brief History of American Torture

Denial — from the highest levels of government to mainstream media still reluctant or refusing to even say or print the word torture to a public which still embraces torture despite its barbarity and inefficacy — is the order of the day when it comes to facing America’s tortured history. Our nation’s failure to honestly examine its darkest deeds raises the all-too-real prospect of their repetition, a chilling possibility that seems likelier than ever given Trump’s choice of Haspel, someone accused of torturing for torture’s sake — and enjoying it.

Torture is the play of sadists. It is a criminal aberration. There has also been a strong element of racism in US state-sponsored torture.

Counterpunch
A Brief History of American Torture
Brett Wilkins | editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal

The Saker — NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization

Snarky backgrounder. Humorous read of some sorry history, centered around former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

The Vineyard of the Saker
NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization
The Saker

Bannon to Charlie Rose — Trump Combined ‘Jacksonian Populism’ & ‘Hamiltonian Economic Nationalism’ to Galvanize Working-Class Americans

MAGA.

It seems that Steve Bannon either forgot about or is ignorant of Friedrich List and the National System and a lot of other American populist and economic nationalist history. Or he is just pumping the big names that most people recognize and relate to.

Breitbart News

Bannon to Charlie Rose: Trump Combined ‘Jacksonian Populism’ & ‘Hamiltonian Economic Nationalism’ to Galvanize Working-Class Americans

Tony Lee

Stratfor — The Apocalyptic Vision of Stephen K. Bannon

Useful short summary of Strauss & Howe's generational theory, chiefly The Fourth Turning, and Steve Bannon's interpretation of its implications for America and the world.

Financial Sense
The Apocalyptic Vision of Stephen K. Bannon

Stratfor

New Deal democrat — "The Changing of the Guard:" the prescient 1980 book that foretold neoliberalism

Backgrounder on the Democratic Party abandoning of the New Deal and trying to capture the center by moving right. The post doesn't mention it but this began under Jimmy Carter.

The Bonddad Blog
"The Changing of the Guard:" the prescient 1980 book that foretold neoliberalism
New Deal democrat

Jada Thacker — Deep History of America’s Deep State

The idea of an elitist Deep State – erasing a “mistake” by the people – pervades current efforts to remove buffoonish President Trump, but the concept has deep historical roots dating from the Founding, writes Jada Thacker.

Does the sudden presence of an American Deep State – loosely defined as an unelected elite that manipulates the elected government to serve its own interests – pose a novel, even existential, threat to democracy?

Not exactly. The threat seems real enough, but it’s nothing new. Consider these facts: 230 years ago, an unelected group of elite Americans held a secretive meeting with an undisclosed agenda. Their purpose was not merely to manipulate lawful government in their own interests, but to abolish it altogether. In its place, they would install a radically undemocratic government – a “more perfect” government, they said – better suited to their investment portfolios.

History does not identify these conspirators as the Deep State. It calls them the Founders. The Founders did not consider themselves conspirators, but “republicans” – not in reference to any political party, but rather to their economic station in society. But their devotion to “republicanism” was transparently self-serving. A current college text, The American Journey: A History of the United States, explains though does not explicate “republican ideology”:

“Their main bulwark against tyranny was civil liberty, or maintaining the right of the people to participate in government. The people who did so, however, had to demonstrate virtue. To eighteenth century republicans, virtuous citizens were those who were focused not on their private interests but rather on what was good for the public as a whole.

“They were necessarily property holders, since only those individuals could exercise an independence of judgment impossible for those dependent upon employers, landlords, masters, or (in the case of women and children) husbands and fathers.” [Emphasis supplied]

Republicanism was a handy idea if you happened to be a master or a landlord, who were the only persons this ideology considered “virtuous” enough to vote or hold political office. Thus, “republicanism” – virtually indistinguishable from today’s “neoliberalism” – created the original Deep State in the image of the economic system it was designed to perpetuate....

The Founding Fathers were bourgeois (property-owning) liberals that held fast to the fundamental conservative principle that some are better than others and deserve to govern. The basis of classical liberalism is private ownership of property, which combined with conservatism results in a property requirement to hold office. The chief domestic adversary is "the rabble," now called "the little people."

How this was accomplished is not a comforting tale. But it cannot be related nor understood without an appreciation of the historical context in which it occurred....

The history behind the myth of American democracy.

Consortium News

Deep History of America’s Deep State

Jada Thacker, history teacher at Marine Military Academy in Harlingen, TX

Mark Ames — The FBI Has No Legal Charter But Lots of Kompromat

A sordid tale, indeed.

Naked Capitalism
Mark Ames: The FBI Has No Legal Charter But Lots of Kompromat

The Saker — The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)

If you didn't catch this as it was published serially, the Saker posts all four parts.

Foreword by the Saker: the four articles below, combined into one, are an exception to the normal rule which is that this blog doe not republish articles already published in the past. In this case, at the request of Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, I decided to make an exception due to the importance and interest of the topic: the origins of the Neocon movement. I am particularly grateful to Paul and Elizabeth who have agreed to my request to remove the original copyright restrictions on this material for publication on the Saker blog. The analysis they wrote offers a very valuable insight into the roots and history of the Neocon phenomenon.

The Vineyard of the Saker
The history of the Neocon takeover of the USA (a 4 part analysis)
The Saker

Dave Lefcourt — Why did it have to be this way?

Deve Lefcourt reviews some of US history and concludes:

We have a free press in name only. It's become an unofficial complicit enabler of the government, accepting the government's version of events so the people get from the MSM only what the government provides as its version of events. 

Only the alternative press, mostly internet sites like this one-named as one of the 200 providing "fake news"- can people get a broader version of events, many times questioning the "official" government version. 

If somehow alternative news sites are banned or as been suggested that Google or Facebook act as censors determining what is "fake news" then the Constitution will have been stood on its head, completely subverted and we will have become the dystopian world George Orwell wrote about in his novel, 1984. 

The US will have descended into absolute tyranny.

As to the question why did it have to be this way? Well we weren't vigilant. We took our freedoms for granted. We let it happen. The next question may very well be can the damage be corrected?

I suggest re-reading the Declaration of Independence. 

OpEdNews
Why did it have to be this way?

Dave Lefcourt

Donald P. Morgan and James Narron — The Final Crisis Chronicle: The Panic of 1907 and the Birth of the Fed

History of economics and finance.

The panic of 1907 was among the most severe we’ve covered in our series and also the most transformative, as it led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System. Also known as the “Knickerbocker Crisis,” the panic of 1907 shares features with the 2007-08 crisis, including “shadow banks” in the form high-flying, less-regulated trusts operating beyond the safety net of the time, and a pivotal “Lehman moment” when Knickerbocker Trust, the second-largest trust in the country, was allowed to fail after J.P. Morgan refused to save it.…

FRBNY — Liberty Street Economics
The Final Crisis Chronicle: The Panic of 1907 and the Birth of the Fed

Donald P. Morgan, assistant vice president in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group and James Narron, First Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia

Brad DeLong — A Note on the Jeffersonian Road Not Taken in American Economic History

Why Hamilton is important.

If Jefferson's view had prevailed, the US would likely have become a backwater.

Grasping Reality
A Note on the Jeffersonian Road Not Taken in American Economic History
Brad DeLong | Professor of Economics, UCAL Berkeley

Robert Parry — The Modern History of ‘Rigged’ US Elections

Robert Parry provides many example from US history.

And, of course, the candidate selection process is rigged in favor of moneyed interests.

Consortium News
The Modern History of ‘Rigged’ US Elections

Robert Parry

Dan La Botz — The Contemporary Crisis of the American Ideology

The old world order is shaking as the post-WWII Pax Americana approaches its end and the post-WWII era runs out of steam domestically and is seriously challenged politically.

It's a bit longish but extremely well done. Definitely worth a read on the weekend.

Defend Democracy
The Contemporary Crisis of the American Ideology
Dan La Botz

Is Donald Trump a Populist? Or is he just popular? — Isaac Chotiner Interviews Michael Kazin

Backgrounder.

Slate
Is Donald Trump a Populist? Or is he just popular?
Isaac Chotiner Interviews Michael Kazin