Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
Peter Stone at The New Republic writes—The Real Deep State Is Trump:
The specter of deep state conspiracies against President Trump has long been a key rhetorical and political weapon in the arsenal of the Trump White House. [...]
The deep state offers a convenient cover and alibi for all manner of executive branch power grabs and abuses founded on alternative facts and paranoid pretexts. In September, for example, the president tweeted unfounded allegations of deep state opposition at the Food and Drug Administration in order to raise the suspicion that entrenched political forces at the agency were blocking the speedy testing and approval of a Covid-19 vaccine “to delay the answer until after Nov. 3.” That same month, Health and Human Services communications flak Michael Caputo mounted a parallel attack in a now-infamous Facebook tantrum charging that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention harbored “deep state” elements bent on “sedition.” [...]
But amid all the bluster and invective directed at the vague and shape-shifting image of a deep state anti-Trump conspiracy nestled within federal bureaucracies, something very close to the opposite dynamic has taken hold: True-believing Trump administration loyalists have erected a deep state complex to shield and advance Trump’s agendas in the sanctums of Washington power and to boost his campaign prospects in 2020.
One unifying thread of the Trumpian theory of the deep state is an abiding disregard for expertise and evidence. This campaign against specialized knowledge has served various ends—from purging top Cabinet officials who don’t follow Trump’s dictums to quashing information Trump finds politically damaging, according to former senior intelligence hands and other officials.
Armed with this blunt article of faith, Trump has broadly expanded his own power, while consolidating his administration’s control of officially sanctioned disinformation. The result has downgraded the flow of information within the administration into a glorified sort of agitprop, former senior officials say—and this brings the Trump White House into clear alignment with elements of authoritarian regimes, where real deep states control information and bend laws. [...]
TOP COMMENTS • COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
QUOTATION
“The corporations that profit from permanent war need us to be afraid. Fear stops us from objecting to government spending on a bloated military. Fear means we will not ask unpleasant questions of those in power. Fear permits the government to operate in secret. Fear means we are willing to give up our rights and liberties for promises of security. The imposition of fear ensures that the corporations that wrecked the country cannot be challenged. Fear keeps us penned in like livestock.”
~~Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class (2010)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2002—Homeland security bill stalled:
House Republicans are threatening to stay in session in order to pressure Senate Democrats to compromise on the Homeland Security bill. Dems are insisting on union protection for the proposed agency's employees, while the GOP hates unions.
However, if no bill ever passes, that would not be a bad thing. All the new agency does is shuffle a multitude of far-flung government agencies into a brand new bureaucracy. And, those agencies most tasked with "homeland security" issues -- the FBI and intelligence agencies -- are not even included.
The whole Homeland Security agency idea had its genesis in the post-9-11 hysteria, and was driven hard by Democrats eager to show their "security" bona fides. While balking at first, the White House caved in to deflect attention from the whole "Bush knew" frenzy. In both cases, support for the agency hasn't been borne of actual security concerns, but political opportunism. This whole idea stinks.