Motive Is Not Method

     Roger Kimball, one of my favorite writers in the Right, has produced an excellent article on the ongoing coup attempt against the legitimately elected president of the United States. He points out, at times overtly and at others obliquely, the major reasons so great a fraction of the federal “justice” system decided to attempt such a coup. To me, every one of them rings true. They speak of a degree of hatred – and not just for Trump, but for Us the People as well – that a decent person must find difficult to fathom.

     A brief snippet just for flavor, because you really should read it all:

     [I]t was impossible that Trump could actually win the election. Nancy Pelosi told us that we could “take it to the bank” that Donald Trump was not going to be president. Many other politicians and talking heads made fools of themselves emitting similar pseudo-certainties right up to the afternoon and early evening of election day.

     But win he did, and that changed everything. Now it was not a candidate who had to be stopped but a duly elected president of the United States who had to be kept from knowing exactly what lengths the government—soon to be his government—had gone to destroy him.

     Just in case you need a reminder about how utterly, uniformly dismissive of Trump’s electoral prospects the Obamunists and their media allies were:

     But he was elected by a comfortable Electoral College majority, and if fraudulent and illegal votes be discounted, probably by a popular majority as well. Ever since, the Left and the “deep state” have been straining to undo the 2016 elections:

     I revisit those clips when I get to feeling a bit low about federal politics. They make great picker-ups, especially with a glass of Harvey’s. But that’s not my principal subject for today. Kimball’s article nicely delineates why the coup attempt has occurred. What he doesn’t cover is what makes it possible.

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     The Constitution defines a federal government of three branches: executive, legislative, and judicial. Herein we find the fabled “separation of powers” so often deemed critical to the restraint of an American tyranny that the Founding Fathers feared. But those who dwell on this feature of the Constitution seldom ask a critical question:

If the Constitution defines a federal government of three branches,
Why do we have four?

     That fourth branch is the unelected and largely unappointed federal bureaucracy. They daily do many things the Founding Fathers never contemplated, almost all of them with the force of law. Indeed, any of the Founders, if brought back to life to review what’s become of the Republic they created, would leap back into his grave with a plaintive demand that we not disturb his repose again.

     Below the level at which the president nominates and Congress confirms Cabinet officers lies the “deep state:” millions of workers in the federal bureaucracies, largely anonymous to Us the People. These employees are protected from the consequences of their actions by a web of Civil Service laws that make it next to impossible to discipline them – and don’t imagine that they can be easily fired.

     The “deep state” includes the levels of the Justice Department that lie below the president’s appointment power. Though in theory those workers, like their appointed bosses, serve “at the pleasure of the president,” the occupant of the Oval Office has no more de facto power to discipline them than you or I.

     So when the election of Donald Trump became an indisputable reality, they who saw (and see) him as a threat to their power, their perquisites, and their transformative social-fascist agenda were able to put the “deep state” to work against the president-elect, secure in the knowledge that given the protections the Civil Service Act confers upon those workers, President Trump would be unable to do the smallest thing about it.

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     Many seek a reduction of the federal Leviathan. The ongoing partial government shutdown has been spoken of as a possible means to that end. That would be “a consummation devoutly to be wish’d.” Yet it would trigger world-shaking outcries from the media. Many of those who would protest a Trump Administration “RIF” of the bureaucracies, as the law provides should the shutdown last more than thirty days, would allege that Trump is exploiting the shutdown specifically to thin the ranks of his adversaries, thus reducing the probability that that fraudulent “Mueller investigations” will bring him down.

     The reduction of the federal workforce is an implicit Trump agenda item. It’s been so since he began his campaign for the presidency. But don’t expect the media to remind you about that. The “deep state” is more important to the media than most Americans are aware. It’s the source and substantiation for the overwhelmingly greater part of their “reporting.” Therefore it must be protected, lest “reporters” be forced to earn their pay once again.

     Consider in this light the caterwauling the Democrats have indulged over the 800,000 federal bureaucrats affected by the shutdown. Their laments over these “unfortunates,” many of whom are paid for doing little or nothing, completely omit the burden on ordinary Americans from the taxes required to support these "nonessential employees." For decades the largest identifiable cost-of-living item in an American family’s budget has been taxation. But don’t expect the media to mention that, either. (A Subaru commercial was once hauled off the air for daring to note that fact. You can’t find it on YouTube, either.)

     Thus, for the reasons Roger Kimball has noted, the “deep state” is energized in its crusade against President Trump. For the reasons noted here, its coup attempt cannot be put down without a massive reduction in the federal workforce, especially in the Justice Department. In particular, a complete purge of the FBI, all the way to the walls, will be required, as it is there that the anti-Trump forces are most deeply dug in and have concentrated their efforts. But then, as the rationale for the FBI began with the Eighteenth Amendment and ended with its repeal by the Twenty-First, that’s a stroke that’s long overdue in any event.