Memories

     I can’t help myself about this one, Gentle Reader:

Mem'ries,
Light the corners of my mind...
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were

Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind...
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were

     I think that’s enough to establish the flavor clearly. But why? Well, because the redoubtable Glenn “InstaPundit” Reynolds has provided us with a memory over which to chortle nastily:

     It is the season of bed-wetting. For those who follow politics closely – we anxious few – every new poll, whether from the UK or the US, is arriving freighted with apocalyptic significance.

     It’s true that the stakes are high. In five months’ time, we could be standing among the smoking ruins of liberal democracy. The Trump coat of arms will be emblazoned on the dome of the Capitol. The British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, will be making tinny jokes about bulldogs as Vladimir Putin moves tanks to the Finnish border.

     On the other hand, the post-war order may be looking remarkably intact, Britain having voted emphatically to Remain, a liberal Atlanticist with unexciting ideas installed in the Oval Office, and the England football team having returned home from France after three matches of unbearable mediocrity.

     Read every word, Gentle Reader. Immerse yourself in the unsurpassable arrogance. Let the memories of politician, pundit, and celebrity certainty flood through you. You’ll find that you can’t help laughing hysterically.

     Back then – was it really only three and a half years ago? My word – the consensus admitted of no dissent: Donald Trump was not going to be president. The United Kingdom would not exit the European Union. All the “people in the know,” the folks whose ears decades of experience had tuned to the vibrations from the corridors of power, were certain. But why? Whence came their absolute faith in...themselves?

     The answer isn’t hard to find: from the start of the Wilson Administration to the end of the Obama regime, the grip on power of the political / bureaucratic / media elite (a.k.a. the Deep State) had never been seriously threatened. What’s harder to find is an explanation for why those selfsame, perfectly assured mouthpieces for The Way Things Are And Must Be haven’t yet grasped how wrong they were.

     Once upon a time, back when blogging was young, there was a lovely, intelligent lady named Megan McArdle, who went by the Internet moniker of Jane Galt. Miss McArdle promulgated an observation that came to be called Jane Galt’s Law:

The party in power is smug and arrogant.
The party out of power is insane.

     That might seem a trifle overwrought, but it comes closer to capturing the psychological state of the American elite – first before the 2016 presidential election, then afterward – than any more temperate assessment.

     “The party in power” in pre-November-2016 America, nominally the Democrats but what a deeper look reveals as the political / bureaucratic / media elite, was convinced that its grip on the electoral system would be sufficient to prevent upstart Donald Trump from gaining the White House. It had all manner of tools at its disposal. In combination, those tools must have appeared invincible. Their duly Anointed One, Hillary Rodham Clinton, would become the president as they had foreordained. A chastened Donald Trump would return to his real-estate empire, his fantasies of national leadership permanently dispelled. Business as usual would continue without a hitch.

     The elite did not believe its hegemony could be challenged.

     Then came the election. What’s this? Trump has won – and by a commanding Electoral College margin, at that? How can this be? It must be a mistake! The nation would not dare to defy Our will, We Who Are The Ultimate Power. It must be corrected at once!

     The inability to believe was transformed into a refusal to believe: a willful rejection of the reality that had whacked the elite across the chops.

     The elite went from smug and arrogant to insane with the flip of a voting machine lever. Innumerable YouTube video collages testify to their frothing at the mouth. Personages from cable-news opinion-mongers all the way to former presidents girded themselves for war against the Usurper. That war, while it has gone through several stages, has never come near to bringing them what they seek. As of yesterday, they appear to have expended the last of their ammunition.

     They were certain of victory.

     They’re still insane with rage. They’ll remain so until the levers of power are once again secure in their hands. At that point they’ll revert to smugness and arrogance. They’ll contrive further protections against ever again having those levers snatched out of their hands, of course. You’ve probably read about some of their notions: the “National Popular Vote Compact,” the proposal to divide the District of Columbia into 127 states, the enfranchising of convicted felons and illegal aliens, a new “Fairness Doctrine” that would cover cable news and the Internet, and so forth.

     No doubt the elite of the United Kingdom is planning something similar. It’s what elites do.

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     I started this screed in a jovial mood, something akin to Schadenfreude. But I intend to close on a monitory note. Should the elite of the United States manage to re-establish its hegemony, it will take whatever steps are necessary to prevent any future loss of power. Those folks believe that they can do perfectly well without “the consent of the governed,” and they mean to prove it.

     Keep your powder dry.

Mincing Words Are An Indicator

     Does anyone remember President Ronald Reagan’s televised statement about the Iran-Contra scandal? Reagan admirers emphasize that he said “I take full responsibility” – which he did say, though absent an impeachment and Senate trial that “responsibility” was weightless. But he said something else that made my ears prick up: something that suggested that certain criminals would never be prosecuted for their crimes:

“Mistakes were made.”

     Note the passive voice. Note the aversion to naming the makers of those “mistakes.” And consider that criminal acts share a distinguishing characteristic that separates them from mere “mistakes.”

     And now we have this:

     In December, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Justice released a report showing significant problems with the warrants that the FBI submitted to FISC in order to secretly wiretap Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. While the OIG's report concluded that the agency was justified in investigating whether Page was unduly influenced by his connections with the Russian government, it also determined that the FBI withheld important details from the FISC that might have influenced its decision to grant these warrants. These omissions were not in Page's favor, and ultimately the OIG found 17 different errors or omissions in the warrant requests, some of which were not corrected in subsequent applications.

     The FISC's judges were extremely unhappy to discover information had been withheld from them, and then-presiding Judge Rosemary M. Collyer (who has since retired) ordered FBI Director Christopher Wray to send a plan to the court by January 10 explaining how the FBI would avoid making similar mistakes in the future.

     Wray submitted his plan last week. It's a dense and technical response that is mostly inscrutable to anybody who does not have a history of involvement with the court's surveillance processes. Wray provides a list of 12 actions the FBI has taken or will take to make sure future applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants include all the information judges should've had when the FBI sought permission to surveil Page. Wray's plans revolve primarily around adding most steps to verify and re-verify information contained in the warrant requests to make sure that FBI agents and supervisors are not omitting information that might undermine or compromise their case for a surveillance warrant. Wray also says the agency will improve training by creating a case study program to teach FBI agents about historical precedents (I'm guessing the Page warrants will play a starring role).

     Note the first sentence of the second paragraph: The FISC's judges were extremely unhappy to discover information had been withheld from them. Another case of the anonymizing passive voice! The information didn’t withhold itself; it was withheld by some FBI agent. Moreover, inasmuch as the FBI’s illegal surveillance of Trump Campaign personnel and of the campaign itself constitute the largest purely political scandal in American history, to characterize its actions, which the actors must have known were against the law, as “mistakes” is a vile, contemptible act of word-mincing.

     The mincing of words, like “mistakes,” involves a deliberate decision by a conscious actor. It is not something that “just happens,” and the rest of us have to cope with it. The FBI is plainly desperate to retain some of the gloss of “Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity” that has been troweled onto it over the decades since Prohibition. Those who find the FBI useful will naturally be inclined to assist it in that undertaking....unless their consciences should impel them in another direction. But conscience, as I’ve noted at many other times, is a liability to one who seeks to serve the Omnipotent State.

     The Omnipotent State isn’t quite coterminous with the Deep State, but the two have an awful lot in common. The Deep State is well served by anonymizing devices and word-mincing “explanations” for its faceless minions’ “mistakes.” And while it’s still rather early in the morning, I cannot imagine a better rationale for tearing down the whole edifice – every Cabinet department other than State, Defense, and Justice, and all the subdepartments, agencies, and bureaus therein – than the adroit and all too frequent use of passive voice and mincing words to avert cold scrutiny of the “mistakes” those minions commit, for which they strain and squirm to avoid being called to account.

Who Are “They?”

     I was contemplating a phrase familiar to nearly every American this morning when it occurred to me that it might contain the answer to the question above. I’ll get to the specific phrase I have in mind a little later. For now, I want to focus on the question. I contend that most of us already know the answer but are afraid to confront it.

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     If you have any acquaintance with the organized aspects of the libertarian movement, you may recognize the name of the late John Hospers, professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and quondam presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party. Professor Hospers was an important member of the Phoenix Foundation, an organization that sought to promote new, freedom-oriented countries and enclaves. In 1980 the Phoenix Foundation took up the cause of the New Hebrides Autonomy Movement, a group that sought to establish an independent, freedom-oriented state on the island of Espiritu Santo. The movement failed, being put down militarily by the newborn socialist nation of Vanuatu, with assistance from the government of Papua New Guinea.

     In a passage about this aborted freedom movement, Professor Hospers wrote:

     The man who called the shots correctly on this situation long in advance was Robert Welch, the former head of the John Birch Society. About five years ago, when a group of us in the Phoenix Foundation were setting out to encourage “new country” projects dedicated to individual liberty, and we had already received requests by the independence leaders of the New Hebrides for financial and intellectual assistance in establishing a republic dedicated to this same cause, Welch said, “Don’t do it. They will not let it happen. The battle must first be fought and won here in America.” It is possible that by “they” he meant the international communist conspiracy, which would attempt to crush by force any independence movement in a small nation. But it is also possible that he meant that non-communist governments, with the aid of enterprises like Burns Philip, would make the world safe for Big Government, with the result that in the end the Soviet Union would establish a puppet government in the New Hebrides. The effects of the two would be much the same; only the techniques would be different. I didn’t think Welch was right at the time, but he was.

     [From “Differences of Theory and Strategy,” in Freedom and Virtue: The Conservative-Libertarian Debate]

     The Phoenix Foundation was involved with other attempts such as the New Hebrides Autonomy Movement, but all were suppressed. In the other cases, defeat came at the hands of small nations near to the projected free state...but the organization and funding of the suppressive efforts – Robert Welch’s “they” – was devilishly hard to trace.

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     Today, in a rather angry piece, Ace of Spades puts a red-hot poker to the Inspector General’s report on the Russian collusion hoax:

     Word is, Barr and Durham are privately "furious" at Obama-appointee Horowitz for pulling a Comey -- mistakes were made, no "intent," case closed.

     From the post below:

     The omissions -- the deliberate lies and actual fraud perpetrated upon the FISA court -- is "concerning," but none of the rats confessed to having been responsible for the lies, therefore there are no lies, or at least we're going to pretend them away...

     It’s a brief piece; please read the whole thing. Correlate with the IG report’s failure to find anyone criminally liable the clever tactics of the principal actors:

     Fusion Co-Founders Glenn Simpson and Jonathan Winer Refused to Talk to IG; James Comey and Former FBI Attorney James Baker Also Avoided Fully Testifying

     Specifically, Comey and Baker refused to get recertified for a classification clearance, thus blocking the IG's efforts to "refresh their recollection" with classified documents.

     "Refreshing a witness' recollection" by showing him documents is a common thing at trials and in investigations.

     But sometimes witnesses lie about events, and sometimes lie about having no recollection of certain critical details. James Comey, for example, has a steel-trap recall as to things he wants to claim to his media and government coconspirators, but has all sorts of convenient memory lapses about stuff that could get him into legal trouble.

     So the IG wanted to "refresh his recollection" about this convenient periods of Lost Time by showing him classified documents and notes that would explain exactly who he talked to and when he talked to them and what he said to them.

     Rather than agreeing to do this, Comey said, "Nah, I decline to get new clearance to see classified material," thus preventing the IG from "refreshing his recollection."

     Did Inspector General Michael Horowitz take this obstruction to any higher authority – perhaps to President Trump, who has the authority to command immediate declassification? Of course not! He rested content with the result he had, knowing that his Deep State brethren would defend him as having “done his job” – “his job” as defined by the priorities of the Deep State, that is.

---

     It is a well known, multiply confirmed fact that, as the late Jerry Pournelle has said, in any organization we can find persons whose top priority is the benefit of the organization itself. As time passes, the incentives involved steadily promote those persons to greater and greater authority, while those dedicated to the objectives the organization was supposed to pursue are gradually marginalized out the door. Pournelle called this his Iron Law of Bureaucracy. It has strong connections to Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics:

     The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.

     For who but an enemy would maneuver to eliminate from the organization those persons most dedicated to its supposed objectives?

     As regards governmental organizations, there are additional dynamics that worsen the two laws above. First, because of Civil Service protections, it’s exceedingly difficult to dispose of unsatisfactory employees once they’ve passed their probationary period. Second and closely tied to the first, Civil Service employment attracts persons whose foremost priority is security. Such persons will not “rock the boat” under circumstances that are other than personally threatening – and such circumstances are rare within government bureaucracies. Third and perhaps worst, government attracts above all persons who desire power over others. Their power-lust gives them a winning drive for advancement. It also fuels their willingness to defend their gains of power and prestige by any means expedient, fair or foul.

     A superficial view of such things impels us to the conclusion that insiders such as Horowitz and Comey are “they,” or at least are closely connected to them. But is it so?

---

     With occasional exceptions, talk about the Deep State tends to avoid naming names. There are names in the above, to be sure, but it’s a lead pipe cinch that neither Horowitz nor Comey nor Baker could have done as described without the connivance, assistance, and approval of many others. Those others are unnamed. But could we name them if we should choose to do so? More urgent yet: What would naming them oblige us to do?

     The question recalls a passage from John Ross’s Unintended Consequences:

     “You are expecting your volunteers to go out and kill people who are just like them. You aren’t saying ‘See that guy over there by the barbed wire? The one wearing a strange uniform, talking in a language you don’t understand, and laughing while his German Shepherd tears the baby out of that naked woman’s belly? Go blast him.’
     “That would be easy. That would be like sitting in your living room in Bozeman, Montana, seeing some Italian U.N. troops in blue berets smash in the door across the street. Take about three seconds to decide what to do there. Boom! Bunch of dead Italians. Ninety-four Crime Bill, where the President had that provision in it to hire a bunch of Hong Kong Municipal Police ‘cause they’d be good at seizing guns, I had to laugh. Talk about hazardous duty, Christ! You send a bunch of Chinese police to go seize guns from folks in Kentucky, undertakers’ll be working three shifts.
     “But what you’re telling people, Ray, is ‘See that guy over there, waiting for the bank’s loan officer ‘cause his wife wants to remodel the bathroom? The one wearing a suit a little more wrinkled than yours? The guy who just dropped off his kids at Little League and then ate lunch with his wife at Shoney’s? Yeah, that’s the one. He’s an ATF field agent. Last week he inspected the inventory of a local gun store. Found a single-shot .22 with a 16.5 inch barrel. Looked at it close, saw it was a smoothbore, made for .22 shot loads, so he called his supervisor. Sixteen inches is the limit for rifles, but under 18 inches for smoothbores without the $200 registration is illegal possession of a sawed-off shotgun. Store owner and his employees are now in jail, trying to raise a $250,000 bond, charged with violating the National Firearms Act, conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws, and violating RICO. The entire contents of the store have been seized under the new forfeiture laws. The agent’s about to go to the bank’s parking garage now. Pop him in the back of the head with a .22 when he fiddles with his car keys, then walk away.’
     “Ray, no one is going to do that. History proves it. You are not going to get intelligent, thoughtful, level-headed leaders to declare violent war on people that live in their neighborhood and whose kids go to their kids’ school.”

     My point “should” be “obvious:”

The Deep State Is Deep.

     It includes millions of people, many of whom are a lot like that guy “wearing a suit a little more wrinkled than yours.” And what, in all good conscience, can good people, no matter how tired unto death they are of being commanded do this and forbidden to do that, do about them? Hold a cyanide-laden neighborhood barbecue?

     Is it possible that we prefer abstract notions about conspirators maneuvering to oppress and subjugate us because in truth, we know that our oppressors live among us, that in many ways they are us, and that we are unwilling to confront them?

     Think about it. As for the phrase I mentioned at the outset, you’ll find it in the Declaration of Independence: “the consent of the governed.” Think about that one, too.

A Frightening Prediction From A Sober, Sensible Man

     You don’t want this to happen. I don’t want this to happen. And I’m sure that if the flunkies of the Deep State and their elected camouflageurs were quizzed, they’d unanimously say that they don’t want it to happen. But that third group doesn’t believe it’s possible:

Rick Wiles: 'There Is Going to be Violence in America' if Trump is Removed From Office from Right Wing Watch on Vimeo.

     Note that this video was posted by “Right Wing Watch,” a left-wing group whose members seem to think a violent counter-revolution is something we in the Right actually want. Make no mistake, Gentle Reader: a counter-revolution against the authoritarian scum who think us a conquered and subjugated people is what it would be. They could not be more wrong in either of their suppositions...but what anyone believes beforehand will be irrelevant should it come to pass.

     The Left has no sense of the depth and breadth of the anger decent Americans have accumulated as we’ve been “progressively” reduced to indentured servitude under their collective heel. Yea, even though that anger was what elected Donald Trump in the first place. But if the alternatives are the unjustified nullification of a free and open election or an armed uprising aimed at cleaning out the Deep State and the political Establishment with high-velocity lead, Americans – the best armed and most resolute people who have ever existed – will not accept subjugation.

     Applause to Brock Townsend for the video.

Mindsets

     The title word has long intrigued me. It suggests a condition of mind that possesses permanence beyond the reach of evidence or logic. That’s not something evolutionary mechanisms would favor, unless it was a specific attachment to the proposition that reality is real, or something equally incontrovertible.

     I’ve often wondered how to distinguish a conviction – i.e., a firmly held belief in some moral-ethical principle or causal mechanism – from a mindset or a component thereof. Do other sorts of opinions participate in mindset or are they too mutable for that? It’s not an easy inquiry, but then, I don’t do easy.

     When the enveloping subject is politics and public policy, mindsets rise to a level of importance that’s barely below that of the laws of physics. Yet their nature remains elusive – and one cannot easily cope with an adversary whose nature eludes one’s understanding.

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     The subject is on my mind because of this essay by Ned Ryun about the “impeachment” foofaurauw. The passage that struck me most tellingly:

     That’s what the last several years have been all about: a collision of worldview and value sets. The breathless rumors of Russian collusion, Kavanaugh gang rapes, none of it was really ever about THAT. It was all about how we deplorables view the world, a difference of policy, and about how America is to be governed—what we do as a country both domestically and on the international stage. They are quite sure not just that we are wrong but that somehow our opinions are illegitimate. Those people lost an election and they couldn’t stand it that an unwashed outsider walked into their holy of holies and called them fools, much to the delight of the Americans who elected him. [Emphasis added by FWP.]

     All true beyond the possibility of refutation. By their behavior shall we know them – and their power-at-any-cost behavior testifies too loudly to be overmatched by their claims that they’re really just protecting “the Constitution” or “the rule of law.” Moreover, while they might be evil. they’re not stupid. They must be aware that they’re not fooling us. If they can’t fool us, what hope have they of prevailing against us?

     My thesis is that the “Deep State mindset” is the reason behind it all. As I wrote only recently, the establishmentarian mindset is offended by the rise of Donald Trump and his unconscionable habit of keeping his campaign promises:

     “This is the way things are done around here,” a superficially conservative attitude, has been the reflexive defense of establishments of all kinds. It couples nicely with the notion that only those who have “been around” should be trusted with the reins. They who prattle about “qualifications,” in speaking of a political candidate, are quietly invoking that idea. By triumphing over “the most qualified candidate in history,” Donald Trump smashed that precept to flinders. But the most interesting aspect of the matter was that our political establishment sensed the threat from “unqualified outsider” Trump in mid-2015, well before his popular support could materialize.

     The Deep State / establishmentarian mindset can be broken down into a small number of mutually-supporting precepts:

• Only power confers legitimacy.
• We (the Deep State) are the power.
• “Outsiders” who attain high office are insurgents who must be crushed.
• Since we are inherently legitimate, whatever we do to crush such insurgents is legitimate.

     Orwell was brilliantly concise about it: “The aim of the High is to remain where they are.” The determination of the Deep State to “remain where they are,” in unchallengeable power over the United States and everyone in it, is what lies beneath all its machinations. It is the foundation for the mindset.

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     The pre-Trump Republican Party was loosely aligned with the Deep State. It expressed that alignment by never seriously rocking the boat. The occasional bill to reduce marginal tax rates? All right. The Deep State would permit that as not materially affecting its power or perquisites. But actual reductions in federal spending, a drawing-down in any of the alphabet agencies, the repeal of major regulation-enabling laws, or significant changes to international arrangements would not pass muster...and the GOP’s senior figures knew it. The Reagan Rebellion drew close to some of those boundaries but never stepped across them. The Trump Administration has refused to accept them at all, a major affront to “the way things are done around here.”

     The chaos that currently afflicts the Republican Party arises from the cleavage between those who have embraced the Trump agenda and those who see it as a threat to their positions. What doth it profit a Republican politician for Americans to regain their freedom while he loses his earmarks? In this too we see the operation of an establishmentarian mindset. “The way things are done around here” required Republican passivity before the Democrats’ initiatives. The exemplar for that posture was former Senator Robert Dole of Kansas, whom Newt Gingrich called the “tax collector for the welfare state.” It was often joked that were the Democrats to propose beheading all white males, Dole would counter with an offer that it be phased in over a three year period. His go-along-to-get-along attitude characterized Republican Congressional operations for many decades. His spiritual brethren still occupy many seats in both houses of Congress.

     To the extent that any significant portion of the GOP realigns itself with Trump and the movement that has elevated him, it will become the Deep State’s enemy. The mindset discussed above allows us to predict the Deep State’s reaction: Kill it before it spreads. The assaults on Trump’s judicial nominees were concrete instances of that reaction. We’ll see other manifestations as the campaign season matures.

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     The Deep State mindset appears unalterable. It’s consistent with the personal incentives and priorities of the millions of persons involved. It also suggests that it cannot be bargained with, and that no truce with it is possible. Which leads us to Ned Ryun’s assessment:

     So if you’re wondering how all of this stops, how we return to normal, I will tell you what a friend told me: “There is no normal. There is only Clausewitz.” There is only absolute and total political war on this axis we face until we beat them into an unconditional surrender. The Left wants it that way because they think they can win. They want no holds barred total political war. Since we can’t escape it, I say we give it to them measure for measure.

     If so, and it does appear that way, let the war begin now – and do not spare the “I’m with you, but” types who call themselves Republicans or conservatives but are less interested in freedom, Constitutionally limited government, and American national sovereignty than in preserving “the way things are done around here.”

Jealous Masters

     Masters never surrender power willingly. Ours won’t be an exception.

     The syndrome appears to have taken hold around 1913, which was a bad year for several reasons. It advanced “progressively,” tightening its hold over the major instruments of education, communication, and government until, in 1928, a man beloved for his relief efforts in Europe after World War I used them as a launching pad into the presidency...a post for which he was not even remotely equipped.

     Herbert Hoover, mistakenly celebrated by far too many today as a “conservative,” was in point of fact a progressive. Theodore Roosevelt had become the prototype for the progressive Republican while in the White House: one who believes that the weight of government can be constructively brought to bear on “problems” of any variety or magnitude. Hoover was cast from that mold, as his many “private-public partnership” initiatives indicate.

     The media megaphones continued to blare progressive bilge throughout the Thirties, the Nightmare Decade. America’s involvement in World War II caused them to switch foci, but the thrust remained the same: Trust the State. We know what we’re doing.

     In contrast with Hoover, FDR’s progressivism didn’t wait for a “problem” to emerge before springing into action. Rather, he institutionalized the processes that Hoover had invoked case-by-case, creating bureaucracy after bureaucracy with standing powers and a mandate to interfere in the American economy. Thus, the next Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, arrived to confront a “permanent government” firmly aligned with progressive thinking. That fourth branch of government was the de facto master of all American enterprise, capable of making or breaking any commercial concern it might choose for attention. So far, the three Constitutional branches have been incapable of reining it in.

     Longevity in power has produced in the Deep State the attitude characteristic of masters: the conviction that they alone are entitled to rule, and that no one may legitimately stand against them. That’s how the Deep State came to be the implacable enemy we face today.

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     [United States Senator from Oklahoma David L.] Boren, formerly a state legislator and governor, went to Washington expecting to make some changes. “What impressed me most is the great power of the bureaucracy compared to that of elected officials. All the talk about growing control by the bureaucracy is not exaggerated. The shift in power is very real.... There is almost a contempt for elected officials.”...

     Senator Boren found, to his surprise, that a Senator has great difficulty even getting phone calls returned by the “permanent” employees, much less getting responsive answers to his questions.

     The voters can’t “throw the rascals out” anymore, because the main rascals are not elected but appointed....

     Regulatory bureaucrats have extra power because they can outlast the elected officials. “Often,” Boren explains, “I’ve said to a bureaucrat, ‘You know this is not the president’s policy.’

     ’True, Senator, but we were here before he came, and we’ll be here after he leaves. We’re not in sympathy with his policy. We’ll study the matter until he leaves.’”

     [From Armington and Ellis, MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense.]

     It might seem that the Deep State, by its nature, would be apolitical, concerned solely with its own power and perquisites. However, the progressive ideology, inculcated in the bureaucracies from their inception by the presidents who oversaw their creation, causes the Deep State to be aligned with the Democrat Party. As we know, that ideology promotes unopposable power in the State. This is a condition the Democrats approve. They hope to use it to maintain their party’s grip on high office.

     Today, Karin McQuillan has a few thoughts on the subject:

     America cannot continue as a republic without the acceptance that one party routinely will be turned out of office. Democrats no longer accept that bedrock principle of American liberty. They see themselves as the only party entitled to govern. “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and the Russian collusion frame-up are two faces of the same coin: Democrats now reject the orderly succession of power through duly constituted elections.

     Please read the whole thing. It’s an excellent explanation of why the Democrats hope it will return them to power – indeed, why no other available approach is more likely to do the job.

     The conviction underlying the Democrats’ promotion of Trump Derangement is what interests me most. They believe that they and only they are entitled to rule, and so are unwilling to tolerate any opposing force. That Trump, a political outsider, should have unseated them was bad enough. That he’s overturning all political precedent by keeping his campaign promises is salt in the wound. That by doing so he’s given the lie to all their propaganda about “globalism,” “transnationalism,” “the era of limits,” and “the new normal” might prove fatal to them.

     The masters of the Deep State see the current situation as a win-or-die dilemma. They believe their survival requires that Trump be brought down, in as garish and dramatic a fashion as possible – and they could well be right.

     The Democrats’ luminaries are wholly in accord with this aim. They see Trump as their mortal enemy. Simply by doing what he’s proposed to do, he could doom them to an obscurity like unto that of the Whigs. So they’ll keep the TDS carnival rotating until they’ve all been unseated. Unfortunately, given the power of incumbency, especially in states such as California, Illinois, and New York, that could take three decades or more.

     The thing for conservatives to beware is the Democrats’ accumulation of para-partisan allies, especially in Big Tech. This is already a subject for serious concern. The World Wide Web was critical to Trump’s 2016 victory. If his supporters are silenced it could badly reduce his chances to gain a second term. Worse yet, it could provide an avenue for the Quisling Republicans of the political Establishment, who’ve never approved of Trump and have opposed him both explicitly and implicitly, to regain the mastery of the GOP.

     It’s a time for vigilance, and for action.

The Mueller Report

     This document, only just released to the Attorney-General, is essentially the only item in the national news just now. It will speak for itself soon enough. However, the early reactions from those who believe the investigation has let them down – i.e.., those on the far Left who’ve been hoping it would provide a pretext for removing President Trump from office – suggest that we who support the president will be cheered by its emptiness. In celebration thereof, allow me to present a couple of favorite compilations:

     Enjoy a little Schadenfreude:

     PS: Would anyone care to suggest a good video-editing program? I have a need.

Thoughts On The Deep State

     Quoth Victor Davis Hanson:

     All great empires of the past created deep states....The so-called deep state is often weaponized to reflect current orthodoxies.

     Well, yes. The political dynamic dictates that that will occur according to a Hayekian process:

1. A government forms over a previously ungoverned region.
2. Persons who want to render “public service” contend with persons avid for power over the control of the government.
3. Those whose highest priority is power get control of the government. (They want it more; therefore they’ll eventually get it.)
4. The masters of the government implement measures to perpetuate their tenure in power. One of the most successful and enduring measures, historically, has been a large, embedded bureaucracy: a “permanent government.”
5. Because the bureaucracy and the power-lusters have mutually supporting agendas, they work together, such that over time it becomes ever more difficult to displace either group.
6. The ultimate consequences are totalitarianism, decay, and collapse back into anarchism.

     The most important of all “current orthodoxies” is quite predictable:

The State is always right.
The needs of the State come first.
The State, no one else, shall define its needs.
Do not oppose the State.

     It has always been this way. It always will be.

---

     The alignment of the Deep State with contemporary “progressivism” is equally predictable. “Progressivism,” my favorite Orwellian term in our time, makes a marvelous rationale for ever-widening, ever-increasing government power. The only thing one could add to it is a state of total warfare against an indefeasible enemy. (While we’ve had a couple of candidates for that position over the century behind us, they’ve let the Deep State down by collapsing of their own weight.)

     Any notion, however absurd, that can be used to rationalize increased government intrusion into private affairs will serve the Deep State. Government’s defining privilege and characteristic is the use of coercion – force, fraud, and intimidation – to achieve its aims. To the Deep State, the method is more important than the putative mission. The case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, which appears to have fizzled, is an excellent example:

     First they were targeted by gay activists who insisted the shop bake them a gay wedding cake, despite many other bakeries in the immediate area willing to do so without the need for state compulsion.

     After the Supreme Court ended that persecution, a trans activist insisted that this same shop-owner bake xer a cake celebrating transexualism.

     And Colorado rushed to put them through more years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of legal persecution.

     Colorado has finally given up -- and some call this "victory."

     Six years. Six years.

     Any more victories like this, and we're done for. Who would actually exercise one's rights and refuse to bake a cake, given that the state, with its unlimited resources, will sue you for six years for daring to assert your rights?

     Anyone who's been subject to a malicious prosecution like this understands that the process is the punishment.

     “Gay rights?” “Transsexualism?” One would not normally associate these “causes” with the bureaucracy’s gray flannel suits. One must look deeper. One must ask the question the ruling elite and the Deep State ask: “Can I use this to acquire more and wider powers?”

     Only that one answer is sought. Nothing else matters.

---

     The above has always struck me as “obvious.” Yet terrifyingly few grasp it, even in outline.

     Of course, to speak of the Deep State as if it were a single mind is to anthropomorphize a “hive entity.” Some – a paltry few, mostly limited to the “over the counter” government – of its components are conscious of their aims as I’ve delineated them. Most are actuated by the sort of communication that takes place among colony ants and worker bees: the vibrations and pheromones that send signals and induce conformity among the relatively mindless members of the hive. That’s irrelevant to the function of the Deep State. What matters is that it provide the ruling elite with an instrument of coercion that is essentially anonymous and de facto unopposable.

     The question for Americans of the Twenty-First Century is whether, once a Deep State has formed, it can be expunged by any means short of violent revolution. So far no method has emerged, which bodes ill for the remnants of freedom in these United States of America.

Ultra-Quickies: I Loves Me A Good Solid Irony

     Don’t expect much from me this weekend, as I’ll be away from Cyclops most of the time and guzzling huge volumes of delightful New York wines and busy with other matters of interest. However, I’ll ring in now and then to cite something of particular interest, such as this conjecture:

     Page and Strzok have become notorious for the anti-Trump texts they sent to one another. The IG report cited these texts as evidence that Strzok's decisions may not have been free of bias.

     One decision in particular stood out. Strzok seems to have been instrumental in delaying a key lead in the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emails. In September 2016, the FBI discovered Clinton emails on the laptop of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.). Rather than pursuing this lead in the Clinton investigation, the FBI — and Strzok specifically — sat on it....

     On October 28 — a mere eleven days before the presidential election — Comey sent his infamous letter to Congress announcing the discovery of Clinton emails on the Weiner laptop. The FBI obtained a search warrant to review the emails two days later, on October 30. Finally, on November 6, two days before the election, Comey sent a final letter to Congress stating that the review of the emails on the laptop had not changed the FBI's conclusions on Clinton.

     The author of the article thinks that alone might have tipped the election to Donald Trump. Please read it all. Then proceed to this heaping helping of sarcasm from Sharyl Attkisson. You’ll be both appalled and amused.

“Deep State” Part 2: Further Thoughts

     Bearing always in mind that headline writers instinctively go for the most lurid imaginable phrasings, nevertheless this article, in which media figures react to the Monmouth University poll I cited here is extremely revealing:

     “The attacks against the so-called deep state … by the president and some Republicans actually might be taking hold,” said co-host Mika Brzezinski. “More Americans now believe that national policy is being manipulated or directed by a deep state. That according to the newest Monmouth university poll. Six in ten Americans believe that un-elected or appointed government officials have too much influence in determining federal policy. Twenty-six percent say the right balance of power exists between elected and un-elected officials.”

     Playing the embedded video gives a better sense of Brzezinski’s disdain for the concept of a “deep state” and for Americans’ affirmation that it exists and has unprecedented power. But it appears that media denigrations and dismissals are having ever less of an effect upon Americans’ convictions and opinions.

     About BLEEP!ing time, ain’t it?

---

     An observation made in the middle of a hyper-fanciful novel of conspiracies, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy, proves to have much real-world impact:

     Communication is only possible between equals. – Hagbard Celine’s “SNAFU Principle”

     The examples usually given in support of this pithy observation use differences in authority for the demonstration. But the Deep State works on a different, although similar, basis: differences in vulnerability.

     As I mentioned in the previous article, government employees enjoy important privileges under current laws and circumstances:

1. Federal employees are protected from termination by Civil Service law.
2. Voluntary resignations by federal employees are vanishingly few in number.
3. Many layers of supervisors stand between the bureaucrat and the elected government.
4. A supervisor-bureaucrat who fails to argue consistently for the expansion of his pyramid of subordinates (and, of course, the funding for it) will not survive. This is well known to career bureaucrats.
5. As the funding for the bureaucracy is extracted by force from millions of persons who have no say in the matter, the top-level bureaucrat – e.g., a Cabinet Secretary – will have no qualms about championing the expansive desires of his subordinates. (Remember that by Item 4 above, Cabinet Secretaries also have an interest in expanding their departments and funding.)

     The combination of those factors renders the Civil Service bureaucrat far less vulnerable than his appointed and elected superiors. He can get away with virtually anything, all the way from goldbricking up to outright defiance of those superiors. There have been numerous examples of this in the recent past. And bear always in mind that no one enters government at any level without an agenda.

     This startling difference in vulnerability is the foundation of bureaucratic intransigence. Short of an open felony, the employee-bureaucrat can do whatever he pleases. As many of them are in government service out of a desire to wield power, that’s what they do. Congressional and Constitutional constraints are, in practice, no constraints at all.

     The situation is made worse by what is sometimes called the vertical stroke: the practice of assigning responsibility to (and inflicting penalties on) appointees for the nonfeasances, misfeasances, and malfeasances of Civil Service employees. Due to the near-perfect invulnerability of the bureaucrat under Civil Service law, a Cabinet secretary or deputy secretary has no effective authority over him. As Robert A. Heinlein has told us, a responsibility without the authority to enforce it is impossible to discharge.

     The SNAFU Principle guarantees disaster from such a configuration.

---

     An additional factor, wound deeply into our contemporary politics, must be mentioned at this time: the Deep State functions indirectly as an ally to the elected legislator. The relevant phenomenon is legislators’ practice of “constituent service.”

     With the intransigent, immobile, and faceless bureaucracy to rail against, any ersatz “reformer” can score campaign points by promising to “cut the red tape.” Voters want exactly that, though given how many times the taming of the bureaucracy has been promised us, we’ve gradually been catching on that it’s no sincere part of the “reformer’s” intentions. However, once the miscreant has been elected to Congress, those in his district will naturally see him as a weapon against whatever bureaucratic action has harmed them – and they will go to him seeking relief. To the extent that the legislator provides such relief on request, he will benefit come election time from his provision of “constituent service.”

     Note that “constituent service” is made not merely necessary but possible by the bureaucracy. Few men canny enough to attain high office would fail to conclude that the bureaucracy is an asset to their ambitions, rather than something they should seek to dismantle or reduce.

---

     In discussing the ObamaCare disaster and the prospects for undoing it, Glenn Reynolds has suggested that “Irish democracy” might be the most effective approach to neutralizing that pernicious enactment:

     Now, as February draws near, things don't look much better. Far fewer than half the number needed by March 31 have signed up. And, as it turns out, most of the people signing up for Obamacare aren't the uninsured for whom it was supposedly enacted, but people who were previously insured (many of whom lost their previous insurancebecause of Obamacare's new requirements). "At most," writes Bloomberg's Megan McArdle, "they've signed up 15% of the uninsured that they were expecting to enroll. ... Where are the uninsured? Did hardly any of them want coverage beginning Jan. 1?" It looks that way.

     In fact, there seem to be more uninsured than there were before Obama took office, leaving Jonah Goldberg to ask, "So what was the point of Obamacare again?"

     If the program fails, it won't be because Republicans stopped it, despite all the House votes and defunding efforts. It will be because millions of Americans' passive resistance brought it to its knees. Irish Democracy, indeed.

     Meanwhile, on the marijuana front, the people of states like Colorado are engaging in an odd, 21st century variety of nullification. Unlike the 19th century John Calhoun version, state laws legalizing marijuana don't purport to neutralize the still-extant federal laws banning cannabis. But the state, and millions of Coloradans, are simply ignoring the federal law and, in essence, daring the feds to do something about it.

     “You gonna make me?” if pronounced by a sufficient number of Americans, might be the only effective way of negating the Deep State’s power, regardless of the issue. That wouldn’t clean out the bureaucracies in a single stroke, of course. However it would materially affect the incentives that draw the would-be power-wielder into government employment in the first place. That would be a net gain from the limited-government perspective.

     I might return to this subject yet again. Stay tuned.

“Deep State”

     I keep citing this passage, yet it seems that few are paying attention:

[United States Senator from Oklahoma David L.] Boren, formerly a state legislator and governor, went to Washington expecting to make some changes. “What impressed me most is the great power of the bureaucracy compared to that of elected officials. All the talk about growing control by the bureaucracy is not exaggerated. The shift in power is very real.... There is almost a contempt for elected officials.”...

Senator Boren found, to his surprise, that a Senator has great difficulty even getting phone calls returned by the “permanent” employees, much less getting responsive answers to his questions.

The voters can’t “throw the rascals out” anymore, because the main rascals are not elected but appointed....

Regulatory bureaucrats have extra power because they can outlast the elected officials. “Often,” Boren explains, “I’ve said to a bureaucrat, ‘You know this is not the president’s policy.’

’True, Senator, but we were here before he came, and we’ll be here after he leaves. We’re not in sympathy with his policy. We’ll study the matter until he leaves.’”

[From Armington and Ellis, MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense.]

     When Monmouth University polled private citizens about the “deep state,” only a minority (37%) were both familiar with the term and professed to be against the phenomenon it labels. Yet the matter is not so simple:

     Few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term “Deep State;” another 24% are somewhat familiar, while 63% say they are not familiar with this term. However, when the term is described as a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy, nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not). Belief in the probable existence of a Deep State comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group, although Republicans (31%) and independents (33%) are somewhat more likely than Democrats (19%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists....

     The Monmouth University Poll was sponsored and conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute from March 2 to 5, 2018 with a national random sample of 803 adults age 18 and older, in English. This includes 400 contacted by a live interviewer on a landline telephone and 403 contacted by a live interviewer on a cell phone. Telephone numbers were selected through random digit dialing and landline respondents were selected with a modified Troldahl-Carter youngest adult household screen. Monmouth is responsible for all aspects of the survey design, data weighting and analysis. Final sample is weighted for region, age, education, gender and race based on US Census information. Data collection support provided by Braun Research (field) and SSI (RDD sample). For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling has a maximum margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points (unadjusted for sample design).

     To me, the survey’s sampling method appears sound, and its questions well designed to minimize surveyor influence on the answers. But don’t take my word for it. Read the linked article and draw your own conclusions.

     If there is a body of persons who, individually or in aggregate, exercise more power than the elected officials of the federal government, we would be justified in pointing to them and saying “There is the true federal government. There is the ‘deep state.’” If we take Senator Boren’s comment on his dealings with the federal bureaucracy as sincere and at face value, and if the 75% of respondents to the Monmouth poll who believe there is such a body are correct in their surmise, we have a problem that goes well beyond anything we could correct by electoral means. But there’s that word if again. Is it so?

     Certainly, conditions are ripe for the emergence of such a body:

1. Federal employees are protected from termination by Civil Service law.
2. Voluntary resignations by federal employees are vanishingly few in number.
3. Many layers of supervisors stand between the bureaucrat and the elected government.
4. A supervisor-bureaucrat who fails to argue consistently for the expansion of his pyramid of subordinates (and, of course, the funding for it) will not survive. This is well known to career bureaucrats.
5. As the funding for the bureaucracy is extracted by force from millions of persons who have no say in the matter, the top-level bureaucrat – e.g., a Cabinet Secretary – will have no qualms about championing the expansive desires of his subordinates. (Remember that by Item 4 above, Cabinet Secretaries also have an interest in expanding their departments and funding.)

     Those are perfect enabling conditions for a “deep state.” They’ve existed for decades. Thus those who:

• Desire authority without responsibility;
• Seek to wield it with their supervisors’ approval;
• Are principally concerned with job security and retirement benefits;

     ...have had a perfect place to gather for at least eighty-five years. Is it plausible that persons of that orientation would not gather under such an umbrella? Isn’t it more likely that such persons would aim for those jobs and pursue them with impassioned ardor? And isn’t it likely, as is the case in union shops nationwide, that when such persons encounter a “maverick” – i.e., one whose schedule of priorities differs greatly from theirs – that they’d do their best to flush him out of their habitat?

     Cyril Northcote Parkinson wasn’t merely right; he was a visionary, a genius.

     Where shall we seek a solution?

Quickies: Politics, Personal Fortunes, And The Deep State

     It’s been the pattern since LBJ at least that a man can enter federal office living paycheck to paycheck and a few years later he’ll be wealthy. Recent cases are legion. They’re responsible for a large fraction of the cynicism Americans feel about government, politics, and the political class.

     Clearly, the old saw that “Caesar’s wife must be above even the hint of scandal” is no longer applied to federal politicians or their kin. The FBI, which is the principal anti-corruption arm of the Justice Department, has not investigated the huge fortunes made by politicians in quite some time...but that might be changing:

• Kushner Under Scrutiny By FBI as Part of Russia Investigation
• FBI Is Reportedly Investigating Ivanka Trump’s Business Deal in Vancouver

     The Deep State has many arrows in its quiver, but among those proven most effective, attacking a target’s relatives is its favorite. That’s how it got Michael Milken to confess to six felonies he never committed, in the process accepting ten years’ imprisonment, a $650 million fine, and barring him from the equities market for life. Jared and Ivanka being the most visible and popular of the Trump progeny, the Deep State might regard them as excellent targets of opportunity, “low hanging fruit.”

     The Trump Organization is now being operated by Trump’s children and their spouses. Does it strike anyone as unlikely that they would continue to wheel and deal, now that Donald Senior is occupied with other duties? Does it strike anyone as somehow seedy that successful fashion mogul Ivanka Trump should continue to extend her lines and their popularity?

     Might it be possible to raise a row about this? Given that no FBI agent has even peeked at Nancy Pelosi’s huge fortune, or the wealth amassed by Harry Reid? Or would that be entirely too unseemly for the “conservative media” and its NeverTrumper barons and baronets?

Expect a WICKED Last-Ditch Attack...

...just before the Wall crumbles.

We MAY be on the verge of the uncovering of the Deep State. The link is to a LONG post, but worth it.