Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

You're right, the "deep state" is used in conspiracy mode, but it isn't actually that.

The “deep state” is real. But it’s not what Trump thinks it is.

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And Trump’s deep state obsession isn’t a new thing. He’s been pumping up this theory since special counsel Robert Mueller launched the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. It has always been a diversion, whether it was coming from Trump or Fox News.

But here’s the thing: The deep state isn’t exactly a phantasm. There are parts of the US government that wield real power outside the conventional checks and balances of the system. It’s not a conspiracy against Trump, but the term does refer to something that exists.

David Rohde is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of In Deep: The FBI, the CIA, and the Truth About America’s “Deep State .. https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Truth-about-Americas-State/dp/1324003545?ots=1&ascsubtag=[]vx[p]20983205[t]w[r]google.com[d]D .” It’s a fair-minded look at the deep state and the various conspiracy theories surrounding it. The term “deep state,” Rohde argues, has become a way for Trump and his supporters to deflect criticism — but it’s also a real idea that can help us think through some legitimate issues, namely how we consider the limits of presidential power and the nature of government accountability.

I spoke to Rohde by phone about how the “deep state” has evolved into a sprawling conspiracy theory and if he thinks Trump’s complaints about it are at all justified. Ultimately, Rohde believes the “deep state” is both a real thing and a toxic distraction.

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What’s the origin of this term? When did it take on the meaning it has now?

David Rohde

For decades, the term “deep state” was applied to Turkey .. https://daily.jstor.org/the-unacknowledged-origins-of-the-deep-state/ . It was a reference to the Turkish military and their efforts to slow the spread of democracy there. Some applied it to Egypt and the Egyptian military to describe the same thing. The first time I found that the term deep state was applied to the US government was a book written in 2007 .. https://www.amazon.com/Road-11-Wealth-Empire-America/dp/0520258711?ots=1&ascsubtag=[]vx[p]20983205[t]w[r]google.com[d]D .. by a University of California Berkeley professor named Peter Dale Scott.

I interviewed Scott for my book, and he used the term “deep state” to describe what liberals typically fear, which is the military-industrial complex. Scott wrote about a sense that the military and defense contractors had driven the country repeatedly into wars and maybe helped fuel 9/11 and the wars that followed. For Scott, it also applied to large financial interests, like Wall Street banks.

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They think it feeds the conspiracy theories Trump and his supporters are spinning up every day. And, to be fair, a lot of them know there was already a lot of distrust of their work after the Ed Snowden leaks [in 2013, Snowden leaked thousands of classified documents about NSA spying programs], and so that’s a cloud hovering over everything. Trump, in his own way, has exploited that lack of trust.

One of the reasons I wrote the book was a 2018 poll that found that more than 70 percent of Americans think that there is a group of unelected officials who secretly influence policy in Washington. Something like 80 percent believe they are being surveilled by the government, and the groups that had the highest belief in this or had the highest fear of this were on the right side of the spectrum.

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