A better name for ‘deep state’ is ‘permanent bureaucracy.’
When people think ‘deep state,’ they imagine super capable elites planning painstakingly effective psyops.
A more accurate visual is thousands of mediocre DMV employees doing the bear minimum yet never getting fired, but rather, getting more funding each year, until it swallows up the entire private sector and a reset occurs.
When I think 'deep state' I assume it to mean a phantom hobgoblin politicans use as an excuse for breaking promises and all their other treachery. Now if we wanna talk 'shadow government', that is a real problem.
This misses one extremely important thing, in my opinion: the corporations. The State, as it has become in the developed world since the end of WW2, is not only the public/government institutions, but the private ones with which the former are intertwined.
The Corporate State is the synthesis of socialism and capitalism. It allows private ownership of the means of production instead of central planning, but only if it stays under the "guidance" of the ideology that those in the public sector want to impose.
In our most current iteration, the ideology is now generated by both sectors -- they have fully merged to that point.
The banking system is the most glaring example, due to the enormous importance that money has in the deployment of the ideological goals of those in power. But it permeates everything. Nothing escapes from the State.
That is in part what I consider 'shadow government'. Those corporstions, the billionaire finaciers, the banking cartel, intelligence agencies, to name a few. The people and entities that control the puppet politicians through bribes, blackmail, and extortion. The entrenched bureaucrats (so-called deep state) have no power other than inefficiency.
I'd rather think that the unelected Permanent Bureaucracy plays the role of "legislating by enforcement".
This relieves the arm of the Corporate State that's subject to ritual democratic "accountability" (a historical peculiarity of our "Corporate State Regime With Western Characteristics") from passing many potentially unpopular laws. In Europe we even have the EU to play that part. In the US, the myriad "agencies".
In China they don't need to pretend because they have their own historically peculiar flavor of the same that doesn't require elections.
But it's the same system everywhere.
Yea I can agree with that. Im not saying they dont affect shit, just that there are more powerful and sinister people lurking in the shadows. Blackmail and such will sway policy far more imo
You just summarized Hayek’s 266 page Road to Serfdom in 3 sentences.
I’d argue for both; there’s plenty of evidence to support each.
As Joel nostr:npub1mw8jj8w0jjfh8afzgpcvhm604wqtn2xngdpydt9plc6pznx9rhgqny59rj mentions above, I like ‘shadow government’ as well.
There are absolutely thousands of inept employees and there are definitely organized criminals with fucked up belief systems, many involved in secret societies, that have infiltrated and taken over every level of our governments and are running psyops, which in turn are compounded by the deliberate incompetence of the lower ranks. ‘Shadow government’, ‘deep state’, ‘permanent bureaucracy’, are all present and damaging.
Remember stupidity is a choice: incompetence IS malice.
“Deep state” also sounds more conspiratorial, and is likely to make your average statist roll their eyes and turn off their brains. Permanent bureaucracy gets the point across more effectively I reckon.
I really like this as a visualization of the deep state 😏:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=JtEkUmYecnk&pp=ygULYXN0ZXJpeCBhMzg%3D
