There is a Deep State – but it’s not what you think

 

June 3, 2020

 

As we watch the events of the last week unfolding since George Floyd’s appallingly brutal death in Minneapolis, the breadth and intensity of the public reaction to this latest in a long line of injustices lays bare a truth so obvious in retrospect that we can conclude no less: there is indeed a Deep State.  But it’s not what you think.

Right-wing politicians, pundits, media figures, and their supporters have decried a shadowy “Deep State” for years, some supposed liberal bureaucracy entrenched in our agencies, from land management to law enforcement, an unseen hand directing both national and world events and allegedly shaping our society in progressive ways, an insidious cabal that must be resisted and rooted out.  Oh, were we to have such an effective force in our government!  The things we could accomplish. 

Imagine.

Aside from such a fanciful notion, the absurdity of which is clear to anyone who’s ever lived or worked alongside our federal institutions and their admittedly dedicated civil workforce, the very fact of the protests and demonstrations for these people on whom the greatest injustices of our society have disproportionately fallen flies full in the face of any assertion that some lurking and powerful faction of those very same people even exists.  Had we a Deep State acting as a mendaciously tenebrous force of government, steered by some leftist, minority, globalist dogma, it would surely follow that our poor would be lifted up, our wealthy persecuted, our capitalist and rent-seeking corporations pilfered, and our minorities ever elevated to greater status. 

But of course, none of that has happened.  Even throughout administrations far more friendly to egalitarian social and economic policies, we have managed to roll back programs benefiting the disadvantaged and underserved.  We have allowed wages to lag our cost of living to the very point where many can no longer work and live.  We have enacted tax policies valuing capital so much more highly than labor that our wealth inequality in this country has reached an extreme, the likes of which we have not seen in over a century.  We have dog-whistled and targeted individuals and whole groups of our citizens with overt cruelty and inciteful rhetoric.  We have heckled and berated those who simply wish to be acknowledged, turning our knives inward on our own countrymen and declaring them the enemy.  And yes, we have allowed black men and women to be killed by the State, with apparent impunity, in our streets and even in their very homes.  If there is a liberal Deep State, it is obviously not worth the stale fare served at its annual meeting.

No, the Deep State is far older and more institutional than that.  The Deep State enacted laws denying the franchise to women and minorities.  The Deep State drew red lines and separated God’s children from one another in our communities and schools, in our restaurants and playgrounds.  The Deep State donned its white robes and pointed hoods and marched on Washington.  The Deep State turned its fire hoses and batons on those who only wished to be free.  The Deep State swept aside our priests and parishioners from the very steps of the church with tear gas and riot police.  The Deep State kicked those who to took a humble and anguished knee before it. 

The Deep State took its own knee on the neck of our brother. 

As he cried out, in one final breath of life, for his mother.

Yes, America.  Conspiracies are real.  A conspiracy has been at work against the people of the United States now for almost three decades, a conspiracy to enrage and divide our nation, so that the few can secure their votes and thus secure their own perpetual power and wealth.  It has found fertile ground and succeeded more wildly than its original instigators and collaborators could possibly have imagined.  But having removed the guardrails of our Republic and pranced upon the cliff edge, we have now gone over it together and cannot yet see the bottom. 

Those who have been so craven and reckless with our fragile American experiment must face a reckoning long overdue, or we will all face a darkened and deserted harbor of extinguished liberty.