[August]

This is a very interesting read:

Populism, Elites, and National Security

Michael J. Glennon The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University

The tensions that have arisen of late between populism and elites pose grave risks for the United States and, I believe, for western democracies generally. These tensions extend far beyond their more obvious manifestations in international trade, immigration, and race relations.
.....
What we have been witnessing over the last year, however, is precisely that: an epic collapse in the image of public harmony. A week has barely gone by in which a salvo was not exchanged between the President and managers of the security bureaucracy. The President tweets that the former FBI director is an “untruthful slime ball,”9 compares the CIA to Nazis,10describes its former leaders as hacks;11 the security managers and their alumni colleagues respond with a counter-barrage of name-calling and leaks. The Washington Post cited nine senior intelligence sources for one critical story; the New York Times cited four for another.12
Set aside the question of who started it or who’s right: The consequence of this public breach is that there is no longer a unitary imagined order governing the making of national security decisions. The myth system has collapsed. Talk of a deep state is now rampant; the President himself regularly refers to it. Three-fourths of the public now believes there is a deep state, defined as a group of “unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national security policy.”

https://css.cua.edu/wp-content/uploa...l-Security.pdf