The deep state is no conspiracy theory
Progressive monoculture has enveloped many of our private and public institutions. Aldous Huxley saw it coming
January 19, 2022 | 10:56 am
In 1958, Aldous Huxley foresaw a congestion of power able to shape and defy popular will. “Under the relentless thrust of accelerating over-population and increasing over-organization, and by means of ever more effective methods of mind-manipulation, the democracies will change their nature,” he predicted. “The quaint old forms—elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest—will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitarianism.”
The changes, according to the author of Brave New World, would be almost imperceptible. “All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial,” he continued. “Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”
The Deep State today is Huxley’s prophesy arrived. Like it or not, Americans live inside a power complex and thought machine that radiates from Washington, DC. Concentrated in blue metro counties and states, its moving parts and wheels, as with a clock, enable us to live in the exacting polity, economy, and culture that we do.
In lofty circles, it is said that the Deep State is a far-right conspiracy theory, nothing more. The very words elicit an eye-roll and a smirk. But what else synchronizes uncountable public agencies and their private-sector partners — wink-wink — in the absence of executive statesmanship? What has made the wheels of government go round and round this last year, and if we are honest, for a very long time?
Surface government, elected and appointed, is only its polished clock-face. Television and newspapers report the ticks and tocks daily. Right now, this clock-face looks like something melting, or covered with ants, a surreal dreamscape straight out of Salvador Dali.
Seeking to federalize election rules, in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris compared last year’s Capitol riot to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. Biden likened adversaries of “voting rights” to the ardent segregationists of the 1960s.
The spectacularly inept Harris matters because Biden’s crumbling façade could collapse at any minute. And there she is, the nation’s prospective jeweler-in-chief, the overseer of what Charles Hugh Smith schematizes as “a vast structure that incorporates hard and soft power — military, diplomatic, intelligence, finance, commercial, energy, media, higher education — in a system of global domination and influence.”
The Deep State is not a conspiracy or a cabal but a consortium of shared statist assumptions propelled by high-minded or financial self-interest. K Street’s mercenary lobbyists push boondoggles. True believers and single-interest advocacies pride themselves on their tunnel vision. The actual bandits are few.
The Deep State includes the federal civil service and its satellites in states, counties and municipalities, funded by and loyal to central power. It includes the military forces and defense industry; money, banking, credit, and finance; research universities; oil and energy, transportation, housing, food, and utilities; and, of course, the all-important electronic ether.
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