This past Christmas at a social gathering of some former high school classmates I had a brief conversation with an old friend, a liberal—I still have one liberal friend, but he’s about the only one left. Aware of my positions on issues, and, yes, having actually read a few of the columns and essays I’ve written over the years, my friend—let’s call him Dave—enjoys needling me as a “conspiracy theorist.” And at that event he was at it again.
I don’t mind his banter, and, in a jocular fashion, I hand it right back at him.
This past Christmas Dave was all exercised about some of my pieces on “the Deep State,” and insisted that such discussion was nothing more than “right-wing talking points,” “conspiratorial exaggerations about legitimate government,” and, basically, much ado about nothing. The Deep State he explained, did not really exist—rather, I was “making it all up,” and that my criticism was actually misdirected at noble professionals who had dedicated their lives and careers to what he termed “the betterment of all Americans.”
How dare I attack those hard-working men and women who actually “made this country work!” [I am quoting his words, as I distinctly remember them.]
I don’t think my conversation that isolated in today’s America. But I also believe that the more zealous and frenzied the opposition to President Trump becomes, the more the reality of the Deep State has also become. As I have written previously, the election of the “great disruptor” has forced the administrative and managerial elites, fearful of losing their power and influence, increasingly out of the closet into the open. Indeed, Donald Trump, with all his bluster and unorthodox (according to Washington DC) manner of doing and saying things, has torn the mask off, at least partially, of the permanent, largely faceless bureaucratic class that has for so long dominated this country…and our lives.........https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/10/no_author/728046-2/
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