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Deep Thoughts

Never mind what you’ve read here, or here.  The “deep state” doesn’t exist. But don’t take my word for it. The Nation says so, based on the word of Michael Hayden, formerly director of the NSA and CIA, and former deputy director of national intelligence.  And, c’mon, who can you trust about these things if not a career espionage hack?  Ok, maybe not if you’re Congress, since Hayden did lie to them, as the article points out, and as most anyone on the Left will tell you.

Things sure are confusing nowadays.  You would think Bob Dreyfuss, “longtime liberal-left journalist,” who authored The Nation’s “no-deep-state” clarification, would be skeptical of the intelligence community.  But he assures us that “just because a former director of the NSA, the CIA, or the FBI says something, it’s not necessarily wrong, or part of a secret plan to mislead people, or some shrouded partial truth that hides the whole story.” Hmmm, that’s a weird idea.  It’s almost like we have to weigh the evidence and make a rational decision.  The Nation isn’t what it used to be.

Don’t worry.  Bob assures us that we still have the military-industrial complex to kick around. That “does indeed exist [and] has enormous influence both within the executive branch and in Congress.”  Whew.  Thanks Bob!  You were starting to scare me.

Still, Bob’s article makes me a little dizzy.  For instance, he says, “Hayden and his longtime colleagues in the spy world have seen the Deep State in countries such as Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, and Brazil [where] the CIA and its fellow alphabet agencies have conspired to support, collaborate with, arm, and train the military-security underworlds in those countries, [and] where coups d’état have been frequent.”  But here in the good old U.S. of A, intelligence agencies operate strictly by the book, as any longtime reader of The Nation will definitely tell you.  They would never try to frame up a president as somehow colluding with Russia.

I scrolled down to the comments to see if they would help clear up my confusion.  One reader said, “Of course there is a deep state. Unelected government officials with power who stay while elected officials come and go have power. The CIA and other security agencies have very little accountability. And the CIA by definition conspires. It’s another attempt by Dreyfuss to give cover to the Democrat’s attempt to externalize their failures onto Russia.”  Ok.  Here’s another: “I don’t mind diversity of opinion, but this piece is so blatantly stupid that it might have qualified for the Op-Ed section of the New York Times.”  Now my head is really starting to hurt.  Let’s try one more.  “We have a corporate/plutocratic/financial oligarchy. Everything becomes clear when you accept that description.”  Ahhhh, now there’s The Nation I recognize.

Secure in the knowledge that our corporate plutocrats are still firmly in charge, I think I’ll just go to bed and fall into a deep state of sleep. I’m pretty sure that still exists.

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