"There is no American Deep State…it just looks like there is"
Kit Knightly
Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I’m convinced.
Last week the New Yorker, and yesterday Salon magazine, published editorials arguing against the very existence of an “American Deep State”. The arguments presented are very…interesting. Both are, perhaps, classic cases of protesting too much
This article, appearing in the New Yorker on Sunday, sets out to tell its readers that there is no such thing as an American “deep state”, repeatedly rubbishing the very idea whilst – at the same time – making a compelling case for the exact opposite.
To start off the author, David Remnick, relates a very cheery sounding story about a young man’s transformative journey from junior naval officer to hard-hitting journalist. I shall relate it to you in bullet points, for the sake of brevity:
- In 1970 junior naval officer Bob Woodward, a Yale graduate and member of the Book and Snake secret society, goes to the White House Situation room. At night.
- Whilst there, he meets a high-up at the FBI named Mark Felt, an intelligence veteran and long-time loyalist to J. Edgar Hoover.
- For reasons unknown the two men discuss the career prospects of young Mr Woodward. Mr Felt gives Woodward advice about pursuing “only employment that interests him”.
- Later that year Woodward leaves the navy, and applies for a job at the Washington Post. He doesn’t get it, thanks to a complete lack of any journalistic experience. He spends a year working at a minor local paper instead, before being hired by the WaPo in 1971.
- Throughout this time Woodward and his FBI friend are in constant contact, Woodward thinking of Felt as a “career counsellor”.
- Felt confides in Woodward that he sees the Nixon administration as “corrupt, paranoid, and trying to infringe on the independence of the Bureau”.
- In 1973 Felt, under the alias “Deep Throat”, leaks Woodward information on the Watergate break-in, and – by proxy – brings down the Nixon administration.
How does that story read to you? There are unquestionably overtones of Operation Mockingbird, right?
Well, not according to Remnick. He tells us the meeting was accidental, the friendship natural, the career advice sincere and the leak opportunistic. He asks the rhetorical question:
Was Deep Throat part of the Deep State?”
As if the only logical answer is “no, of course not”, when in truth any answer other than “Yes, almost certainly” shows a level of willful blindness or chronic naivety that probably merits medication.
We are expected to believe that a young naval officer, with no previous interest or experience in journalism, takes career advice from a senior FBI agent after one (accidental) meeting, leaves the navy, becomes a reporter, and ultimately acts as a key cog in what amounted to a “soft coup” in the United States.
That is patently absurd.
As I said before, what is presented as a case against the existence of an American Deep State, makes a very strong argument for both its existence, and its power.
Next, Remnick provides us with a little history on “Deep States”:
“Deep State” comes from the Turkish derin devlet, a clandestine network, including military and intelligence officers, along with civilian allies, whose mission was to protect the secular order established, in 1923, by the father figure of post-Ottoman Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was behind at least four coups, and it surveilled and murdered reporters, dissidents, Communists, Kurds, and Islamists. The Deep State takes a similar form in Pakistan, with its powerful intelligence service, the I.S.I., and in Egypt, where the military establishment is tied to some of the largest business interests in the country.
You see, he’s not arguing that Deep State power structures don’t exist – he willingly admits that they do – it’s just that they don’t have them in America. His argument for this is simple…or at least, it probably would be if he were to make one.
What he actually DOES is simply describe how deep states work in other countries, and then leave an ellipsis that’s meant to convey “and of course none of that is true in the USA”, when in fact – again – it does the exact opposite.
What he does is supply us a short checklist of qualities which define a “Deep State”:
- Clandestine and secretive
- Involving military and intelligence officers
- civilians allies
- Protecting the status quo
- coups
- surveillance
- assassinations
- ties to big business interests
Does that not sound the least bit familiar to anyone else?
The first two are givens that need no explanation.
Civilian allies? Well, I would imagine that a planted and/or manipulated journalist would make a good “civilian ally”. Such a person could be used to “leak” information that brings down enemies of the Deep State. Or, indeed, to write clumsy editorials about how the Deep State doesn’t even exist.
Protecting the status quo. The protection of “secular order” in Turkey could easily be translated as the protection of the neo-liberal order in the United States. It is essentially a program of protecting those in power from any kind of change. In fact, the way Remnick writes about this mission, it’s almost as if he is arguing that the noble ends justify ignoble means. That’s an interesting subtext to include.
Coups, surveillance and assassinations. Turkey’s derin devlet was behind only four coups? That’s a busy morning at the CIA. Surveillance? Well, it has suited the MSM of late to pretend they didn’t tell us all about the level of surveillance we operate under every single day. But we all know. Assassinations? Yes, there are a few famous examples, and a few not so famous. Blowing the President’s head off in the middle of a public square probably counts.
Ties to big business? Well Eisenhower admitted that, and warned against it, sixty years ago. Soros Open Society Foundation frequently collaborates with the State Department, as does the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The Pentagon’s ties to Boeing and Lockheed Martin are well documented, as is Dick Cheney’s involvement with Halliburton. The list is endless.
As an eight-point definition of a “deep state”, America’s power structures certainly seem to stand as a perfect template.
Now we come to the good part. The part where Remnick is forced to include a lot of information he’d rather pretend wasn’t true, because – if he didn’t mention it – he would open himself up to an awful lot of correction and/or ridicule…even more so than he does already.
One does not have to be ignorant of the C.I.A.’s abuses — or of history, in general — to reject the idea of an American Deep State. Previous Presidents have felt resistance, or worse, from elements in the federal bureaucracies: Eisenhower warned of the “military-industrial complex”; L.B.J. felt pressure from the Pentagon; Obama’s Syria policy was rebuked by the State Department through its “dissent channel”.
You see, there undoubtedly are powerful secretive intelligence organisations with ties to big business and the military.
Yes, you can point to the uncontested public record of literally dozens of crimes – both international and domestic – carried out by these agencies (calling coups and wars “abuses”, is craven apologist language).
Yes, it’s perfectly true that many Presidents (from both parties) have faced domestic opposition from these agencies, to their eventual ruin in some cases. Yes, some of those President’s – including Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy – have publicly warned against the influence of these unelected actors and agencies…but – BUT – that doesn’t mean America has a “Deep State. Because:
…to use the term as it is used in Turkey, Pakistan, or Egypt is to assume that all these institutions constitute part of a subterranean web of common and nefarious purpose.
Which begs the response: “And?”
For one thing, David, it’s not to assume that, it’s to reason that…based on evidence (including all the evidence you helpfully supply in your article). It was your self-appointed task to provide a counter-argument to this reading of the evidence….and you have failed. Miserably.
However, David Remnick is not alone in his ineffectual assertion that “there is no deep state, it just looks like there is”.
Further arguments that there are no “secretive military and intelligence collectives” pushing their agendas through “civilian allies”, was published in Salon. It is an editorial on the exact same subject, published on the exact same day, with almost the exact same title.
The author, Ryan Bohl, argues (in apparent seriousness) that deep states are definitely real, that Egypt has one, but that American can’t have one…because America and Egypt are different.
His assertions that America “doesn’t have a deep state”, would probably hold more water if he displayed any kind of understanding of what the term actually means. Instead he has, in truly Orwellian fashion, redefined the phrase in order to present a counter-argument…and even then barely manages to scrape one together.
…a major flaw of the American Deep State theory is that a deep state needs a weak state to survive
I’m not sure where Bohl got this statement from. I suspect he made it up. It means nothing and is never backed up by any kind of sources, analysis or evidence. It is a baseless factoid, invented to allow the author to use the rhetorical trick of shifting the argument.
Having “established” that a Deep State cannot exist within a strong nation, the author no longer has to disprove the Deep State’s existence…but can now focus on proving that America is strong. Unfortunately for him, he is equally bad at this.
What does a weak state look like? For one, it’s horrifically ineffective: not a “I can’t believe they made me wait 45 minutes for my driver’s license when there were only six people in front of me” nuisance, but “I can’t believe I had to spend 2 years, $4000, and know an official at the Ministry of Transport via a relative to get my license”-style corruption. It is a state that fails to provide water, electricity, schools, and roads on a vast scale every single day.
The logic is obviously terrible. His argument that a deep state can only exist within weak and corrupt infrastructure? A completely unjustifiable a priori assumption. One that is never established with any kind of evidence.
…but let’s suppose, for the sake of argument, that he’s right – doesn’t America have a failing infrastructure?
Doesn’t America house 20% of all the incarcerated people on the planet?
Aren’t many of these people held in corrupt private prisons?
Aren’t post-industrial cities falling apart?
Didn’t Detroit have no water for weeks at a time?
And didn’t Flint have toxic water?
Aren’t their roads and bridges crumbling?
Didn’t New Orleans flood because of neglected levees?
Aren’t their dams crumbling to dust?
Have not Salon themselves published two articles in the last month about the collapsing American infrastructure?
If a state is labeled “weak” on the quality of its infrastructure and development, then any objective observer would have to accept that America is weak.
In many cases it is practically a third world nation.
But Bohl has a response:
It can seem like the United States has a weak state when you compile the many anecdotes of bad roads, bridges, schools, water supplies, and other creaky public services. But this is misleading: just because you know a lot of stories about a topic doesn’t mean you know anything about its societal scale.
You see, much like the deep state, it might seem like America is falling apart…but it’s not really. Just look at the statistics he cites.
Of course, these statistics are “indexes”, with a secret formula entirely invented by America-based NGOs who are almost certainly part of the (entirely fictional) American deep state.
There is also yet another critical argument against an America deep state: the regular transfer of power.
Another flawed argument. The very theory he is arguing against is that the elected officials possess very little power at all, and, as such, power is never transferred. Rather, the puppet is replaced.
What frustrates Trump and his allies is not a conspiracy of a CIA/State Department/journalists/Democrats/Obama/Pentagon cabal, agenda-driven to impose some secret world order upon the United States. Rather, they are encountering the hard edges of America’s geopolitical interests.
You see, it’s not there is a deep state with an agenda, it’s just that America has concrete, innate “interests” that cannot be threatened by elected officials without encountering massive resistance from the agencies whose job it is to protect these interests.
…it is not in America’s interests to align with Russia any more than it has to, especially under the Putin government. So long as Russia has an independent foreign policy, it will be a threat to both NATO and the American-led world order; only bringing its foreign policy into the American-led alliance system will end that condition.
It is counter to the unquestioned and never-changing “interests” of the USA to have friendly relations with Russia, so naturally if the elected representatives of the people try to improve those relations, then the CIA/State Dept./FBI/the media and other unelected bodies will work together in opposing those plans.
This does not mean America has a deep state.
America having geo-political interests that extend beyond the power of the people’s elected officials is NOT evidence of a “deep state”…because? Well…
As the deep state accusations grow, it would behoove some to visit Egypt, stay a while, and try to get a driver’s license. That is what a place with a deep state truly feels like.
…have you ever tried getting a driver’s license in Cairo?
*
So two…
…wait, did I say two? I meant three four five six seven…
Seven non-members of the non-deep state are so enraged by the idea that people might think the totally fake American deep state might be real, that they accidentally publish seemingly coordinated attacks on the very idea. Under very similar titles. All within the same few days. Citing the same “counter examples” of Egypt and Turkey. All acting with symmetrical umbrage.
That’s almost as unlikely as bumping into a senior FBI agent in the White House by chance, taking his off-hand advice about a career change and then accidentally breaking the story that results in the FBI’s removal of a President they perceived as a threat to their influence, when you think about it.
Nevermind. I’m just paranoid. America doesn’t have a deep state.
It just sometimes really looks like it does.
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Even though the JDL was declared a terrorist outfit by the FBI and banned by the DOJ, they operate with impunity on the streets of DC…..
DC is looking like the West Bank…
https://friedemannwo.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/the-deep-state-trump-soros-and-why-banks-must-be-saved
I tried to post this to Goat_Moag
March 25, 2017 comment – but it would not come through – and yet said ‘duplicate comment’.
So I try it as a comment to the main article to see if it gets through…
In a utube of Prof James Loewen, he illuminates come interesting examples of how and why history education at school level became bland and boring – based less in an overt evil agenda and more in the covert self-interest within social and political structures. When educational institutions no longer exercise independent freedoms as to their text books – the authors are biased away from including controversy of possible offence that could easily work to exclude their work from its primary market and readership.
The ‘evil’ agenda is essentially the top-down coercive imposition upon ‘society’ that is wilfully or reactively blind to the needs of others while being driven by a false sense of its own.
The Good News about recognizing the fake narrative that passed off as the world – is the re-wakening of the innocence and curiosity as to what is true.
The persistence in blame and hate may claim to have woke up to ‘reality’ and come to hate ‘the sheeple’ for refusing to ‘wake up’ – but the territory of self-differentiation from which to point the finger is just another device of obfuscation and delay.
On the weak state:
If the state was set up to operate a means of control, then no surprise that it is open to being controlled.
The appeal of the US constitution was a promissory note for the state to hold what can only be held as a living culture. Without the inner quality of the meaning of the terms – the currency is soon alloyed and manipulated to operate a trojan mask of the wish and belief – than any genuinely shared and known reality.
If the state of institutional society – was dedicated to genuine communication, and by genuine I mean both within and without – or intra personal as well as inter personal – then outcomes arising from such a value and willingness would be different from top-down dictates – or indeed the demand for top-down dictate by those who would thus escape their own responsibilities.
The idea of sovereignty transferred to the state – in various configurations. I hold that it belongs to the true individual – as the true and free will. But the idea of free will itself is usurped and assigned to a fragmentation that takes its freedom at expense of wholeness and the other. Insanity usurps Reason by definition – and redefines or re-assigns all things to its premise. Clearly, structures are inherent to the unfolding and living of life – but the true function of structure and form is to embody and support the living. When the existing structures are recognized to be operating against our Good – then the release of identity and allegiance opens the way to embody the new – which is a path never taken before.
“In a utube of Prof James Loewen, he illuminates come interesting examples of how and why history education at school level became bland and boring…”
Where is ‘utube’?
Your “duplicate comment” probably did “come through” though.
Kit, you have outdone yourself! Brilliant!
Tubularsock hasn’t laughed this hard in a long time.
And seven articles with the same base material only shows Tubularsock that the “Deep State” still is using an old mimeograph machine to push their agenda. Hey, times are tough.
Saved this informative article. Please check out Gaia channel for other deeper related witness accounts according David Wilcok, Corey Goode, and their guests. I like Simone Parks of the U.K. On this subject. Enjoy….
Reblogged this on 4bluesun and commented:
Please check out David Wilcock, and Corey Goode on Gaia? They talk about this and more. Interesting insider quest too.
Hmmm
The “Deep State” which is the same entity which so many past Presidents have warned us about, is nothing more than the Zionists who have had a stranglehold on the country since the creation of the Federal Reserve (which they have controlled since day 1) and of course the Federal income tax to feed it. For it was the Zionists which tricked America into WWI, WWII, Vietnam, the Iraq War and of course the endless wars for Israel since they carried out the 9-11 false flag operation.
You are so right.
‘The “Deep State” which is the same entity which so many past Presidents have warned us about, is nothing more than the Zionists… [Emphasis added]’
Next time you pull up a traffic light ask one of the windscreen cleaners to do your eyes too.
David Remnick is a member of the Rockefeller/CFR, along with Bill Clinton, John McCain, Lloyd Blankfein, and George Soros. He is a paid propagandist for the deep state. What else needs to be said?
Every Fed chairman since WW2 has been a CFR member, along with most secretaries of State, Treasury, Defense and CIA starting with the Dulles brothers. See member lists at cfr org.
Makes perfects sense to me see that one coincidence after another runs the universe right? Mark Felt high up in the FBI and 57 at the time meets Bob Woodward uber dunce who would have been 27 would immediately strike up a natural friendship, they would have had so much in common.
Anybody else find it excruciating watching Woodward try to formulate a sentence let alone speak?
“There is no sun, it’s just a lamp” said the White Witch while sprinkling forgetting powder on the surface people. (CS Lewis)
And just in time! Check this out: Ditching the “Deep State”: The Rise of a New Conspiracy Theory in American Politics. Over at CounterPunch, Anthony DiMaggio has decided to cast in his lot with the MSM and denounce deep state ‘conspiracy theories’. More and more of the writers over there, it seems, fancy themselves as part of the anti-Trump ‘resistance’ and refuse to countenance any deviation from the script. There are still a few good writers left at CounterPunch (like Mike Whitney and CJ Hopkins), but they’re dwindling. So sad … for years, that was my favorite website. But it looks like someday soon we’re going to need an Off-CounterPunch, or perhaps a Counter-CounterPunch. It’s all so reminiscent of what happened to The Graun a couple of years back.
It’s good that you tell on them. They deserve it. They shouldn’t be able to get away with pleading endlessly for donations while betraying us. I’ve noticed a decline. Joshua St Clair’s weak ‘Putin did it’ for things he didn’t do and Jeffrey St Clair’s nastiness toward me for no good reason are telltale signs. We have every right to watchdog our watchdogs. It’s called smart – and democracy, and freedom. And yes, CounterPunch carries good writers and therefore conveys good info, regardless. Still…
The only good thing about those changes at CounterPunch is that they’ll probably give Louis Proyect a bigger platform to massage his ego. One hopes that means he’ll spend less time coming here for his regular doses of sado-masochism. I tell you, it gets boring whipping him all the time at Off-Guardian.
“So long as Russia has an independent foreign policy, it will be a threat to both NATO and the American-led world order; only bringing its foreign policy into the American-led alliance system will end that condition.”
Got it. The only thing Russia can do to avoid war is to transform itself into a Yeltsin-style puppet state. Well, well … thanks for the candor, Ryan!
“As the deep state accusations grow, it would behoove some to visit Egypt, stay a while, and try to get a driver’s license. That is what a place with a deep state truly feels like.”
Just check back in 50 years … Egypt is our future.
I’m reading Goebbels’s Diaries right now, and my God have you got the style down pat! Well done, I suppose.
We assume this descent into ad hom means you can’t argue with the facts presented.
Particularly since it was Ryan Bohl’s argument and the shaky assumptions it was based on that got demolished by Kit.
“We assume this descent into ad hom means you can’t argue with the facts presented.”
I think if you reread his post you’ll see the possibilty that he means that God has got Goebbels’ style down pat. Which is just plain silly, what with omnipotscience an all.
Of course there is a deep state, but that it has a policy is another matter. If our present policies are those of the deep state then the deep state has a policy of human extinction. Since the deep state, however deep, is still human beings, they will disappear with the rest of us. So the deep state either has a policy of human extinction that is death, or it really has no control, even though the levers of power are in its hands. For it takes all its strength just to cling to those levers of power.
A case of the ‘present’ cannibalizing the ‘future’.
Yes but it is present framed in terms of a past that replaces an unfolding presence with a fleeting moment in which to grab at or suck on, whstever seems to delay the ‘inevitable’ – which in terms of exposure to tuth is a kind of psychic death – but in terms of acceptance and alignment in true is the re-wakening to life and dis-spelling of illusion.
The belief in death is operating fear of life – and perpetual threat/war. I don’t mean that life and death are not experienced in various ways – but that the sense of self that feels disconnected from life in fear of death is in fact operating in fear of life – while using fear to drive a manual command and control ‘mind in attempt at coping or managing alone and to protect that separateness as its life.
The present can and generally is experienced within linear time reference – except in states of unselfconscious joy or glimpses of intuitive recognition – in which a quality of thoughtlessness and timelessness are associated with an intimacy or synchronicity of being. Thinking (in the sense I am using it) operates the blocking signal within which is the ‘matrix’ of the mind of control.
Looking upon the symptoms as if they are the disease is failing to recognize the feedback at the level of feedback – and attempting to deny, eradicate or manage (block) the symptoms that seem a violation or loss of self to the mindset of a rigidly defined and defended sense of self – that is associated with fear-conditioning.
We cant forever deny fears that are active but running sub-consciously though us – and we cant just wish or pretend them away. In any case they rise to our awareness – as – our symptomatic perception as another opportunity to take a different route than persisting in the same old same old.
Our own fears project into and onto all kinds of scenarios that trigger them by association – and we react as if they are true – and thus impose upon the present and deny any future unlike the past. That is not to say they are necessarily unfounded – but if they are not truly owned, they are ungrounded and we are then as likely to interpret anything and everything falsely – while feeling vindicated by our fears – and of course the hate and guilt that is always associated with them.
We may hate the hateful and malign influences as we see them operating destructively to Life on Earth, but hate is a tuning dial to a ‘reptillian’ perception that lives perpetually within the scream of terror – regardless the mind made to block it out. No one can make another’s choices – but anyone may elect not to join in strengthening or reinforcing insane or self-destructive choices – when they notice the hooks of fear-mindedness and choose not to take the bait. This means breathing and living through what our minds would otherwise recoil from – in a willingness to find a better way. That willingness is an opening through which life can enter – in ways and forms that are relevant and resonant to who you are discovering yourself to be as a result of at least temporarily releasing an attempt to be who you are not – but operate as the strategy that came to define you.
Innocence is inherent to our true nature and yet unthinkable or heretical to the mind of guilt’s conviction. If your true presence shines openly the likely expectation is of being rejected and denied – at best. Why else did we grow the mask and set it as our protector?
Both of these articles are unintentionally… hilarious. Juggling the dogmas and orthodoxies, mixed with sophistry, whilst pretending that none of that actually exists, is always amusing to see. Comparing ‘primative’ Deep State actors and institutions in Turkey and Egypt with the United States, which is arguably the most sophisticated and integrated Deep State in history, chertainly the most powerful and successful… is bizarre, though understandable. The primary , core, dogma, is simple; even though it’s obvious that the Deep State is there and incredibly powerful, that can’t be true because.. we’re not Turkey or Eygypt, we’re the United States and a liberal democracy, and that’s what were told to think and believe from childhood, like many other fairytales.
We can’t possibly have a deep state because, unlike Turkey or Egypt, we’re … exceptional! 😀
To misquote Dark side of the Moon:
“There is no Deep State. Matter of fact, it’s ALL pretty deep.”
Fun stuff, Kit. And right on.
*My stuff just isn’t getting through. I posted two posts, via the OG site and via my WP Reader earlier today, on another laptop, to no avail. Usually, The WP Reader route works. I don’t trust WP further than I can throw a piano.
We can only apologise to you and everyone for the continued issues with commenting. We are looking into possible causes/solutions. Many people seem to be affected. You aren’t alone.
The media is an integral part of the Deep State. It is national/global in nature, the industry is highly concentrated (i.e. a small number of actors have huge power in shaping public opinion), is owned in the main by billionaires, who in Russia would be called oligarchs. It has a uniformity of Weltanschauung, namely anything too far to the left of Genghis Khan is ‘Communist’ and therefore illegal. I am sure there is at least one ‘spooks paper’ like the Daily Telegraph in the UK (where anyone not under hypnosis from propaganda discerns the joined-at-the-hip nature of the relationship of the Editor and the head of MI6).
Those who have studied the media when a Middle Eastern adventure is being sold know that the media serves the government which serves the billionaires pulling the strings. The storyline is planned, coordinated and rolled out. It is pure propagsnda, not independent journalism.
This story is rather like the Pope saying the catholic church does not harbour paedophiles……
@binra
I feel the powerful – in terms of influence – simply use money as a tool – and use those greedy for wealth or fame as tools no less. In fact they use anything and everything to gain and maintain such influence and naturally meet and combine with others who ‘see’ the world as they do. To the belief and identity in worldly power, there IS no other but wishful thinking.
@tutisicecream
If we take for example Christopher (Kit) Marlow [no Machiavellian intent intended here] the then deep state was meshed with the social influencers of the time. He was a poet a play-write and an agent of the crown. He was also made to disappear. The theatre and emerging literature as printed material was the MSM of the time so had to be controlled by the state/crown. Who was Shakespeare for example is another mystery enmeshed with the emerging deep state of the time.
The above two quotes are good descriptions of a deep state, or the establishment, landed class. call it what you will but he main aim is to maintain the status quo. The have’s verses the chavs [great unwashed plebs] Nothing will change the bulk of the population only tend to think on a month to month basis [the odd few maybe one or two years ahead] These odd few might even claw their way up and become part of the establishment. [and life goes on]
Whether you support Trump or not [he has used the system to get were he his now] but the establishment is blocking his every move. What I feel will happen in the coming months is;
There will be a major crisis and the establishment will close ranks and say it was all that silly President Trumps fault. To which they will be told, No it was not my fault, you [the establishment] have stopped me from doing anything to change the status quo.
Yes – nothing new under the sun.
In the paradigm of a separated control and coercion or struggle of power – everything is interpreted as if two or more powers of mutual opposition and exclusion compete for dominance or existence – and this is become the accepted reality to such degree that when the frontiers of science – or of intuitive insight – opens the perspective of a unified reality expression via filters of polarised identifications (or accepted definitions), the conflicts are increased so as to block the new paradigm – or diverted it to old cracked bottles.
I hold that action and reaction wind up the torture racket of the human condition-ing – but that releasing the attempt to force balance allows a different order of change to manifest. Of course change is always manifesting – but the attempt to force a narrative upon it so as to operate an ‘insider’ advantage, is the temptation to play god at expense of the whole and of others who are no less or more integral than oneself. Hence the narrative of self-specialness and feeding it to the unwary.
While the current view of the guides or guardians or shepherds of humanity is almost exclusively negatively polarized – ie: as lying and deceitful psychopaths, or greedy, fearful and corrupt – I nonetheless see positive influences of all kinds and degrees in the unfolding drama of human experience – that may also operate through blind agencies intent on private agenda at expense of the whole.
When I write – I espouse or embody the values I hold dear. This is cultural expression. But if I trade cultural expression for cultural manipulation – then I become defined negatively by the feared outcome I seek to block, subvert, or avoid.
Shakespeare, (whoever the authors were), holds a mirror up for humanity to recognize itself – as willingness allows. I’m sure it has subliminal social and political framing as an embodiment of an Elizabethan vision for Britain.
I believe Marlowe was the precursor to the famous banking statement “Give me the power to control the money supply and I don’t care who runs the nation’ – only in his day it was songs.
I feel that awareness of the power of image and language is not a monopoly to the ‘establishment’ and that waking up to this power is reclaiming our individual sovereignty from a false framed subjection.
The ‘matrix’ of deceit meme runs variations of mind-control – but few renounce the mind that seeks or presumes control – and so they participate, in various postures of oppositional identity.
Whereas the old Aristocracy generally managed its assets on conservative principles, the modern progressive sweeping away of traditional restraints in hope of ‘change’ tends to asset stripping everything and everyone – as a destructive pattern of addiction to undermine one’s own existence in exchange for self-conceits.
Vested interests. Established powers and patterns of influence.
I feel that narrative control is the nature of the obfuscation of the issue – and that we are all participant in trying to make sense of our reality-experience – just as in Humpty Dumpty.
Narratives of perception and belief themselves become ‘established powers and patterns of influence’.
Consider the mind as a casting manager for the personification of all that it makes in story and casts out to both capture and get rid of.
Riding the narrative identity or zeitgeist – seeks then to control it – as if to cling onto power.
Whatever way you look at it – beliefs and perceptions are the basis for action or triggered reaction.
A deeply entrenched refusal to embrace change operates the denial. Perhaps the many ARE voting through unconsciously operating patterns of projection and subjection?
For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. But for action aligned with and embodying a wholeness of being, there is no coercive intent. This CAN arise sontaneously from recognition that embraces all polarities within itself. And of course can also be faked by a script that seems to be fair or seems to speak for the collective good – but is simply coercion masked in forms of the accepted or believed ‘good’.
The world is a slightly safer place since the death of David Rockefeller. This is a quote from his Memoirs. Money working for the best interest of money, conspiring against the best interests of the United States – sounds a bit Deep Statish to me.
Do you really believe the world is now ‘safer’ as a result of David Rockefeller’s death? Or is it the personification of hates and fears that cant find articulation – as a kind of mythological shorthand?
What if the rich and powerful believe the evils of nationalism, the evils of ‘traditional’ superstitious identity and the evils of what seems an obviously fallen or depraved nature, can – and should be relegated to ‘history’ – and therefore a new world order means ‘free of the evils that should be in the past’? Oh yes – I feel to say but according to WHOSE plan exactly!
I feel the powerful – in terms of influence – simply use money as a tool – and use those greedy for wealth or fame as tools no less. In fact they use anything and everything to gain and maintain such influence and naturally meet and combine with others who ‘see’ the world as they do. To the belief and identity in worldly power, there IS no other but wishful thinking.
Everyone operates out-from and through their core beliefs and definitions that inform and dictate their experience of existence. Everyone believes (they are right in) their judgements
History seems to me to be the applying of what seemed like a good idea at the time to a world or relationship that then becomes an entanglement in struggle and suffering.
The quote is a great example of defusing the worst kind of accusation of malign deceit by openly stating it in a way that can be plausibly denied under the virtue of working for world peace.
The mind subjected to the arts and deceits of power sees not in terms of personal vanity but of seizing the opportunity to use the opponents mind against them. I feel this use of the mind against its self is a key signature of a false sense of independence – as a sort of mythological experience or narrative control.
If there wasn’t a market (desire) for it – you couldn’t sell it. I feel to go beneath the narrative identity to the ideas and forces at work.
@binra: No is the short answer, the adjective “slightly” was meant to convey a sense of tongue in cheek. 🙂
The world may never be rid of the like of ‘Rockefeller’: equally, it can be said that no such person has ever, will ever, or could ever “exist.” That which was not born cannot be subject to death and decay.
‘Rockefeller ‘ represents the way of thinking; the commonality of experience expressed in terms we can all understand – self and other – whereas in reality, no such distinction exists. However, language quickly breaks down without the you/me dichotomy: the ability to communicate becomes meaningless as all dualistic distinction collapses into silence.
Concepts such as “safe”, “safer” or “less safe” have no real world application outside the common idiom.
If we want to communicate in terms of the “Real”: we have to employ the poetic – where words are semiotic signifiers and not repositories of concrete meaning – the world of today is the same as the world of tomorrow in it’s ceaselessly changing constancy.
As to matters of mind and ways of experiencing – if the mind cannot come, and it cannot go – how can it be turned against one?
You cant have it both ways. Either personae battle out the pain and struggle of conflicted reality or they simply don’t – and something else is going on beneath the cover story. Belief in narrative reality as belief in drama of minds in opposition generates all the capacity to live such a world – but it isn’t the mechanism that determines the nature and quality of one’s experience – so much as the wish that calls it forth.
Just as acts are embodied belief, so belief can embody wishes and fears of invested personal identification.
The wish to project hated or ‘evil’ self away from self operates the intent and attempt to eradicate it in the ‘other’ or in the world – (under any scapegoating term). The self-replicating nature of hate ought to be recognisable – but generally is not when the hater feels right, vindicated, validated and empowered in their hating.
It is not that hating is wrong, bad or sinful so much as that it is self-destructive to the peace or individuality of one’s awareness of being – for the WANT overrides all else in its assertion of power – as if a feller was rock-skinned.
If you recognize the nature of being you know you do only unto your Self. But when you own what Is your own part and release the wish that cast your world awry, then you indeed see that you never HAD this power but the genie of the wish – and indeed it cannot even seem to exist within recognition of All Power – or true Indiviisibility and individuality.
I don’t expect the the mind-in-the-world to follow what I say – but the insight of a moment’s pause of such may find resonance. For as you imply – how can you separate your ‘self’ from all that rises to your awareness as knowing existence?
So yes, we use shorthand terms and symbols as a substitute currency for direct relationship and communication – and it is this currency that is corrupted and corrupting to relationship and communication.
Historically, humanity has fragmented AS IF split off from Source or being – but this is a development in thought, feeling and act – that has all the reality we give it – again mostly unconsciously of a deep state of mesmeric identification-investment within forms. But nothing has a built in meaning – unless it is the capacity of experience to reflect Meaning as you extend or give forth.
Thus I am not picking on you personally, but noting the example you gave as one among a pervasive many, as a candidate for releasing the deep state – in the moment of its noticing and recognition.
If false to any man, can you be true to thyself?
Or is this the generation of a masking mind in place of a direct self-honesty of being? Is the human world pay to play? Losing Soul-awareness for a world that keeps us blind by learning to ‘see’ only as such world frames and directs?
“You cant have it both ways.”
Why not? I can choose my mode of expression as I see fit. After all, I can communicate with you and address you as a separate entity in order to create a discourse, but this does nothing to reify your own inner experience as a separate ego identity, does it?
Therefore, in a political discourse I can refer to Trump, Obama or Rockefeller without creating something substantive or delusional in my mind or yours.
“Either personae battle out the pain and struggle of conflicted reality or they simply don’t – and something else is going on beneath the cover story. “
I don’t see this in terms of either/or – the dramatis personae battle it out AND there is something else is going on beneath the cover story. It is the failure of language to be able to accommodate these two separate yet indifferentiable realities. They are not mutually exclusive – even if they seem so. We can all address the world of forms and appearances – whether accurately or inaccurately – within the common idiom, utilising language as it is commonly spoken. Who can address the “something else” beneath, the deeper reality, without leaving language behind?
For the mind to be in the world, it does not necessitate the mind being of the world – does it?
As for “Soul-awareness” – the concept and construction you call “Soul” represents a debilitation of the mind actuated entirely by the Present – the mind or self not able to to come to terms with its inevitable dissolution. After all, death is a biological certainty.
In terms of afterlife or transmigration – sustained self-observance reveals that nothing substantive or reifiable passes from one present state to another present state – so what can pass from one life to another?
The mind that seeks its own continuity or eternalization is the very mind that engenders the fear/hate principal – the question is, who ‘owns’ the fear – me or you?
As for a ‘Soul’, better to be fully present and not to be burdened by a misconception born of the misunderstanding of what or who we really are. Our finity is our sanctity. 🙂
Oh of course YOU can have it anyway your mind can slice and dice it – and pass off as meaningful to YOU.
I’m not suggesting there is a limit upon you that you haven’t chosen in some way or at some ‘level’ of YOU.
As Casting Manager of your own show – you can assign whatever you want to Trump – and make a trumpet of it. Why you would find this meaningful is another issue. But opening that issue is the ability to reverse engineer our own personal and collective conditioning. But is generally used as the basis to shut down the possibility of such communication – for our OWN exposure is protected by the Other’s guilt. Not in truth but in defence against any truth that does not support and conform our sense of survival.
I quite agree that ‘either/or’ is often set as a false framing by the mind that is perceiving in terms of threat and reaction – and so both/AND – operate an open embrace to an expanding perspective instead of a lock-down of perspective in caricature.
If you seek to be self-honest AND self-deceptive – you will merely shift between them to lose the ability to tell the difference. Two diametrically operating purposes cannot both apply to the same thing at the same time.
Language embodies and communicates the purpose of its inspiration – or lack thereof. The intent to use it as a weapon adulterates and devalues the currency – leading to a blocked channel amidst the ‘appearance’ or form of a communucation.
To witness to the inherent qualities of being does not first have to define them – in fact the witnessing is the movement in which and by which I am identified in the flow of being – without the interjection of ‘command and control’ mind.
Death is a perspective change – no less than what we call life. If you can recognize what is truly alive – it will expand and embrace your current perspective. While the mind is fragmented in its own Script, life is assigned to idols or self-image – otherwise the game would be over – and a different quality of script running.
What is the purpose of the script that runs the mind that makes the world? I don’t ask the scripted mind to answer, because it has no sense of making its own experience – but merely suffers it. The asking is the invitation to notice – from a perspective ‘above’ or prior to such a mind.
I also suggest that infinity is embodied in every apparently finite expression, but that the meanings you give and accept true are your freedom to extend the true of YOU – or limit and obscure as if to be something else.
To own one’s own – is the freedom to recognize what truly belongs to who you now accept yourself to be. One of the ways to dis-own is in dissociation and displacement.
I find that once what is going on under the drama is recognized, I cannot run it as reality and believe it. The loss of the capacity to believe illusion is its disintegration. But realize that self-illusion is itself a kind of dis-integration – so what is feared as death – whether psychic or biological has resonances with the entrance-ment into what is grasped to as a temporary and frail sense of life.
Language is the word by which we define or accept definition as our perspective within Existence. Everything is already perfectly communicating – but the mind of image and symbol, and conceptual derivatives or short-hand – makes a model for an automaton that believes it has its own life.
I like the term Soul for the qualities of feeling-awareness that have a signature resonance of inherent sanctity – because it is outside of time. A true resonance and wholeness of being that embraces all that I am and can be. As with all such terms – the usurping by egotism is presuming to ‘have one – which is more of a reversal.
But whether anyone uses the same or different symbols for the same or different meanings – doesn’t matter. What matters – or embodies – is the willingness to communicate or should I say – to open to a quality of shared resonance.
We can interact in resonance as conflicted self – as a mutual separation society in SEEMING relationship – or we can find synchronicity in a shared sense of worth. The attempt to have BOTH is the history of the last few millennia. But always of a present action/reaction that is denied exposure as an act by assigning it elswehere, elsewhen and at the hand of the Other.
Your description of states has merit – for each state is an instant of Creation that the mind is structured to interpret as change within time and space – when every change is a total change.
But you don’t allow for the Creative in which, of which and as which, everything is as it is to any current frequency of focus – for a lifetime is a focus within a much more intricate structure of consciousness than the timeline of a getting device. Soul is multidimensional – and prior to all its focuses that to Soul are simultaneous for there is no where or when else to be. Eternity is not really a continnuity of time – so much as an expansion of being that we can align with and recognize our self as joy.
Continuity of joy opens a totally different life-focu than continuity of past into future. Presence is already true – but where? Where are you? The mindfulness movement is awake to that a so called mind is focussing in an imaginary self and world of props and scripted to re-enact the core patterns of a conditioned sense of self. But this evasion of presence in depreciation of its power, casts itself over – and yet becomes immediately subject to – its virtual world.
Even the most fragmented dissociation of self is yet within a presence it believes itself denied and deprived of. And thus operates within a script of denial as its assertion of self – for that is all it knows.
A deep state of defence against threat operates in everyone – automatically for the most part – and requiring no conscious ‘conspiracy’ – for threat is defended against – and anything that opens any real change that cannot be subverted and weaponised – is the Enemy. The only change allowed is that which extends possession and control. Thus we have the insanity of being dispossessed and out of control… as a script running our mind, our lives, our world, armoured against editing from without and refusing to look within. It can learn and speak scriptures or any other form of language – but its core message is always fear and guilt – howsoever disguised.
So I don’t choose to reinforce that which doesn’t belong in me as I accept and act from. This is similar to the idea of no longer giving allegiance to tyrants or ‘Caesar’. You can give to God and Caesar – but as I say – you will co-fuse the two. Power corrupts – when presumed to be a personal possession. If I came over as being critical of you – that was not my intent. My desire is to open the way to look at what is beneath – and find or redeem the language that facilitates or enables this.
The allegiance to the dictate of guilt, fear and blame absolutely denies the willingness or curiosity of creative imagination and discovery. The end times are the meeting with the end of level baddie – except this is within us and not – after all – in the symptoms.
I see everything being brought to light – deep state or no. I also see this as ‘the choice’ as to what you align in and accept as true for us each individually – and within the collective reality that shifts us to partake of.
The shift of focus does not ‘carry’ anything from one state to another because it hasn’t gone anywhere – and the connections being opened are simply relevant and resonant to the purpose unfolding.
Binra, Quote :
“Language embodies and communicates the purpose of its inspiration – or lack thereof.”
I couldn’t have put it better myself. There is something unique, strangely admirable yet coma-inducing about your own use of language.
You are capable of rendering a riddle out of a brick. Please keep up the good work but a 5-line summary of your posts at their BEGINNING would save innocents from becoming lost in the virtual worlds you so ably construct. I mean … what if they never came back?!.
Hi! – in a way I am (my writing is) calling ‘Over here!” to an attention somewhat mesmerized within the frame of its own thinking to open or listen for perspective upon thought – instead of engaging (in) more thinking – and THEN feel for clothing or phrasing by which to communicate such perspective in language of word and phrase and meaning – such as written conversation can articulate.
The space between the lines is where felt meaning communicates from ‘within’ or beneath appearances of form-assigned meanings.
So the mind is in some sense inside out or backwards when seeking reinforcement and fulfilment within an existing story of itself/ourselves – unless of course we have a true joy of it. Mind-capture is an entrance-ment.
Struggling to make sense of our world or solve the riddle of our ‘self’ is of course set in the terms of such self-definition. We are capable of ‘phishing’ ourselves as a kind of identity theft – so no surprise that we use each other to set up and reinforce such entanglement. Perhaps the most entangling is the belief-reaction that one must force-overcome/escape a MISIDENTIFIED situation or misformulated reality. Taking the bait. Hooked into reaction.
The already ‘taken in’ are ‘lost’ in a world of shifting and conflicting meanings that demand defence and sacrifice of true. Truth is not a casualty of war – so much as denied awareness and expression, by tyrannous dictate. But it hasn’t ‘gone’ anywhere while we attend self-illusion.
Yes, David Rockefeller — one more lizard-person bites the dust!
With wealth goes power and the deep state serves to maintain that power whether imperial or communist. If we go back to the time of Elizabeth I the British deep state was well established, as were others in Europe.
A little history
If we take for example Christopher (Kit) Marlow [no Machiavellian intent intended here] the then deep state was meshed with the social influencers of the time. He was a poet a play-write and an agent of the crown. He was also made to disappear. The theatre and emerging literature as printed material was the MSM of the time so had to be controlled by the state/crown. Who was Shakespeare for example is another mystery enmeshed with the emerging deep state of the time.
So all of this is clear the artist or writer is with the state or against it. They are elevated or they may loose their job or even be made to disappear.
Regarding the article
One point worth emphasising regarding the quote from Bohl:
“…it is not in America’s interests to align with Russia any more than it has to, especially under the Putin government. So long as Russia has an independent foreign policy, it will be a threat to both NATO and the American-led world order; only bringing its foreign policy into the American-led alliance system will end that condition.”
Russia on two occasions under Breznev and Putin has sought membership of NATO. Putin was first and foremost an Atlantisist wishing for integration with Europe. Putin’s fall from grace was his indefatigable belief in co-operative statehood in a multi-polar world. He believed literally the West’s/USA’s weasel words about globalisation.
Globalisation was really a codeword for American Economic Imperialism if not through the back-door then through the front via regime change.
Yes. Any accepted form or meaning can be used as a trojan intent. Working both sides of the fence in every apparent conflict or polarising issue, makes for an ‘invisible’ third party operating beyond the framing of the terms the issue appears and is set in.
The will to power is in every mind working the same – but takes different forms. For we are manipulated through our desire to manipulate.
This operates chaos or lawlessness – as it does the attempt to harness, control or monopolise lawlessness – perhaps in the name of law, order and the peace of the realm! But there is a positive potential through the limiting of lawlessness as the conditions in which to awaken and grow a sense of law or principle towards the reintegration to our true nature – instead of embodying the mind of the orphan, rebel, exile or outlaw.
Holding the conditions in which life can flourish – is an impossible feat for the mind that does not know its own movement of being. Yet such have been the conditionings through which such culture as we have – has lived its day.
Individually, the sub-conscious routines of past learned belief-behaviours, operate automatically as a ‘mind’, of reaction to psychic and emotional triggers – while generating the feeling of freedom to separate, struggle and assert a personal reality. And protecting that persona sense of freedom and power from exposure in terms of fears, self-contradictions and invalidations of powerlessness. There are many layers of diversion and obfuscation to such a ‘mind’.
If we can readily – in most any moment observe this in ourself – why would we be surprised that it operates the same writ large? But not all communication is withheld in desire to limit and control via artificially contrived scarcity. One has to be in the willingness to receive or abide it – or the ‘mind’ will recoil and re-enact the patterns of its separation trauma – instead of opening perspective in which to re-integrate and align the ‘mind’.
In the framing of the world, ‘power’ is assigned to the destructive – while adorning itself in association with culture – as if to legitimise lawlessness. I feel to challenge this idea of ‘power’ – not in its own terms! But as a primary foundation-idea from which all follows as sure as night follows day.
Even if the characteristics of a Turkish-style Deep State don’t exist in the US, that’s not the same as saying that a Deep State doesn’t exist in the US, period. A Deep State can exist in the US but because of that country’s particular political characteristics and culture, such a shadow government can have a completely different style and look. In the case of the US, we’d be looking at the role that lobby groups on Capitol Hill, the corporate media establishment, the various US alphabet intel agencies and thinktanks play in maintaining a Deep State.
What Bohl and Remnick are doing in their respective articles is deliberately obfuscating the issue by saying what the Deep State looks like in Middle Eastern countries and then applying that model to the political environment of the US, without considering Turkey and Egypt’s political histories and cultural environment that favour authoritarian government in those countries. What they should have done is ask what the aims of a Deep State might be and what aspects of US political culture, the nation’s institutions and structures might be directed to serving those aims.
One could also argue that the US is a weak state and has always been a weak state because it has never been able to bear the presence of countries close to its borders that follow their own political paths without invading them or trying to change their governments by overthrowing them or impeaching their leaders.
Deep state?
Is neither here nor there.
DEEP POCKET$?
That’s another thing entirely.
And those ‘pocket$’ are insatiable.
Follow the money.
Another funny piece on offGuardian: good stuff.
” Follow the money. ”
Yep. In short , that’s it.
Deep down , they’re pretty shallow.
Especially the Nixon case is explained well in Russ Baker´s “Family of Secrets”! And for the Deep State as such:
„Deep State USA: Dulles, Dallas and Devilish Games“: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/04/20/deep-state-usa-dulles-dallas-and-devilish-games/
Regards
When has any POTUS made policy that was counter to monied interests? If you ever come up with a name I’ll show you several monied interests who control him. That is how weak the US as a state is. A weak state is one that cannot offer it’s people a democracy that isn’t owned by monied interests either side of it’s two party system. It is an either/or party system, that is a reflection of the wealth and powerful interests who require their chosen representative to provide them with policies that fulfill their interests above those of the nation.
Welcome to the (weak)USA.
We have rebranded deep state and call it The Establishment. Forget Bob Woodhouse, think about Rupert Murdoch and how much influence that civilian has over us/uk policy.
I’d argue that the US was set up from the start to be a weak state just so it could be controlled / administered by a “deep state” of the owners. It is functioning the way it was designed, the only question is who is now the owners?
Things make perfect sense if you consider their goal is to evict the squatters by death. I offer Kelo v. City of New London as evidence. It was not a ruling based on property rights per say that of the occupants, but was a ruling straight out of land lord / tenant law. How do you evict when there is no public street to evict to?
History certainly gives us the answer in spades, and the study of history gives us the answer to present and future. Perhaps why history is such a lost endeavor to instill in the masses these days? Rest assured, the owners (few they may be) and their administrators, make sure their children study and know the classics to present.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.