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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   37901 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 8, 2024

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I've seen in some places it has been discussed that the deep state was going to assassinate Biden so a better candidate could replace him. Maybe the deep state patsy got confused and shot the wrong guy.

What bothers me a little bit about the 'deep state' discourse is that the conclusions seem to be so rarely consistent. Like, you could maybe convince me that there's some deep state in a loose organizational/institutional sense, but it's far from clear to me what exactly they would want even if so, and people throwing around the terms don't seem to have a consistent story either.

It's a goofy concept for how slippery its use is. The term contains everything from "bureaucratic inertia" to "the illuminati conspiracy to control the world."

I think the steelman of the "deep state" concept would be the Iron Law of Institutions as applied to the Executive Branch. The people in the deep state would be primarily concerned with expanding the power and authority of the Executive Branch (regardless of the wishes of any particular president), and any threats to that would be resisted (typically not violently, because typically violence is not necessary).

Good reply, thanks. But even in that case, I don't think it's at all clear that either Biden or Trump would be "better" with that criteria? Like, people in the general public are politically divided despite wanting the expansion of the power and authority of the United States, so I don't really get how a simple law like that would have consistent interpretation either.

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