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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 14, 2024

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The deep state isn't some nefarious ingroup. It's a useful umbrella term to capture the emergent ideology of DC's upper-middle-class bureaucracy. But that’s it.

The concept of "Deep State" is one of the only exports of Turkish political discourse to the wider Western world (you are welcome).

While some Americans such as you came up with explanations as to how it "actually" denotes something else more inline with your own worldview, no the actual concept of Deep State very much describes an inner polity that actually runs the country while staying embedded deep inside the visible state.

This makes a lot of sense in the local context of Turkey and similar shakier Western-aligned countries (Greece, Egypt etc but even for example Italy). These countries often had a core of NATO aligned bureaucrats and military/intelligence officers who coordinated with each other to manipulate or bypass the wider political process for important decisions. These structures were on hyperdrive during the Cold War but they did not disappear overnight afterwards and usually morphed into different shapes.

As the world nears a new era where there is genuine competition and danger for the US Empire, and the politicians and regular bureaucrats cannot be trusted with certain decisions, it is not a coincidence that some of these groups are reactivating and flexing their muscles.