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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   2429 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 9, 2025

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DOGE and the general plan of reshaping the civil service / deep state to be more right-leaning

Is that what's happening though? From my perspective, I've observed the following:

  • First, all of the people tasked with carrying out this administration's agenda are political appointees. This means that all of these people can easily be replaced in four or even eight years.

  • Second, and relatedly, I don't think there is a plan to make the civil service more right-leaning, and even if there is such a plan, it would be ineffective because nearly all of the people being fired are either not performing tasks that could be described as either left or right or the tasks they perform change with agency policy, which again, is a product of political appointment. Further, if the goal is to create a more right-leaning civil service, why are the most right-leaning government agencies (Veterans Affairs and Defense) facing the deepest cuts? Instead, I think the plan is to create the appearance that you've significantly shrunk the size of the government by firing tens of thousands of people (maybe in the low hundreds of thousands when all is said and done) and cutting "waste" and "fraud". However, neither of things actually affect the national debt in any significant way or drastically change the political orientation of the country in the long-term.

  • Lastly, and most importantly, there does not appear to be a deep state, or at least the deep state is nothing like what its proponents claimed it was. Consider the deepest of the alleged deep state operations: foreign policy. Trump has been able to upend the global order unilaterally and with virtually no resistance. Decades of carefully crafted alliances and policy are being thrown out the window and there are not secret operatives in the shadows stopping this. In a way, this is a massive blackpill for some Trump supporters because it demonstrates that everything done so far can just be reversed under a Democratic administration.

Lastly, and most importantly, there does not appear to be a deep state, or at least the deep state is nothing like what its proponents claimed it was. Consider the deepest of the alleged deep state operations: foreign policy. Trump has been able to upend the global order unilaterally and with virtually no resistance.

Last time he was in the White House, Army generals were bragging to the press about giving false information to their commander-in-chief. If there was no deep state, such a thing would be unthinkable, or immediately, and he would be free to do all what he's doing now 8 years ago. The fact that he's able to pull it off now, after 4 years of consolidating a coalition within the US government proves the opposite of what you're claiming.

And US defense officials bypassed Obama when they shared intelligence with allies who then shared it with Assad. There were multiple instances during the Obama administration where generals publicly disagreed with him and were accused of undermining him (especially with re to Afghanistan and Syria), including when McChrystal and his staff made comments to Rolling Stone against senior White House officials. If your definition of the deep state is the military undermining the President, that was a phenomenon well before Trump's first term. That's just politics.

I think the fact that Trump has been able completely redefine the parameters of American foreign policy is evidence against the type of deep state pushed by right wingers.

And US defense officials bypassed Obama when they shared intelligence with allies who then shared it with Assad.

Correct, Obama was also frustrated by the deep state on several occasions.

I think the fact that Trump has been able completely redefine the parameters of American foreign policy is evidence against the type of deep state pushed by right wingers.

Do you think you can restate the idea of the deep state pushed by the right-wingers, in a way that the right-wingers will recognize as their own?

The original coinage of the term "Deep State" referred to the Kemalists in the Turkish military, who would threaten to coup any elected government they didn't like. I would say that a "Deep State" is a faction that:

  • Mostly consists of career government employees (in the Turkish case, career army officers)
  • Has a political agenda beyond self-enrichment that could bring it into conflict with the elected government (in the Turkish case, Kemalist secularism)
  • Has the ability and will to effectively oppose the elected government such that it gets more of its agenda than conventional democratic logic would predict.

My steelman of the MAGA complaint about the Deep State is

  • There is a GOPe Deep State consisting of career military officers, career national security professionals, and academics, consultants and arms company executives who revolving-door through these positions. It has an agenda of promoting "American hegemony" and the so-called "Rules-Based International Order" through forever wars, and is more loyal to Israel than the United States. It enforces its will on the elected government by surveillance and blackmail of officials, and if that doesn't work by wilfully sabotaging military operations.
  • There is a Blue Deep State consisting of career bureaucrats in the domestic policy arms of the government and NGO/academic types funded by them. It has an agenda of wokestupid anarcho-tyranny. It enforces its will on the elected government by selective leaking to sympathetic media.
  • These two factions may or may not be allied. It doesn't matter. Both should die in a fire.

Note that this is a specific theory that not ever MAGA supporter would agree with. In particular, Moldbug's Cathedral is the opposite of the Deep State - Moldbug says that the career government isn't an independent power centre - it is taking orders from the NYT and Harvard. Whereas the Deep State theory is that the NYT and Harvard are doing what they do in order to retain access to funding dispensed by the Deep State. Similarly, pervasive petty corruption and laziness is a different critique to the Deep State critique, although both can be true simultaneously in different parts of the government. The army was the least corrupt part of the pre-Erdogan Turkish government.

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