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In this episode, we talk about the deep state, J6, and Ray Epps.
Participants: Yassine, Shakesneer.
Links:
Jack Posobiec's Pipe Bomb Allegation (Twitter)
Pipe Bombs in Washington DC (FBI)
'I started a riot for the sitting president': Why Ali Alexander won't go to jail for his role in Jan. 6 (Raw Story)
J6 Select Committee Interview of Ray Epps
Ray Epps Defense Sentencing Memo (Courtlistener)
Proud Boys Sentencing Memos (Courtlistener)
Wishing For Entrapment (Yassine Meskhout)
Recorded 2024-01-19 | Uploaded 2024-01-22
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Notes -
The Deep State segment was frustrating to me, not because I believe the more sinister theories about it, but because I hear a more compelling and far-reaching explanation of it on a weekly basis from my rightier friends.
The mundane, plausible version of the theory goes that the Clinton Administration engaged in a purposeful stocking of the DC bureaucracy with partisans who would continue to pursue Democratic Party goals regardless of who was in office. These are the same class of new political operators who trashed the White House before GWB took office.
Taking it a bit further, Trump posed an unusual adversary, as mainstream Democrats expected him to shuffle LGBTQ and all brown people into camps. Also, symbolically, he was the disruptor of the narrative that mainstream Democrats created for themselves with Obama: That conservativism was dead (IMO they may have been correct; populism is not "conservative") and Obama was the leading light of a new era of progressive liberal democratic rule. Opposing Trump with every administrative stroke was a noble effort.
The version that really gets the Deep State Theorists (DSTs) buzzing, however, adds a few more layers to the obstinate liberal bureacracy, which DSTs see as one component of an elite movement starting** at the WEF/Davos "you will eat bugs and own nothing" set. WEF directs the high-level political operators like Victoria Newland who are orchestrating "forever wars" as part of a military industrial complex that has captured centrists in both parties - NeoCons and NeoLibs - and this is who the DC managerial class serves, whether they know it or not. They aren't anti-conservative as much as they are anti-populist, which is why Bernie was also boxed out by the DNC and there is so much commonality between Bernie and Trump supporters, in a "Rich Men North of Richmond" respect. The threat that Trump poses is disruption of the plans of elite billionaires and technocrats to turn the world into a globohomo concentration camp of some kind that somehow profits from stripping the rest of us of material goods and property (I don't really understand this part of the theory, unless you add the asterisk below).
** Add one more layer above the WEV/Davos: Satanic pedophiles are behind the scenes. The answer to why they are doing anything ultimately comes down to "They are literally evil and serving Satan." It is astonishing how many smart people I know actually buy into this theory in some regard. It does plug some logical holes, but with silly putty, IMO.
What's the evidence that Clinton administration stuffed DC bureaucracy with partisans? The number of federal employees declined significantly by around 340,000 or 11% over the Clinton years. I really have trouble following these arguments because I can't tell what the premises are based on, or even what they mean (e.g. what is conservatism and how did Obama claim it was dead?). This was the advantage of a real-time conversation, because I was able to ask clarifying questions for every point.
When Obama was elected, Democrats were, understandably on a high, and while I can't point stats my sense of the national mood was that the younger Boomer Liberalism that first assumed power under Clinton considered itself victoroious in the culture war (and it was!) and this was reflected with unusual smugness. A new generation was in charge, and they were "on the right side of history." There were some prominent books and articles that got a lot of talk radio play in the wake of Obama's election, like the uncreatively titled "The Death of Conservatism" by Sam Tanenhaus (2009, The New Republic) and "The Death of Conservatism" by Lee Siegel (2009, The Daily Beast). Even quasi-conservative Andrew Sullivan got into it with a book titled "The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back." More self-eulogizing from conservatives in "The Death of Conservatism: A Movement and Its Consequences" edited by Lee Edwards (2011).
As for the ideological composition of the federal workforce, the size doesn't matter as much as who made up the ranks. I asked ChatGPT and it responded with this:
Obviously, there is not going to be a stated purpose in these initiatives to replace older workers with young democrats, but there is going to be a natural influx of Democrats in such an environment led by party operatives, especially with diversity initiatives driving part of it.
I don't think the Deep State segment would've have gone any differently if this is the theory that was deployed. A bunch of books claiming the death of a political movement are the norm for any era, and the NPR program you mention appears to be the one responsible for eliminating over 250,000 federal jobs. I would've asked very similar clarifying questions because I don't see how you go between "250k federal jobs eliminated" to "also older workers were replaced by younger democrats" (citation needed) and then to "these new federal employees continued to pursue Democratic Party goals for the next 20 years, including during Bush era" (citation needed) and then "this Clinton era group was particularly activated in opposition to Trump because of fears he'd shuffle LGBTQ and brown people into camps" (citation needed) and so on. This illustrates the benefits of a real time conversation in dissecting these claims.
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This is a terrible metric to discuss the question. What does the number of federal employees have to do with anything? The only publicly available data (at least I think it's publicly available, since people post fancy charts with that every once in a while) I'm aware of that could maybe resolve the question one way or the other, is which party the political donations of the employees went to, and if that changed over the Clinton years.
I wasn't given a metric for the phrase "purposeful stocking of the DC bureaucracy with partisans" so I went and looked for my own. Coming up with your own interpretation is a natural response when encountering an ambiguous statement. Even if we establish that political donations among federal employees shifted between 1993 and 2001, how do we rule out other causes besides whatever "purposeful stocking" was supposed to mean?
If you're going to criticize political donations data for not answering the question of whether the hiring and firing decisions that made it so were purposeful, it makes even less sense for you to put forward the number of federal employees as a metric, as it cannot prove or disprove the purposeful nature of the shift, nor there even being a shift in the first place.
Mostly I'm just annoyed at the rat sphere's insistence on quantitative analysis, and it is the next exhibit in the case for dropping the entire framework in political debates. There's no guarantee something will even be arguable with quantitative data in the abstract, in the case it will be, there's no guarantee the data will be gathered, if it is, there's no guarantee it will be available to the public, so expecting someone to actively provide it to back their argument makes no sense. It makes even less sense to act like dropping some random number not even related to the question provides a valid counter argument. It's fine if you want to ask why he think Clinton stocked the federal bureaucracies with supporters, but then just ask that, instead of doing this weird dance with "evidence" that can't even answer the question.
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