- 12 Oct 2019 15:43
#15041444
The Deep State Coup by anonymous members of the spook wing of the Deep State is a real thing, according to Matt Taibbi.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
Okay, so far so good. Most leftists would agree with this. But then Matt goes off the reservation completely:
Two things can be true at the same time, as the saying goes.
Thing Number One: Trump is systematically abusing his authority as president for personal monetary gain and political advantage.
Thing Number Two: The Deep State exists, and it's using Trump's numerous misdeeds to stage a stealth takeover of the levers of power.
Non-conservatives are not sufficiently cognizant of Thing Number Two. If Bernie Sanders won the Presidency (to take a long-shot example) the same Deep State would be sabotage his efforts to downsize the military budget and withdraw troops from numerous theaters. CNN punditry is now a rogue's gallery of CIA spooks and Defense Dept intel.
I framed this as "non-conservatives" because this is a particular fault of liberal groupthink. I don't use the word left, because CNN/MSM/Deep State are not "left" in any recognizable or meaningful sense of the word.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/were-in-a-permanent-coup
The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?
When the KGB in 1991 tried to reassume control of the crumbling Soviet Union by placing Mikhail Gorbachev under arrest and attempting to seize Moscow, logistics ruled. Boris Yeltsin’s crew drove to the Russian White House in ordinary cars, beating KGB coup plotters who were trying to reach the seat of Russian government in armored vehicles. A key moment came when one of Yeltsin’s men, Alexander Rutskoi – who two years later would himself lead a coup against Yeltsin – prevailed upon a Major in a tank unit to defy KGB orders and turn on the “criminals.”
We have long been spared this madness in America. Our head-counting ceremony was Election Day. We did it once every four years.
That’s all over, in the Trump era.
Okay, so far so good. Most leftists would agree with this. But then Matt goes off the reservation completely:
the people pushing hardest for Trump’s early removal are more dangerous than Trump. Many Americans don’t see this because they’re not used to waking up in a country where you’re not sure who the president will be by nightfall. They don’t understand that this predicament is worse than having a bad president.
The Trump presidency is the first to reveal a full-blown schism between the intelligence community and the White House. Senior figures in the CIA, NSA, FBI and other agencies made an open break from their would-be boss before Trump’s inauguration, commencing a public war of leaks that has not stopped...
...The leak of the January, 2017 “meeting” between the four chiefs and Trump – which without question damaged both the presidency and America’s standing abroad – was an unprecedented act of insubordination.
It was also a bold new foray into domestic politics by intelligence agencies that in recent decades began asserting all sorts of frightening new authority. They were kidnapping foreigners, assassinating by drone, conducting paramilitary operations without congressional notice, building an international archipelago of secret prisons, and engaging in mass warrantless surveillance of Americans. We found out in a court case just last week how extensive the illegal domestic surveillance has been, with the FBI engaging in tens of thousands of warrantless searches involving American emails and phone numbers under the guise of combating foreign subversion.
The agencies’ new trick is inserting themselves into domestic politics using leaks and media pressure. The “intel chiefs” meeting was just the first in a series of similar stories, many following the pattern in which a document was created, passed from department from department, and leaked.
Two things can be true at the same time, as the saying goes.
Thing Number One: Trump is systematically abusing his authority as president for personal monetary gain and political advantage.
Thing Number Two: The Deep State exists, and it's using Trump's numerous misdeeds to stage a stealth takeover of the levers of power.
Non-conservatives are not sufficiently cognizant of Thing Number Two. If Bernie Sanders won the Presidency (to take a long-shot example) the same Deep State would be sabotage his efforts to downsize the military budget and withdraw troops from numerous theaters. CNN punditry is now a rogue's gallery of CIA spooks and Defense Dept intel.
I framed this as "non-conservatives" because this is a particular fault of liberal groupthink. I don't use the word left, because CNN/MSM/Deep State are not "left" in any recognizable or meaningful sense of the word.
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. -Antonio Gramsci