A lot of people are wondering what it is. This article by Philip Giraldi also comes in handy in describing what the Deep State is.
I would define the Deep State as:
- The foreign policy establishment of the United States
That’s it.
The following are euphemisms for the Deep State:
- The National Security State. Unfortunately, a better description would be to say that the Deep State grows out of the National Security State like a hatchling from its egg.
- The military-industrial complex
Unfortunately, that encompasses an awful lot of America, including those listed below.
- 100% of the US media, including all of the newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV and radio news stations.
- Most of the Executive Branch of the US government, including the State Department, the Pentagon, the CIA and all of the rest of the alphabet soup of intelligence agencies, Homeland Security, USAID, National Endowment for Democracy, the National Security Council, US embassy staff all over the world. The Treasury and Justice Departments would also have to be included.
- The entire Legislative Branch of the US government. Almost all Congresspersons are full-fledged members of the Deep State, with few exceptions. If you don’t join the Deep State, you probably cannot get elected.
- The judiciary, although their principal role is hard to pin down.
- A wide variety of foreign policy think tanks or stink tanks including the Brookings Institution, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Atlantic Council, the American-Israeli Political Action Committee, the Rand Institute, etc.
- The Democratic and Republican political parties. Neither party can go against the Deep State, and in general, both parties support the goals and actions of the Deep State to the hilt, with the only debate being that the Republicans do not feel that the Deep State is aggressive enough. The inner core of both political parties is made of powerful members of the Deep State.
- The US military and associated institutions such as war colleges and the colleges and universities of the various branches of the US military. The US military is an essential cog of the Deep State. I should note here that the US military is profoundly politicized and ideological and always has been. It’s not supposed to be politicized at all, but if you think the Pentagon is apolitical, you are dead wrong. The Pentagon has an ideology and an agenda and it is drilled into the head of every soldier. As you move up into officer ranks, it only gets worse.
- Various “private” mercenary and intelligence gathering companies. Often these are private in name only as they have deep ties to the state, often to the point of being CIA fronts. They work very closely with the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies, especially the CIA.
- Defense contractors, i.e. large defense corporations such as Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, etc.
- The various police agencies of the United States
- Lobbyists
- Large banks (banksters)
- The financial industry (Big Finance)
- Wall Street (one of the principal pillars of the Deep State)
- The Federal Reserve Bank
- Many US universities and many foreign policy experts at those universities. Certain universities such as Harvard, Yale, Georgetown, etc. are simply pillars of the Deep State and have been for decades if not longer. Georgetown should be called the University of the CIA.
- Most of the large corporations of the US. The foreign policy of the US is designed for one thing and one thing only: to benefit large corporations and the US ruling class (the 1%). In other words, the corporations more or less run our foreign policy and our foreign policy is run for them and not for the ordinary people. The Carlyle Group and Halliburton are two of the worst examples of corporations that are simply cogs in the Deep State.
- The ruling class of the US. The American rich, the 1%, have long been one of the main pillars of the Deep State. Bottom line is that if the ruling class opposed the doings of the Deep State, the Deep State would have to change a lot of its behavior. The Deep State does a lot of the nasty things it does because the rich like it, and those actions are undertaken to benefit the ruling class and not the ordinary people. In some cases, the ruling class even make foreign policy decisions, for instance, the plan to invade Iraq was agreed to at a meeting of very wealthy Americans and politicians including Warren Buffet, George Bush, Dick Chaney and Arnold Schwarzenegger. This rich people have a lot more power than you think.
The ideology of the Deep State includes:
- The “Washington Consensus”
- American exceptionalism
- Maintenance of the status quo
- US imperialism
- Anti-Communism, anti-socialism, anti-Left
- Anti-nationalism or opposition to nations pursuing independent policies
I believe that the Deep State concerns itself mostly with foreign policy and does not bother much with domestic issues. However, if you go against the Deep State like Kennedy did, you may just end up with a bullet in your head. Or your plane might crash, like what happened to Paul Wellstone. Or you might have anthrax mailed to your Congressional office as in the case of Senator Dascle. Like the Mafia, the Deep State has a way of terrorizing you and making you obey.
US domestic policy is also run by a cabal, but it is not nearly so all-encompassing. Bottom line is all of the folks listed above tend to also agree on the basic contours of US domestic policy. However, it cannot be said that all of the US Congress is part of some Domestic Deep State because there is a lot of disagreement on domestic policy in Congress. Even the Executive Branch and the political parties tend to differ quite a bit on domestic policy. US Domestic Policy is not so much a singular entity as the Deep State is for foreign policy.
The Domestic Deep State is simply the ruling class, the large corporations and the federal government and media that back their project to the hilt.