From around the middle of the twentieth century, federal agencies tasked with law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and various types of “defense” have accrued overwhelming power in the United States. Democrats, who now worship such agencies, may wail at the term “Deep State” and the idea that they are nefarious. But regardless, the FBI, CIA, and myriad other “three letter agencies” are immensely powerful and reside outside of the political process which the public participates in.
Perhaps the John F. Kennedy assassination was a coup, perhaps it wasn’t. But there is little doubt that in the immortal words of Senator Chuck Schumer, these agencies have “six ways from Sunday of getting back at you.” While President Donald Trump may give lip service to fighting the Deep State, his support of what I called the “Trump-Biden World War III Bill” funding Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan demonstrates that he knows the limits of permitted resistance to their power and that they will ultimately win. While it is probably impossible to fight the Deep State within the legal democratic process, we also have an enemy in “the Middle State,” the administrators who operate in the open, and that can potentially be vanquished from within the system.
It is best to think of this Middle State as playing the role of the clergy under feudalism. In fact, this is a direct parallel since the kind of work they do is called “clerical,” having historically done by clergy. The lack of formal power of the Catholic Church in the United States means we have never had the clericalism and anti-clericalism of the Latin countries, but perhaps it is time for our anti-clerical moment. You can argue that this is different because the clergy performed a primarily religious function, but this disregards just how much secular liberals worship the government.
Religious or not, the record of gutting the clergy’s power without collapsing into communism is better than that of removing the nobles (who are more akin to the Deep State). Most of northern Europe was able to remove the power of clergy during the reformation, though no example is as striking as Henry VIII of England closing the monasteries. Of course, over time a more powerful secular bureaucracy arose, but it was a long process. In the modern era, Presidnt Ronald Reagan was able to fire the federal air traffic controllers for striking, a move no president has survived (be that politically or mortally) making against any intelligence agency. This should give us hope that getting at least some of our country and freedom back is a possibility.
Some months ago The New York Times put out a short video titled, “It Turns Out the ‘Deep State’ is Actually Kind of Awesome,” which was targeted at people whose brains are already mush. The basic premise was to go around talking to people with relatively anodyne government jobs and asking these mundane bureaucrats how it felt to be classified as enemies of the people by Donald Trump. No attention was given to the parts of the government that are secretive or dangerous, and the message was that these are “public servants” and not “unelected bureaucrats.”
While some of these jobs are necessary to run a government, administrative bloat is consuming our society and economy, with our terminally “underfunded” schools, which always have money for new administrators, being just one example. The absurdity of the press telling us to appreciate the selflessness of this class is that salaries, benefits, and pensions are much higher than comparable jobs in the private sector, all with much better job security, so they are not sacrificing anything. As has historically been common in mature states which become ever more corrupt, our clergy’s power has completely outstripped that of the laity in a way which greatly harms the common man. Further, these tax eaters are among the biggest supporters of the growth of government, and are the ones who actually do most of the work of harassing and oppressing us. Reigning this in should be a political priority. The fact that they are generally Democratic partisans is an advantage since it gives the other faction a meaningful self-interest in fighting them; it’s the one time politicians can be incentivized to do something useful.
Though it has been far from perfect, Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter provides a compelling demonstration of the broader situation. He fired over half of the Twitter workforce upon taking power and the website continued to function, even if there has been some problems and Musk’s mercurial nature provides its own annoyances. Like the government and the rest of our society, Twitter had a large class of people who didn’t do anything a normal person could identify as useful. Instead, their job was to harass and control the users in a way that made the experience much worse for the majority in favor of their narrow class interests. They were certainly self-important, but not important in the normally understood sense of the word.
As at Twitter, there is every reason to believe much of our government bureaucracy could be gutted and ultimately do better at their core tasks. Hopefully, this would inspire the private sector to follow suit and purge its own clerics. Regulatory requirements do become a problem in any program to reduce employee numbers, and we know that government career bureaucrats will apply them maliciously in this circumstance, but major cuts to regulations would be a key part of any program to go after the bureaucracy.
It is fair to be “black pilled” about fighting the CIA or getting rid of the warfare state. However, the offense taken about Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s “joke” that miserable, childless cat ladies who work for the government are ruining society shows that this class is simultaneously powerful and vulnerable. They may have unions and a sympathetic media and political party, but the Middle State does not have the power to go around blackmailing, prosecuting, or assassinating everyone of significance who may oppose them. Our entire system is designed to ensure the Deep State maintains power, but it is a different matter for the Middle State. It would require determination and decent political leadership to make it a reality, but the Middle State, major enemies of freedom in their own right, can be defeated within the confines of the current political system, and deserve to be.
