The Political Class and the Deep State
In an earlier post, I discussed the relationship between the "Deep State" (DS) and the "Administrative State" (AS); how the DS subsumes the AS, and uses it as a tool (some call it a weapon) to achieve its goals. There's another element even more pernicious than the AS, which is just as subsumed by the DS and operates under its manipulation: the political class.
Like all the parts of the DS, the political class is populated by people with bills to pay, families to feed, and lifestyles ... all of which need financing. Anything that perpetuates the political class, particularly the incumbency, is good; anything which impedes or threatens the existence of the political class is evil in their eyes.
Simple faith is all it requires for membership in the political class: all one has to do is believe that this mass of people, bureaucracy and non-governmental organizations are of value to society, that its working members deserve to live off the taxpayer, and that politics is an honorable career. Not all people hold these beliefs. You're a member of the political class when you say you are.
The political class is comprised of people who believe that politics is, among other things, a valid, valuable economic field of endevor, and that office-holding is a perfectly legitimate life-long career. These people come from all political parties and, between them, hold every political ideology from the extreme right to the extreme left wing. Whether or not individuals in the political class publicly confess their deepest held ideologies is a matter of optics: it's still not acceptable for a politician, thank God, to be a Communist -- just as unacceptable is adherence to the idologies of the Ku Klux Klan or American Nazi Party. Optics apply to the exterior appearance, not to the heart, so we probably will find a very small number of closet Nazis and crypto-Communists among the ranks of the American political class.
The political class is also partially populated by a more plebian subset of person known as the wannabe. Wannabes are on the outside, holding no appointed, hired, or elected office; doing whatever they can to get closer to the incumbents. The incumbency holds all the power and wealth, the wannabes are doing all they can to get into the 'tent' and ingratiate themselves with the incumbents so that they, too, can benefit from the perquisites of wealth and power -- the goal of the self-administered professional school they just graduated. Wannabes don't get paid very well until they move up into the incumbency. The wannabe is typically very young, perhaps funded by inherited personal wealth for a least a while, idealistic and naive.
Wait a minute, you say, wealth? What kind of wealth is there to be had from the state of incumbency? I didn't want to get into this, but I've led myself into it.
First, there are the statutorily-protected paying jobs which pay quite well when compared to typical jobs in the private sector which are often filled by political patronage. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, all government employees -- whether at the Federal, State, or municipal levels -- weren't remunerated well, nor was there any concept of job longevity; government employees were frequently hired and fired with political influence from the incumbency, making the notion of a lifelong Federal career non-existent.
Developments in the 1950s gave us government employees' unions, such as the AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and AFT (American Federation of Teachers). These unions, in a society which acutely remembered the Great Depression of the 1930s, negotiated for and obtained job protections which remain in force today; which make it nearly impossible to discharge a unionized Federal employee without that employee's cooperation. The long and short of this story is that we need to think of government employment as a much more secure -- and better-paid -- potential career path than could be found on the open labor market of the private sector. This is the principal membership of the Administrative State: protected individuals who can and do hold the same range of ideologies as members of the political class.
If a political wannabe ends up with a Federal General Schedule job in some deep burrow of the bureaucracy, that's okay -- it's seen as a lifelong reward for services rendered. But the wannabe really strikes pay dirt when and if she should become a campaign advisor; that's where all the untracked cash is -- at the campaign level. From working on campaign committees, the wannabe improves his chances of upward mobility by building a network of acquaintances who are all "connected" to the candidate for whom they work. Should that candidate be elected, there's often a GS job or move up the political ladder for the wannabe. Even should that candidate lose the election, there's always the next election to plan for. This is also the case for elected officials: everybody has to go out and win re-election sometime, which leads to campaigning around the clock, especially in the case of a member of the House of Representatives, who has to stand for election every two years.
The next source of funding for the political class is illicit revenue from kickback, bribery and other revenue diversion schemes resulting from outside influence and/or control. While clearly (and seriously) illegal under every penal code on the planet, an incumbent in the political class is well-protected and served by underground professionals knowledgeable in workarounds: money laundering, corrupt tax-exempt personal foundations, and other avenues known only to those who clandestinely abuse them. Corrupted politicians are much more effective to their master if they serve a lifetime -- keeping them comfortable and thus even more corruptible during their tenure is an acceptable expense of doing business for the masters of the DS. Lengthening the tenure of the corrupt is also a normal business expense, the acquisition, leverage, perpetuation and extension of power is also very important to the lobbyist footing the bill.
Not all politicians are corrupt -- only some are. Non-corrupt politicians are members of the political class, too, as are the corrupt. The lobbyists who handle the controlled corrupt are also members of the political class.
Also associated with, and often considered the propaganda arm of, the political class are the news media; their corporate ownership & management, all the way down to the function of reporter. The mainstream media (MSM) are the largest corporations who have a broad reach and large audience, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Time-Warner, Fox, and others. Alternative media, such as those seen on the Internet, are far too numerous to name, very disorganized, and usually not corporate-owned or controlled -- those who work in this segment are rarely members of the political class, but those who are, are.
Now believing I've properly measured and described the political class memberships and motivations, let's move on to an area deserving special contempt: the "free press", which enjoys special Constitutional protection from regulation through the Constitution's First Amendment. Our founding fathers clearly intended a free press to be a watchdog guarding against governmental abuses; but a very strong argument can be made that this duty has been abrogated.
The position of MSM reporter is often called 'journalist'. Journalism is a rigidly defined science which used to hold some very firm ethical positions, the first of these being that "facts go on the front page, opinions go in the Op/Ed section". Today, journalism is more or less dead, merely waiting for its coma to deteriorate to where the plug can be pulled. The patient contracted the fatal disease of sensationalism during the era of the Watergate scandal, when so-called "investigative reporting" started to earn prestigious awards and made lots of money in advertising and sales. This disease progressed to the point where it infected the journalism schools, and finally -- 40 years later -- pervaded the entire industry as an epidemic. The problem with this is that many (proportion unknown) of MSM's voting consumers have witnessed the journalistic body -- and hence, the products they produce -- falter, stumble, and go into a deep coma. I first noted the incubation of the activist strain of this disease in 1974, and have noticed the deteriorating state of journalism in general ever since.
Today, the position of "reporter" is either a very seasoned, well-paid veteran who has all the public facing duties possible -- on-air newscaster, editor, commentator -- or a young, inexperienced recent college graduate who is so desperate as to work under the most exploitative of conditions, only to face later layoffs under the "last hired, first fired" doctrine. Political developments over the past couple of decades have caused public confidence in the MSM to not just falter, but fall flat on its face as its failure to adhere to journalistic standards have become obvious. The veterans are getting less energetic, more sensitive to criticism, and are retiring due to age, which means they have to be replaced. They're being replaced by the younger "will write for food" activists who call themselves journalists.
The younger bring with them the weaknesses of youth, in particular, idealism. There's nothing wrong with idealism until one attempts to replace pragmatism -- reality -- with it. There's a word for that kind of idealist: activist. The clear trend in what passes for journalism today is that reporters are no longer journalists, but activists. Idealism brings with it a narrow-minded system of beliefs that are either untested by reality, or resulted in historical events that youths are generally not taught (see AFT) in public schools. A young left-wing activist, as a result, is prone to ignore what happens when socialism is instituted, then fails, or fails to understand that not all war is evil -- that there are worse things than death. Those pairs of eyeballs are those through which the world is reported upon by the MSM. It's exponentially worse when we consider that the MSM is struggling to retain its traditional role as the exclusive publicity filter for Capitol Hill ... things have gotten a lot worse since President Trump showed up with his Twitter account; he -- unlike his predecessors -- does not depend on a wonk Public Relations subcommittee to come up with a scripted statement for him a bit too late for timeliness, he just comes out and tweets what he thinks suits him, thus cutting the MSM out of the loop. It's no small wonder the MSM has a built-in laser focus on DJT, and would love to see him removed from office just as much as would the Democrat majority in the House.
If we project that these activists are -- as idealists will be -- attracted to left-wing ideologies, then we should not be surprised that the media is pushing 'news' stories with obvious left-wing slants. Expect it.
In 1992, what I still perceive as a major historical disaster struck the United States in the election of William Jefferson Clinton as the 42nd President of the United States. Bill, while of a questionable character himself, brought his wife -- Hillary Rodham Clinton -- with him to the White House as his "co-president" (enter disaster stage right, excuse me while I puke). Hillary quickly became Bill's "fixer". I won't walk through the sordid in-office behaviors of POTUS during the Clinton Administration -- we all pretty much know what those are; as we also know of HRC's activity in healthcare, the White House Travel Office, outside investments and other areas of controversy for eight years. When President Clinton's second term expired, Hillary ran for -- and won -- the US Senate seat that opened up on the retirement of Patrick Moynihan in New York, never mind that Hillary had never lived anywhere in the state. She and Bill moved to Chappaqua, New York in order to establish NY State residency, and Hillary's name recognition easily swept the Democrat primary and finally the general election. She served one term in the Senate, then began her own presidential campaign in 2004, which ended up defeated at the Democratic National Convention in favor of John Kerry -- who, himself, lost in the general election to an incumbent President George W. Bush. HRC was back as a Democrat candidate in 2008, only to run neck-and-neck through the National Convention with a little-known Illinois state senator named Barack Hussein Obama. Obama won the Democrat nomination under questionable circumstances (was a deal reached in a smoke-filled room?) and won the 2008 general Presidential election against Republican Mitt Romney.
Hillary was pretty upset at the treatment she'd received in her '08 candidacy from the DNC; and it all ended with herappeasementappointment and confirmation as Secretary of State by newly-inaugurated President Obama, where she served a rather controversial four years as Obama's Secretary of State through his first term. Mrs. Clinton behaved in her role as Secretary of State just as she had as First Lady during her husband's incumbency -- she was publicly exposed as a petty tyrant with a cruel, even sadistic edge, a wicked, irrational temper and filthy mouth -- to stand opposed to her on any issue was to risk ejection from the political class altogether, or even get "suicided". In her day-to-day operations, she was sloppy -- even defiant of the law -- in handling of classified information, and caught absolutely unaware (or at least so she claims) during the so-called Arab Spring of 2010, leading to the Benghazi Incident, in which HRC and most of the National Security Council watched and listened (from the comfort of a Capitol Hill "war room") to the Libyan Embassy personnel under siege by Arab rebels, while refusing to send any assistance to their aid, resulting in the highly publicized deaths of American citizen employees of the State Department. Being a cabinet member, HRC had insider access to the very heart of the Obama Administration for its entire first term, turning State over to John Kerry in 2013 while she organized her 2016 Presidential campaign. There is no known governmental incumbent political class position higher or more influential/powerful than that inside that very small circle.
In 2016, HRC again stood for the Democrat nomination for the Presidency, and this time won it. It seemed as if the entire political class stood firmly behind her candidacy. This time, an outsider named Donald J. Trump obtained the Republican nomination over a set of notable, yet bland, crowd of also-rans. Candidate Trump ran on a promise he called "drain the swamp", a firmly populist/nationalist platform plank the Republican Party would never have adopted absent a force like Trump -- after all, the incumbents and wannabes in the Republican party are just as invested in their livelihoods as any other political class member, irrespective of ideology. It took the DNC a long time to come to grips with the possible candidacy and electoral victory of Mr. Trump -- some of its members to this very day still do not. Most of the political class lined up behind HRC, as it was easy for them to tell what "drain the swamp" meant. Threaten my livelihood? Not in a million years! So began the demonization of then-candidate Trump in the MSM and rather vile, brand new lows in characterizations from HRC of Trump and those who'd dare to consider voting for him. The defamatory crescendo grew to a deafening level, so much so that by November 1st, 2016 all the MSM-sponsored polls gave Hillary a 90+% probability of winning. It wasn't until election night itself that the DNC's poor polling and campaigning resulted in what were -- to the political class -- total surprises portending the possible breakup of the political class' power structure and perhaps even the dislodging of the Deep State itself.
The actual election results shook the political class -- incumbents and wannabes -- to their cores. Even Republicans took active positions as "never-Trumpers" -- they, too, knew what "drain the swamp" meant. And by now the Obama Administration had some very serious problems facing them: they'd been spying on Obama's political enemies since at least 2014, if not 2010, and needed to cover all that up quickly and totally before President-elect Trump could take office. You'd think a professional team of political class members could have at least covered their tracks well and completely. But, no.
Instead, 'stories' began to be floated to and through the MSM about how the Russian Government had (oh, ever so definitely) repeatedly attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, how then-candidate Trump had been assisted (or, more commonly claimed, "stole the election") in his 2016 electoral victory, how Trump was suspected of being a Russian intelligence operative/asset, and that yes, the FBI had been investigating him since July 2016. This wave of smarmy black propaganda started in October 2016 with the background story of how the Russians had repeatedly been caught red-handed attempting to interfere in the US electoral process, although no evidence of that accusation was ever produced.
Shortly after the election, then-NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -- a man of outstanding honesty, candor, and honor -- took it upon himself to visit President-elect Trump's transition team's HQ at Trump Tower in NYC, and in a personal conversation, relayed that the Obama Administration had been collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT: phone calls, photo surveillance) and human intelligence (HUMINT: classic spy-vs-spy activities, covert operations) against him at the Trump Tower using the secret resources of the US Government. Trump reacted by moving his transition HQ to a country club in New Jersey the very next day.
The fact that someone had spilled the beans whipped through the White House like a wildfire, and Admiral Rogers was fired as Director, NSA two days later -- the Obama illicit intelligence network knew what had happened. The scandal now known as "Spygate" was born, although it took the MSM a number of weeks to finish ridiculing the very idea, then finally ignore it, and resume their droning black propaganda campaign against DJT. Cries for his impeachment were heard long before his inauguration. Most members of the political class -- regardless of ideology -- were very hostile to the idea that their livelihoods were now seriously at risk, and began to militate against Mr. Trump long before he could even take the oath of office.
By the time Mr. Trump became President Trump, the ideological and propaganda battle lines were firmly drawn and operating at high volume with increasing frequency. However, the Democrat party had won control of neither house of Congress and was powerless to initiate any kind of investigative procedures against POTUS. Instead, those first two years were spent with the Republican Members of Congress getting used to the concept of a POTUS who really didn't eat babies as the MSM portrayed, someone they could work with, and ultimately trust, although not all Republicans became comfortable with a non-member of the political class controlling the destiny of their livelihoods. Personages like Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake were still violently opposed to Trump; perhaps due to what was personally at stake for them. Furthermore, during the 115th Congress, the minority party was joined by a surprising number of Republican never-Trumpers in the appointment of a "special counsel"; a well-known Robert Mueller who was characterized as a "good guy" by political class consensus. Mueller had been Director FBI for a full ten-year term plus two additional years at the personal pleas of then-President Barack Obama, seemed well-qualified to be special counsel, and won bi-partisan support for the position. Every Office of Special Counsel requires a mission statement, one which was neither well defined nor well publicized at its outset, then expanded in a similarly foggy environment by a temporary Director FBI whom Trump chose to promote from the swamp, Rod Rosenstein.
Fast forward to 2018, a midterm election in which the American MSM pulled out all the stops in their ongoing propaganda campaign, and through which a Republican majority in the House of Represenatives turned Democrat. No Republicans -- never-Trumpers or not -- would support any kind of censure against POTUS; but Democrats did not consider themselves so restrained. Irrational leftist fixtures of the incumbent political class such as Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Elijah Cummings (D-MI), and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) turned up the heat and volume of the Congressional sanctions machine against President Trump under the guise of "Executive Branch oversight", although it was plain by now that the true goal of the Democrat Party was impeachment and removal from office of DJT so that the DS could get back to its business of re-establishing its intel channels and other instruments of totalitarian control.
In April 2018, two of President Trump's Attorneys General had been replaced by William Barr, who'd held the same position in the Bush 41 Administration, as well as Director CIA before that. He won Senate confirmation rather easily, given a Republican majority in the Senate who recognized Bill as an "old boy" of the political class -- his confirmation glided through the Senate with fairly strong bi-partisan support. Little did the dirtier members of the political class grasp the concept that soon-to-be AG Barr is a man of principle and common sense, unafraid of repercussions of his doing whatever had to be done to (a) usher through the completion of the Special Counsel's report, and (b) enforce the law of the United States to the utmost.
The so-called Muller Report (or "Mueller Dossier", the minimum required product of any Special Counsel) was completed in May 2019, months behind any reasonable schedule yet prematurely in the eyes of the Democrat House majority, who was still trying to impeach POTUS at any cost. When AG Barr previewed the Mueller dossier in an open letter to Congress, declaring that the Special Counsel had found no evidence of collusion with the Russian Government nor any acts of Obstruction of Justice, the House Democrats blew up: their fervent assurance had been that Mueller would find something the House could hang Trump with, and now that their ace-in-the-hole had turned out to be a failed fantasy, they began lashing out in all directions; wisdom, strategy, and optics be damned. For example, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed President Trump's Federal income tax filings for the past six years; but were foiled at this rather naked attempt at skullduggery by a Federal judge as well as the Departments of Treasury and Justice. It continues to be true at this writing that the House Democrats seek to continue their poorly disguised fishing expedition by any means possible -- the only problem for them is that all the means have been exhausted; they now have to depend on President Trump taking some misstep the MSM can inflate and propagandize. It's pretty pathetic.
Now, in June 2019, we have multiple full investigations into Spygate underway, and the obvious conclusions of criminality are going to result from them, complete (hopefully) with indictments for the serious crimes associated with Obama's illicit espionage machinery. The former (Obama Administration) Director CIA (John Brennan), Director NSA (James Clapper), Director FBI (James Comey), Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton), Attorneys General (Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch), and subordinate senior-level managers are all on the hook. Whether indictments against all of these or only some of these people are pending is yet to be known; while their roles and deeds during the period 2012-2017 are starting to come to light thanks to the alternative media -- the MSM still won't touch these subjects with anything other than derision and ridicule ... the MSM's complicity in Spygate is still suspect, and MSM principals know that their reputation and trustworthiness will go straight to hell once the facts are known, which is a fate certain MSM organizations (NY Times and even NBC) are already trying to get in front of. The rest of the MSM organizations, such as CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC, are not yet trying to smooth the way for the final explosion the day on which most incriminating evidence is declassified, a power President Trump has delegated to AG Barr. I suspect some of these organs are going to have to publically confess and flip if they expect to retain their already-dwindling audiences.
Other than the above, I cannot speculate into the outcome of the Spygate investigations, although I certainly hold dear hopes that the truth will be exposed. I'd also love to see an investigation into the "Russian interference" charges (which I suspect were laid to give the Spygate excuses grounds for plausible deniability), and their truth or falsity established. Should it turn out that the "backgrounder" for the Spygate excuses turn out to have been a lie as well, I'm not looking forward to the day when President Trump will have to face Russian President Vladimir Putin and apologize for the slander made against the Russian government and nation, in general. But having observed President Trump for quite a while, I suspect he will do it with utmost sincerity.
Personally, I'd love to classify the actions of the Democrat party -- namely "slow-walking" a coup d'état -- as making everyone involved eligible for treason charges; but treason doesn't fit (in legal terms) well in the absence of a war; we can expect this to be thoroughly debated soon. Sedition and violations of the Espionage Act, as well as mishandling of classified information are much more suitable charges that are likely to be easy to prove. We'll have to stay tuned to alternative media (do you really think the MSM is going to report truthfully on these indictments?) for developments in order to find out. I would love nothing better than to have the ultimate responsibility and guilt land on the necks of now-private citizens HRC and Obama, and I still hold out a little hope for treason charges for these two, as their actions were so repugnant, so arrogant, so damaging, and so disloyal as to merit the Federal death penalty.
But if you take anything away from this post, remember that the Deep State doesn't exist without the human greed and excesses of the political class. This 'class' and its satellites -- the MSM, lobbyists, the various wannabes still on the outside, rebellious Marxist organizations -- need to be forever restrained and even shrunk by term limits (see previous post). Present and future generations of Americans need to know that the political class is not an honorable group of people, and that ambition to join it might be a very serious error.
Could we even dream of repeal of the Patriot Act? Of a permanent and immediate end to the police state we've been living in since 2001? I'll dream for us all, not to worry.
Like all the parts of the DS, the political class is populated by people with bills to pay, families to feed, and lifestyles ... all of which need financing. Anything that perpetuates the political class, particularly the incumbency, is good; anything which impedes or threatens the existence of the political class is evil in their eyes.
Simple faith is all it requires for membership in the political class: all one has to do is believe that this mass of people, bureaucracy and non-governmental organizations are of value to society, that its working members deserve to live off the taxpayer, and that politics is an honorable career. Not all people hold these beliefs. You're a member of the political class when you say you are.
The political class is comprised of people who believe that politics is, among other things, a valid, valuable economic field of endevor, and that office-holding is a perfectly legitimate life-long career. These people come from all political parties and, between them, hold every political ideology from the extreme right to the extreme left wing. Whether or not individuals in the political class publicly confess their deepest held ideologies is a matter of optics: it's still not acceptable for a politician, thank God, to be a Communist -- just as unacceptable is adherence to the idologies of the Ku Klux Klan or American Nazi Party. Optics apply to the exterior appearance, not to the heart, so we probably will find a very small number of closet Nazis and crypto-Communists among the ranks of the American political class.
The political class is also partially populated by a more plebian subset of person known as the wannabe. Wannabes are on the outside, holding no appointed, hired, or elected office; doing whatever they can to get closer to the incumbents. The incumbency holds all the power and wealth, the wannabes are doing all they can to get into the 'tent' and ingratiate themselves with the incumbents so that they, too, can benefit from the perquisites of wealth and power -- the goal of the self-administered professional school they just graduated. Wannabes don't get paid very well until they move up into the incumbency. The wannabe is typically very young, perhaps funded by inherited personal wealth for a least a while, idealistic and naive.
Wait a minute, you say, wealth? What kind of wealth is there to be had from the state of incumbency? I didn't want to get into this, but I've led myself into it.
First, there are the statutorily-protected paying jobs which pay quite well when compared to typical jobs in the private sector which are often filled by political patronage. Throughout the first half of the 20th Century, all government employees -- whether at the Federal, State, or municipal levels -- weren't remunerated well, nor was there any concept of job longevity; government employees were frequently hired and fired with political influence from the incumbency, making the notion of a lifelong Federal career non-existent.
Developments in the 1950s gave us government employees' unions, such as the AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees) and AFT (American Federation of Teachers). These unions, in a society which acutely remembered the Great Depression of the 1930s, negotiated for and obtained job protections which remain in force today; which make it nearly impossible to discharge a unionized Federal employee without that employee's cooperation. The long and short of this story is that we need to think of government employment as a much more secure -- and better-paid -- potential career path than could be found on the open labor market of the private sector. This is the principal membership of the Administrative State: protected individuals who can and do hold the same range of ideologies as members of the political class.
If a political wannabe ends up with a Federal General Schedule job in some deep burrow of the bureaucracy, that's okay -- it's seen as a lifelong reward for services rendered. But the wannabe really strikes pay dirt when and if she should become a campaign advisor; that's where all the untracked cash is -- at the campaign level. From working on campaign committees, the wannabe improves his chances of upward mobility by building a network of acquaintances who are all "connected" to the candidate for whom they work. Should that candidate be elected, there's often a GS job or move up the political ladder for the wannabe. Even should that candidate lose the election, there's always the next election to plan for. This is also the case for elected officials: everybody has to go out and win re-election sometime, which leads to campaigning around the clock, especially in the case of a member of the House of Representatives, who has to stand for election every two years.
The next source of funding for the political class is illicit revenue from kickback, bribery and other revenue diversion schemes resulting from outside influence and/or control. While clearly (and seriously) illegal under every penal code on the planet, an incumbent in the political class is well-protected and served by underground professionals knowledgeable in workarounds: money laundering, corrupt tax-exempt personal foundations, and other avenues known only to those who clandestinely abuse them. Corrupted politicians are much more effective to their master if they serve a lifetime -- keeping them comfortable and thus even more corruptible during their tenure is an acceptable expense of doing business for the masters of the DS. Lengthening the tenure of the corrupt is also a normal business expense, the acquisition, leverage, perpetuation and extension of power is also very important to the lobbyist footing the bill.
Not all politicians are corrupt -- only some are. Non-corrupt politicians are members of the political class, too, as are the corrupt. The lobbyists who handle the controlled corrupt are also members of the political class.
Also associated with, and often considered the propaganda arm of, the political class are the news media; their corporate ownership & management, all the way down to the function of reporter. The mainstream media (MSM) are the largest corporations who have a broad reach and large audience, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Time-Warner, Fox, and others. Alternative media, such as those seen on the Internet, are far too numerous to name, very disorganized, and usually not corporate-owned or controlled -- those who work in this segment are rarely members of the political class, but those who are, are.
Now believing I've properly measured and described the political class memberships and motivations, let's move on to an area deserving special contempt: the "free press", which enjoys special Constitutional protection from regulation through the Constitution's First Amendment. Our founding fathers clearly intended a free press to be a watchdog guarding against governmental abuses; but a very strong argument can be made that this duty has been abrogated.
The position of MSM reporter is often called 'journalist'. Journalism is a rigidly defined science which used to hold some very firm ethical positions, the first of these being that "facts go on the front page, opinions go in the Op/Ed section". Today, journalism is more or less dead, merely waiting for its coma to deteriorate to where the plug can be pulled. The patient contracted the fatal disease of sensationalism during the era of the Watergate scandal, when so-called "investigative reporting" started to earn prestigious awards and made lots of money in advertising and sales. This disease progressed to the point where it infected the journalism schools, and finally -- 40 years later -- pervaded the entire industry as an epidemic. The problem with this is that many (proportion unknown) of MSM's voting consumers have witnessed the journalistic body -- and hence, the products they produce -- falter, stumble, and go into a deep coma. I first noted the incubation of the activist strain of this disease in 1974, and have noticed the deteriorating state of journalism in general ever since.
Today, the position of "reporter" is either a very seasoned, well-paid veteran who has all the public facing duties possible -- on-air newscaster, editor, commentator -- or a young, inexperienced recent college graduate who is so desperate as to work under the most exploitative of conditions, only to face later layoffs under the "last hired, first fired" doctrine. Political developments over the past couple of decades have caused public confidence in the MSM to not just falter, but fall flat on its face as its failure to adhere to journalistic standards have become obvious. The veterans are getting less energetic, more sensitive to criticism, and are retiring due to age, which means they have to be replaced. They're being replaced by the younger "will write for food" activists who call themselves journalists.
The younger bring with them the weaknesses of youth, in particular, idealism. There's nothing wrong with idealism until one attempts to replace pragmatism -- reality -- with it. There's a word for that kind of idealist: activist. The clear trend in what passes for journalism today is that reporters are no longer journalists, but activists. Idealism brings with it a narrow-minded system of beliefs that are either untested by reality, or resulted in historical events that youths are generally not taught (see AFT) in public schools. A young left-wing activist, as a result, is prone to ignore what happens when socialism is instituted, then fails, or fails to understand that not all war is evil -- that there are worse things than death. Those pairs of eyeballs are those through which the world is reported upon by the MSM. It's exponentially worse when we consider that the MSM is struggling to retain its traditional role as the exclusive publicity filter for Capitol Hill ... things have gotten a lot worse since President Trump showed up with his Twitter account; he -- unlike his predecessors -- does not depend on a wonk Public Relations subcommittee to come up with a scripted statement for him a bit too late for timeliness, he just comes out and tweets what he thinks suits him, thus cutting the MSM out of the loop. It's no small wonder the MSM has a built-in laser focus on DJT, and would love to see him removed from office just as much as would the Democrat majority in the House.
If we project that these activists are -- as idealists will be -- attracted to left-wing ideologies, then we should not be surprised that the media is pushing 'news' stories with obvious left-wing slants. Expect it.
In 1992, what I still perceive as a major historical disaster struck the United States in the election of William Jefferson Clinton as the 42nd President of the United States. Bill, while of a questionable character himself, brought his wife -- Hillary Rodham Clinton -- with him to the White House as his "co-president" (enter disaster stage right, excuse me while I puke). Hillary quickly became Bill's "fixer". I won't walk through the sordid in-office behaviors of POTUS during the Clinton Administration -- we all pretty much know what those are; as we also know of HRC's activity in healthcare, the White House Travel Office, outside investments and other areas of controversy for eight years. When President Clinton's second term expired, Hillary ran for -- and won -- the US Senate seat that opened up on the retirement of Patrick Moynihan in New York, never mind that Hillary had never lived anywhere in the state. She and Bill moved to Chappaqua, New York in order to establish NY State residency, and Hillary's name recognition easily swept the Democrat primary and finally the general election. She served one term in the Senate, then began her own presidential campaign in 2004, which ended up defeated at the Democratic National Convention in favor of John Kerry -- who, himself, lost in the general election to an incumbent President George W. Bush. HRC was back as a Democrat candidate in 2008, only to run neck-and-neck through the National Convention with a little-known Illinois state senator named Barack Hussein Obama. Obama won the Democrat nomination under questionable circumstances (was a deal reached in a smoke-filled room?) and won the 2008 general Presidential election against Republican Mitt Romney.
Hillary was pretty upset at the treatment she'd received in her '08 candidacy from the DNC; and it all ended with her
In 2016, HRC again stood for the Democrat nomination for the Presidency, and this time won it. It seemed as if the entire political class stood firmly behind her candidacy. This time, an outsider named Donald J. Trump obtained the Republican nomination over a set of notable, yet bland, crowd of also-rans. Candidate Trump ran on a promise he called "drain the swamp", a firmly populist/nationalist platform plank the Republican Party would never have adopted absent a force like Trump -- after all, the incumbents and wannabes in the Republican party are just as invested in their livelihoods as any other political class member, irrespective of ideology. It took the DNC a long time to come to grips with the possible candidacy and electoral victory of Mr. Trump -- some of its members to this very day still do not. Most of the political class lined up behind HRC, as it was easy for them to tell what "drain the swamp" meant. Threaten my livelihood? Not in a million years! So began the demonization of then-candidate Trump in the MSM and rather vile, brand new lows in characterizations from HRC of Trump and those who'd dare to consider voting for him. The defamatory crescendo grew to a deafening level, so much so that by November 1st, 2016 all the MSM-sponsored polls gave Hillary a 90+% probability of winning. It wasn't until election night itself that the DNC's poor polling and campaigning resulted in what were -- to the political class -- total surprises portending the possible breakup of the political class' power structure and perhaps even the dislodging of the Deep State itself.
The actual election results shook the political class -- incumbents and wannabes -- to their cores. Even Republicans took active positions as "never-Trumpers" -- they, too, knew what "drain the swamp" meant. And by now the Obama Administration had some very serious problems facing them: they'd been spying on Obama's political enemies since at least 2014, if not 2010, and needed to cover all that up quickly and totally before President-elect Trump could take office. You'd think a professional team of political class members could have at least covered their tracks well and completely. But, no.
Instead, 'stories' began to be floated to and through the MSM about how the Russian Government had (oh, ever so definitely) repeatedly attempted to interfere in the 2016 election, how then-candidate Trump had been assisted (or, more commonly claimed, "stole the election") in his 2016 electoral victory, how Trump was suspected of being a Russian intelligence operative/asset, and that yes, the FBI had been investigating him since July 2016. This wave of smarmy black propaganda started in October 2016 with the background story of how the Russians had repeatedly been caught red-handed attempting to interfere in the US electoral process, although no evidence of that accusation was ever produced.
Shortly after the election, then-NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers -- a man of outstanding honesty, candor, and honor -- took it upon himself to visit President-elect Trump's transition team's HQ at Trump Tower in NYC, and in a personal conversation, relayed that the Obama Administration had been collecting signals intelligence (SIGINT: phone calls, photo surveillance) and human intelligence (HUMINT: classic spy-vs-spy activities, covert operations) against him at the Trump Tower using the secret resources of the US Government. Trump reacted by moving his transition HQ to a country club in New Jersey the very next day.
The fact that someone had spilled the beans whipped through the White House like a wildfire, and Admiral Rogers was fired as Director, NSA two days later -- the Obama illicit intelligence network knew what had happened. The scandal now known as "Spygate" was born, although it took the MSM a number of weeks to finish ridiculing the very idea, then finally ignore it, and resume their droning black propaganda campaign against DJT. Cries for his impeachment were heard long before his inauguration. Most members of the political class -- regardless of ideology -- were very hostile to the idea that their livelihoods were now seriously at risk, and began to militate against Mr. Trump long before he could even take the oath of office.
By the time Mr. Trump became President Trump, the ideological and propaganda battle lines were firmly drawn and operating at high volume with increasing frequency. However, the Democrat party had won control of neither house of Congress and was powerless to initiate any kind of investigative procedures against POTUS. Instead, those first two years were spent with the Republican Members of Congress getting used to the concept of a POTUS who really didn't eat babies as the MSM portrayed, someone they could work with, and ultimately trust, although not all Republicans became comfortable with a non-member of the political class controlling the destiny of their livelihoods. Personages like Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake were still violently opposed to Trump; perhaps due to what was personally at stake for them. Furthermore, during the 115th Congress, the minority party was joined by a surprising number of Republican never-Trumpers in the appointment of a "special counsel"; a well-known Robert Mueller who was characterized as a "good guy" by political class consensus. Mueller had been Director FBI for a full ten-year term plus two additional years at the personal pleas of then-President Barack Obama, seemed well-qualified to be special counsel, and won bi-partisan support for the position. Every Office of Special Counsel requires a mission statement, one which was neither well defined nor well publicized at its outset, then expanded in a similarly foggy environment by a temporary Director FBI whom Trump chose to promote from the swamp, Rod Rosenstein.
Fast forward to 2018, a midterm election in which the American MSM pulled out all the stops in their ongoing propaganda campaign, and through which a Republican majority in the House of Represenatives turned Democrat. No Republicans -- never-Trumpers or not -- would support any kind of censure against POTUS; but Democrats did not consider themselves so restrained. Irrational leftist fixtures of the incumbent political class such as Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Elijah Cummings (D-MI), and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) turned up the heat and volume of the Congressional sanctions machine against President Trump under the guise of "Executive Branch oversight", although it was plain by now that the true goal of the Democrat Party was impeachment and removal from office of DJT so that the DS could get back to its business of re-establishing its intel channels and other instruments of totalitarian control.
In April 2018, two of President Trump's Attorneys General had been replaced by William Barr, who'd held the same position in the Bush 41 Administration, as well as Director CIA before that. He won Senate confirmation rather easily, given a Republican majority in the Senate who recognized Bill as an "old boy" of the political class -- his confirmation glided through the Senate with fairly strong bi-partisan support. Little did the dirtier members of the political class grasp the concept that soon-to-be AG Barr is a man of principle and common sense, unafraid of repercussions of his doing whatever had to be done to (a) usher through the completion of the Special Counsel's report, and (b) enforce the law of the United States to the utmost.
The so-called Muller Report (or "Mueller Dossier", the minimum required product of any Special Counsel) was completed in May 2019, months behind any reasonable schedule yet prematurely in the eyes of the Democrat House majority, who was still trying to impeach POTUS at any cost. When AG Barr previewed the Mueller dossier in an open letter to Congress, declaring that the Special Counsel had found no evidence of collusion with the Russian Government nor any acts of Obstruction of Justice, the House Democrats blew up: their fervent assurance had been that Mueller would find something the House could hang Trump with, and now that their ace-in-the-hole had turned out to be a failed fantasy, they began lashing out in all directions; wisdom, strategy, and optics be damned. For example, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed President Trump's Federal income tax filings for the past six years; but were foiled at this rather naked attempt at skullduggery by a Federal judge as well as the Departments of Treasury and Justice. It continues to be true at this writing that the House Democrats seek to continue their poorly disguised fishing expedition by any means possible -- the only problem for them is that all the means have been exhausted; they now have to depend on President Trump taking some misstep the MSM can inflate and propagandize. It's pretty pathetic.
Now, in June 2019, we have multiple full investigations into Spygate underway, and the obvious conclusions of criminality are going to result from them, complete (hopefully) with indictments for the serious crimes associated with Obama's illicit espionage machinery. The former (Obama Administration) Director CIA (John Brennan), Director NSA (James Clapper), Director FBI (James Comey), Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton), Attorneys General (Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch), and subordinate senior-level managers are all on the hook. Whether indictments against all of these or only some of these people are pending is yet to be known; while their roles and deeds during the period 2012-2017 are starting to come to light thanks to the alternative media -- the MSM still won't touch these subjects with anything other than derision and ridicule ... the MSM's complicity in Spygate is still suspect, and MSM principals know that their reputation and trustworthiness will go straight to hell once the facts are known, which is a fate certain MSM organizations (NY Times and even NBC) are already trying to get in front of. The rest of the MSM organizations, such as CNN, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC, are not yet trying to smooth the way for the final explosion the day on which most incriminating evidence is declassified, a power President Trump has delegated to AG Barr. I suspect some of these organs are going to have to publically confess and flip if they expect to retain their already-dwindling audiences.
Other than the above, I cannot speculate into the outcome of the Spygate investigations, although I certainly hold dear hopes that the truth will be exposed. I'd also love to see an investigation into the "Russian interference" charges (which I suspect were laid to give the Spygate excuses grounds for plausible deniability), and their truth or falsity established. Should it turn out that the "backgrounder" for the Spygate excuses turn out to have been a lie as well, I'm not looking forward to the day when President Trump will have to face Russian President Vladimir Putin and apologize for the slander made against the Russian government and nation, in general. But having observed President Trump for quite a while, I suspect he will do it with utmost sincerity.
Personally, I'd love to classify the actions of the Democrat party -- namely "slow-walking" a coup d'état -- as making everyone involved eligible for treason charges; but treason doesn't fit (in legal terms) well in the absence of a war; we can expect this to be thoroughly debated soon. Sedition and violations of the Espionage Act, as well as mishandling of classified information are much more suitable charges that are likely to be easy to prove. We'll have to stay tuned to alternative media (do you really think the MSM is going to report truthfully on these indictments?) for developments in order to find out. I would love nothing better than to have the ultimate responsibility and guilt land on the necks of now-private citizens HRC and Obama, and I still hold out a little hope for treason charges for these two, as their actions were so repugnant, so arrogant, so damaging, and so disloyal as to merit the Federal death penalty.
But if you take anything away from this post, remember that the Deep State doesn't exist without the human greed and excesses of the political class. This 'class' and its satellites -- the MSM, lobbyists, the various wannabes still on the outside, rebellious Marxist organizations -- need to be forever restrained and even shrunk by term limits (see previous post). Present and future generations of Americans need to know that the political class is not an honorable group of people, and that ambition to join it might be a very serious error.
Could we even dream of repeal of the Patriot Act? Of a permanent and immediate end to the police state we've been living in since 2001? I'll dream for us all, not to worry.
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