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What "deep state"? The military, the intelligence agencies, and the billionaires all already love Trump. Who else is left?
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Dec 12, 2016 15:27
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:40 |
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tekz posted:The term doesn't mean what you seem to think it means. You can call it the military-industrial-intelligence complex if you want, but no they're not going to coup Trump lol. There might be a lot of bureaucratic infighting though. Squalid posted:The term deep state was created to refer to the network within the Turkish government responsible for the nation's numerous coups and military conspiracies, and is useful for describing circumstances in several other states like Greece for example prior to the establishment of its military junta in the late 1960s. The analogy becomes very tenuous however when extended to the United States. "Deep state" has a lot of meanings, all of which boil down to "the shadowy conspiracy that a) secretly controls the country from the shadows regardless of who the nominal leader is, or b) is secretly responsible for all dissent against our country's glorious leader and is constantly scheming to undermine or overthrow our great government". It's basically a genericized conspiracy theory. In places like Egypt or Turkey, it generally holds meaning B, while in the US it usually is used for meaning A.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:00
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Thug Lessons posted:Pointing out that even liberal democracies contain undemocratic elements that are capable of independent action outside of the control of that nation's leaders is not a conspiracy theory. Of course they do. Claiming that those undemocratic elements are secretly colluding in a largely-unknown shadow government that controls everything in the country, on the other hand, is absolutely a conspiracy theory. tekz posted:That's a simplistic and moronic view. Mike Lofgren wrote an excellent book on this, here's an excerpt: http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state/ For example, this link. This is Conspiracy Theory 101. He points to basically every entity with any political influence at all, both inside and outside the government...and mishmashes them together into a "secret and unaccountable Deep State", which has been in complete and utter control of government to the point where it basically is the government, except when a heroic Tea Partier talks about maybe perhaps considering rolling back a law, at which point the Deep State teeters on the edge of complete destruction at the hands of those brave radicals rebelling against the evils of political consensus (which he compares to Marxism). It's one thing to say that the military-industrial complex has too much influence; it's another thing entirely to assert that "terror" is actually a secret code word used by Congressional leadership to pass along voting orders from their shadowy masters.
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Dec 12, 2016 23:45
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Gail Wynand posted:You're assuming that the normal rules still apply. They don't. It would be folly to assume that everyone in the IC will stand idly by as Trump's Gleichschaltung happens. Sure the FBI is in Trump's pocket but I doubt the CIA, NSA, and State intelligence among others are on board. Let's also remember the CIA has a huge special forces arm. Why would this be any different from any of the other times Presidents have poo poo all over the Constitution?
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Dec 13, 2016 00:30
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Gail Wynand posted:Your scenario of debilitating leaks is the most likely one assuming Trump doesn't attempt a purge. I could see an attempt at his own personal Night of the Long Knives (with fewer corpses and more arrests/firings) triggering a coup. Conway has already suggested a purge of the IC is planned. In order to fire people who aren't politically reliable, he has to be able to reliably identify people who aren't politically reliable, and the lower you go the more difficult this gets, especially when you're seen as hostile towards the agency or undermining the agency. And arrests? It's not like Trump has a folder full of blackmail material on intelligence officials, and he can't very well order them to investigate themselves. The problem with the "debilitating leaks" scenario is that it assumes there's anything they could leak that could damage his legitimacy any more than the stuff he already does openly with no attempt to hide it. Unless they catch him personally murdering someone on video, I don't think anything would really stick - and even then, he might get away with it depending on the skin color and socioeconomic status of the victim. Donald Trump isn't going to destroy our democracy. He doesn't need to. He's not going to undermine the military or the intel agencies, because they're not a serious threat to him - they might push back against specific policies, but they won't take overt action against his entire presidency.
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Dec 13, 2016 17:15
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deathbysnusnu posted:I think public opinion will have a lot to say when it comes to whether or not democratic norms get smashed in the next 4 years in some kind of new flexing of power to stop Trump. If Trump is sitting at a 20% approval rating and an 80% intensely disapprove rating (unrealistic I know), the more likely a coup that stops an obviously terrible action by Trump seems. If Trump started tweeting out right now that he's going to bomb China day one in office, people would get real creative to stop him from getting there. If it's just the slow decline in civil liberties and expectations that government do something other than loot public infrastructure and resources , we'll probably just tolerate it. 20% approval isn't unrealistic at all - Truman, Nixon, Carter, and both Bushes all got within a few points of that. Notice that coups typically did not happen as a result. If he loses and alleges voter fraud, no one - not even his own appointees - will buy it. No one's going to stick their necks out for the sake of a candidate who can't even rig the polls properly. Look at the NC governor's race for an example of how that goes.
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Dec 13, 2016 20:28
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 01:40 |
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Gail Wynand posted:Anyway, here's another point. If people in the CIA and military really believe that Putin has installed Trump in power aren't they honor bound to try to coup him? No, of course not. Whatever meddling may have happened, Trump is the legally-elected president, and everybody knew about his poorly-concealed Russian ties when they voted for him. If he wants to change US foreign policy and cozy up to our rivals and enemies, it's his right as president, just like how Obama didn't get couped by the CIA for signing the Iran deal or normalizing relations with Cuba.
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Dec 14, 2016 16:36
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