We live in a time when conspiracy theories abound. Two words often utilized in these narratives are the ‘deep state’, a robust, unelected and unaccountable group of presidency officials. But unlike many conspiracies, it’s widely acknowledged that it does exist. What varies is whether or not it is taken into account to exist for the nice of a rustic, or for sick.
Definitions of the term vary. It can mean anything from officious, controlling civil servants equivalent to those portrayed within the ever relevant British comedy ‘Yes Minister’, to sinister networks controlling governments against the desires of the people.
The secretive nature of the latter signifies that an extraordinary person cannot know the extent to which they exist in real life or simply within the imagination of conspiracy theorists.
In the US there’s about to be a president who believes that the bureaucracy seeks to work against him, and that it should go. Donald Trump has said that he plans to “dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington corruption” using a series of measures that may allow him to fireplace civil servants and supposedly improve accountability of intelligence services.
“Faceless bureaucrats won’t ever again give you the chance to persecute conservatives, Christians or the left’s political enemies,” he said.
Although he didn’t give examples, he is probably referring to incidents equivalent to the revelations that the FBI has been categorising traditionalist Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists.
Switching sides, and from an anti-Trump perspective, then the ‘deep state’ is a positive means to stop catastrophe. Historian Margaret O Mara, at the very least, agrees with the incoming president that it exists, nevertheless she believes that it’s thing as it could keep an erring leader in check. She wrote an article for the New York Times in 2019 entitled: “The ‘Deep State’ Exists to Battle People Like Trump.”
She continued: “Far from being a tool of political corruption, the Civil Service was created to be an antidote to the very form of corruption and self-dealing that seems to plague this administration.”
An article in The Atlantic argues that the ‘deep state’ prevented Trump from interfering within the Covid response in a way that will have been harmful.
Seen on this light, a robust, independent executive is a bulwark against extremist leaders who get elected by the populace. Given that many Americans do consider that Trump is such a frontrunner, it’s comprehensible that they’d support those that work against his plans, even in the event that they should not capable of be held accountable by the electorate.
Yet Vice President-elect JD Vance makes the purpose that to ensure that democracy to operate, i.e. for the people to have their will enacted, then the president should be held accountable by elected and visual actors reasonably than unseen bureaucrats.
“The president recognises that if you’ve gotten people in your government who you tell do something and so they disobey you, that is not like checks and balances,” said Vance in a pre-election interview with Tucker Carlson.
“They’re a part of your government. The checks and balances are the home, the senate and the judiciary. If the people in your government aren’t obeying you, you’ve gotten to switch them.”
He cites the instance of public support for mass deportations, and predicts that the ‘deep state’ will oppose this and co-ordinate a press campaign against such actions, though it’s the desire of the people and one in every of the explanations that Trump was elected.
Like so many political questions on this era of the ‘culture wars’, the way you view the ‘deep state’ depends from which perspective you come from, and whether you perceive Trump and his policies positively or negatively.
Does the ‘deep state’ exist outside the US?
According to conservative journalist Rod Dreher, the ‘deep state’ was liable for the recent pulling of the elections in Romania to stop Georgescu gaining power. Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss claimed the ‘deep state’ worked against her during her very transient period in power.
But within the UK, it has long been widely acknowledged that the civil service works against the desires of elected politicians, mainly as a result of the recognition of the hilarious UK TV series “Yes, Minister”. In this series, a hapless minister was usually thwarted in his great plans for policy and promotion by the infamous civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby. The character was played to perfection by the late Nigel Hawthorne, who portrayed a servile deference to the elected minister while at all times scheming for one of the best interests of the civil service itself, and typically the established order.
Former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is reported to have loved the programme and said “its clearly-observed portrayal of what goes on within the corridors of power has given me hours of pure joy”.
It’s not only the Tory government who had this experience. According to politico Steve Hilton, former Prime Minister Tony Blair said of civil servants: “You cannot underestimate how much they consider it’s their job to really run the country and to withstand the changes recommend by people they dismiss as ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politicians. They genuinely see themselves because the true guardians of the national interest, and think that their job is solely to wear you down and wait you out.”
So it just isn’t in dispute that unelected powerful bureaucracies provide resistance to an elected politician. However perceptions seem to differ, depending on whether the person perceiving them agrees with their politics. Shouldn’t or not it’s necessary that the means by which power is checked are visible and accountable to the general public?
At a time of rising division and a lack of expertise between political ‘sides’ of liberal and conservative, Republican and Democrat, the muse upon which we run our countries is prone to face significant challenges. Could or not it’s that these fundamental political differences and the ‘culture wars’ are the principal reason to be concerned about our future, reasonably than the means by which they’re acted out in government?
Heather Tomlinson is a contract Christian author. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com or via X (Twitter) @heathertomli.
