Understanding The Blob

The term “deep state” remains a popular way for newly awakened normies to think of how their government operates. It is not the people on the ballot at election time who are running things, but a shadowy cabal of people who operate outside the bounds of the political system. Whenever something goes wrong, they naturally assume it is the work of the deep state. The problem is that the deep state, as most people imagine it, does not exist. It is a useful fiction.

The dismantling of USAID is a good example. The reporting on it in the unofficial media made it seem as if this entity was controlling large swaths of the government, when in fact it was just a money laundering scheme. Instead of cleaning cash acquired through illegal means, it put government cash in the hands of media activists, lobbyists, not-for-profits, and policy shops tied to permanent Washington. It was a clearing house and networking hub for permanent Washington.

In a way, the economy of permanent Washington is something like the economies of ancient city states. Those city states operated what is called palace economies where agricultural products flowed into the palace of the ruler and were then distributed back to the populace as needed. Farmers, craftsmen, and traders maintained their own economy, but a substantial portion of their economic output flowed into the palace to be redistributed as the ruler saw fit.

That is how USAID functioned. It got tens of billions from Congress and used some of that to draw in tens of billions more from other sources in the government and private donors, which it then directed to friendly sources. This was not a formal scheme where they sat around in a hollowed-out volcano figuring out how to use the money to further their evil agenda. It was more like an extended network of friends who networked within this large community, underwritten by tax money.

Imagine if the Church of Scientology had infiltrated the government. Members got positions in the administrative state and the political system. They then directed money to organizations run by fellow cult members. Those organizations then used some of the money to lobby for more money from the system in the form of government contracts, but also by influence peddling to private actors. They would then organize these resources to control public policy.

That is the nature of the “deep state.” The people in it do not think of themselves as part of the deep state. From their perspective, they are just normal people working in the media, government, politics, and policy. Everyone they know is a normal person working in one of these areas. This is how they know they are normal and the people talking about the deep state are not normal. All the normal people they know agree with them that the deep state is a conspiracy theory.

As an example, look at the LinkedIn profile of Maggie Mitchell Salem, the current Executive Director of something called IRIS. That stands for Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services. It is an open borders not-for-profit located in Connecticut with a fifteen-million-dollar budget. According to the organization’s website, “IRIS inspired and is one of the seven organizations implementing a new national resettlement program, Welcome Corps.” They want your town full of Somalis.

Now, if you scan down Mx. Salem’s resume, you see that open borders is a new advocation for her. Five years ago, she was the Executive Director of something called the Qatar Foundation International. According to their website, they promote learning the Arabic language, using donations from the Qatari government. That is nonsense, of course, as its real purpose is to buy influence in Washington. They hire people like Mx. Salem to put their money in the right hands.

We know this from a story in the Tablet. According to that report, Mx. Salem was writing anti-Saudi stories for a man named Jamal Khashoggi, who was supposedly a Saudi journalist working for the Washington Post. He was a dissident, in that he did not like new ruler of Saudi Arabia. The Qataris do not like the Saudis, so they paid Mx. Salem to handle Mr. Khashoggi to place anti-Saudi material in the hometown newspaper of the Imperial Capital, the Washington Post.

If you scan down further in Mx. Salem’s resume, you will learn that she started out in life as a foreign service officer, stationed in Tel Aviv. You will note that technically, USAID was under the supervision of the State Department. Mx. Salem used her government job to cultivate friendships in the Middle East and in Washington, so that one day she could get one of those good jobs at good wages in the deep state. By all accounts, the Qataris are very generous with their American friends.

Eventually, the Saudis grew tired of seeing anti-Saudi material in the hometown newspaper of the Imperial Capital, so they kidnapped Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul and then chopped him up in their consulate. One of the reasons the Saudis are planning for a post-America world is they have grown weary of the perfidy of the deep state, which will fink on anyone for money. This is a feature of managerialism. Everyone is for sale, so anyone can buy what they want from the deep state.

This level of bungling by Mx. Salem in the dreaded private sector would have resulted in termination and banishment from the industry, but in the deep state where everyone knows your name, it is a minor bump in the road. She bounced over to the immigration rackets before getting a job in the Biden years running a not-for-profit in Tunisia and then back into the immigration rackets. The lines between the government and those who lobby the government are never very clear.

What you see in this one example is how the managerial state operates like a community that rules over the country. It is why voting does not matter, as the people running the thousands of entities that make up the system are always going to be people who have as their top priority the preservation of their class. It is not a deep state so much as a broad state that overlays everything. Every silo of power is controlled by people who believe the same things.

This is why the first bullet out of the Trump barrel this time was at USAID. It is also why they are attacking elite colleges like Harvard. These are important nodes of a system that organized the antibodies against him the first time. It is why they have systematically broken up the media connections within the government. The point is to destabilize and dismember this broad community of people who operate as the unofficial government of the American empire.

It sounds like an impossible task, given the tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of people who make up this blob. The Khashoggi story, however, points to something else about this system. It is has grown increasingly incompetent and corrupt since the end of the Cold War. Hard times breed hard men and easy times breed perfidious women incapable of maintaining the structures of power. Trump is a symptom of a system that is collapsing in on itself.


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Mycale
Mycale
17 days ago

“Imagine if the Church of Scientology had infiltrated the government. Members got positions in the administrative state and the political system. They then directed money to organizations run by fellow cult members. Those organizations then used some of the money to lobby for more money from the system in the form of government contracts, but also by influence peddling to private actors. They would then organize these resources to control public policy.”

haha yea imagine if some religious group with extremely high in-group preference took control of our government and did all that that would really suck haha just imagine…

Last edited 17 days ago by Mycale
TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

Point taken.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

Another gate to keep.

Tired Citizen
Tired Citizen
Reply to  Mycale
16 days ago

Every. Single. Time…

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Mycale
15 days ago

Give me time, dude, my imagination needs time to fire up.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

Having experience with the Blob in my youth, it’s difficult to explain the level of ideological uniformity within the system. There were simply no alternative mindsets within it because the people allowed into the Blob were so stunningly similar in personality and outlook. They were the same person. Even the few flyover whites who managed to get into the Blob were the same. Indeed, they were the most loyal as they hated the local hillbillies of their childhood. Of course, this is their Achilles’ Heel. They can’t understand what is happening because our thoughts, our ideas never penetrate their world… Read more »

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

Can attest. It goes a large way toward explaining why the Deep State has become so ossified and dysfunctional, too. The world outside of D.C./D.C. mindset changed dramatically but those within the sphere remained the same.

Barney Rubble
Barney Rubble
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Agreed. In my mind, a Venn Diagram of the drivers of the Deep State would consist of two overlapping circles: the dirty money rackets and the broad policy consensus. It’s not just the uniparty…it’s a set of shared assumptions & worldview (globalist, functionally progressive) of everyone who matters in all the institutions. Working-level flunkies in the bureaucracy never question it. It’s like a fish questioning the water in which they swim. I always think of Z’s point that it’s who, not how, that matters. Imagine a Deep State populated by people who think like Pat Buchanan, and who see it… Read more »

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Barney Rubble
17 days ago

There was a seminal book written in 1968, THE CENTER, about how the imperial capitol worked. I read it about ten years back. Recommended. The operational model was brilliantly explained, and you see it employed almost identically today even though the world sort of changed over the last sixty years. “Bubble” doesn’t even come close to describing this situation. These people think they are fighting Lester Maddox and George Wallace.

Chris
Chris
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Do you have an author by chance? I can’t seem to find it anywhere, even at places like Second Sale. Thank you.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Chris
17 days ago

Stewart Alsop.

It is wild that rather than describing a world in the distant past it comes across more as a contemporary user’s manual.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Stewart Alsop was a closet homosexual who was seduced by a KGB male agent once while the Soviets filmed the encounter. He was also the man who pushed LBJ into appointing the Warren Commission. At one time, he was one of the most influential journalists in the US.

As such, he was able to do something that most would never consider. Alsop turned around and went to his friends in the USGOV like Dulles and Wisner and admitted that the Soviets had homosexual blackmail on him, and was even more eager now to hup-hup-hup along to any instructions from Uncle.

Last edited 17 days ago by Emmanuel_Thoreau
Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

I don’t know if you read THE CENTER, but it oozes love and affection for the system to the point of religious reverence.

Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Stewart OR Joseph Alsop?

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Dr. Dre
16 days ago

Stewart. Joseph was not homosexual. He embarrassed himself during Vietnam (Joe) in Georgetown many times, however, and by the late 1970s, the Alsops — who just 15 years before had incredible power in DC — were just specters hanging around Pam Harriman’s salon.

Chris
Chris
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Once again, thanks!

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

comment image

Mister we could use a man like Lester Maddox again.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

But I honestly don’t know how you’d ever change it. Even if you tried to overhaul it, the nature of the jobs would drive out anyone who thinks differently. The Blob can only be killed, not reformed. But the nature of DC would immediately set to recreate it.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

This sounds crazy, but a Constantinople solution might–might–save it. Simply relocate the capitol to, say, Houston. I don’t think the GAE could be sustained as long as Byzantium, to be clear. That is sort of killing it.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Simply relocate the capitol to, say, Houston.”

Might I suggest Amundsen-Scott?

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

They wouldn’t be any less hunkered down in the bunker there.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

OK, how about Leavenworth?

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

It would definitely help to break it up physically. Dept of Ag in Kansas City. Labor in Cleveland. State Dept in Albany. Flyover country and smaller cities.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Not Houston, but a place like Omaha, Indianapolis or Des Moines.

ray'
ray'
Reply to  TempoNick
17 days ago

Yep. Make it brutal for them to organize. They’ll LOVE Midwestern winters in their trailers.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  ray'
17 days ago

Washington DC is not exactly a pleasant place in any time of year.

Paintersforms
Paintersforms
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Might as well be Detroit if Canada is the 51st state. Pretty empty canvas to paint on, too. Joking! I think.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Paintersforms
17 days ago

Too many blacks. You’ll have another DC before you know it.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

There is a “Deep State” in every country. In fact, I think the term was originally meant to describe the govt of Turkey. However, the US deep state is unlike anything that has come before. It is sustained essentially by the US dollar. There has never been a international monetary system like the current one, where the reserve currency is pure fiat and there is an endless flow of dollars. The fall of the US dollar will kill the US Deep State as it currently exists.

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

My grad school program in DC was a farm system for The Blob and it was definitely the flyover types most determined to ingratiate themselves with their fellow drones. I discovered that a classmate of mine (of course he was a donut puncher) was from the same neck of upstate NY as me. When I asked him about it he gave me a blank stare and looked like he wanted to bolt from the room in shame. These are types that thrill at the idea of forcing the blessings of diversity into their former neighborhoods.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  KGB
17 days ago

Yes. These types are to be pitied, really.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

If by pity, you mean “Violently defeat, throw down from their positions, and force into exile for their traitorous behavior,” I am right with you.

iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  roo_ster
17 days ago

I like the cut of your jib rooster

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  roo_ster
15 days ago

That’s a lot of empathy you packed in their, dude! 🙂

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  KGB
17 days ago

The middle-class flyover types trying to get into the Blob were generally like the character Tracy Flick from the movie Election. Of course, there were a fair amount of wealthy flyover types who went to nice public high schools or private schools in the Midwest or Far West. They weren’t quite as pushy as the middle-class strivers as they felt a bit more at home with the East/West Coast elites, but they still retained their dislike of their fellow flyover whites. Regardless, the personality types were overall pretty similar. They had to be. Any normal person wouldn’t want to be… Read more »

(((They))) Live
(((They))) Live
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

Our World is now run by Tracy Flick, at the time I assumed she was based on Hillary

Good film BTW

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

One of our most important questions is: to what extent is the upper class whites’ hatred of flyover whites inborn versus how much is induced by the media.

I pray that most of it is induced because the alternative makes white solidarity nearly impossible.

Perhaps most of our ethnocentric alphas were slain in the wars of the last century and we’re left with self-interested detritus. I sure hope not.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

My working hypothesis is that in whites it is mostly induced, while in jews it is mostly inborn

NoName
NoName
Reply to  KGB
17 days ago

What’s a donut pusher?

Or do I even want to know the answer to that question?

Ketchup-stained Griller
Ketchup-stained Griller
Reply to  NoName
17 days ago

…In other words the pitcher, not the catcher.??

KGB
KGB
Reply to  Ketchup-stained Griller
16 days ago

“Social club? He’s gotta go!”

Whitney
Member
Reply to  NoName
17 days ago

I googled it. It’s what you think

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Whitney
15 days ago

One of the greatest marketing triumphs of all time was persuading normies that doughnut pushing was not only normal but too be encouraged.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

This ideological uniformity mirrors precisely the ideologal uniformity of academia. That is hardly coincidental inasmuch as the Blob’s inmates all matriculated through the academy, and a high percentage of them through its elite nodes. This being the case, punishing academia severely will be a necessary component of any plan to vanquish the Blob.

Dr_Mantis_Tobbogan_MD
Member
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

The blob is the game of Jewish geography, which is of course the game of “who do you know?” Laughs aside, it reminds me of the distinction in the Mafia about a “friend of ours” and a “friend of mine,” with “ours” being a “made” man and “mine” being an associate. The “made” men always help the other “made” men and you can’t kill a “made” man without approval of a boss. Associates can always be whacked with little warning and little approval from the bosses required. These people live next to each other in that hellscape of D.C. with… Read more »

Robbo
Robbo
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
15 days ago

That’s why Blobs throughout history always fail: they lose touch with reality and get their heads chopped off. The current blob is facing that dilemma.

Xman
Xman
17 days ago

The Deep State does exist within the MIC and law enforcement, but it is a different entity than the Blob of shitlibs, strivers and busybodies that control the elite class. The analogy with Scientology is a good one — the elite class operates like a cult and to be a member of it you must adhere to its belief system, norms and attitudes. You do not get ahead an America by knowing or accomplishing things, you gat ahead by knowing the right people and having the right attitudes and joining this cult. This is the great divide that separates practical,… Read more »

Felix Krull
Member
Reply to  Xman
17 days ago

The purpose of undergraduate college was to do bong hits with the judge’s son, the congressman’s sons, and the police lieutenant’s daughter

TFW you belatedly realize that the most important task at uni was volunteering in the student bar on Fridays.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
17 days ago

The problem is that the deep state, as most people imagine it, does not exist. It is a useful fiction. Operative there is “imagine.” People intuit correctly, though. The Deep State is the only state. Elections and “public officials” are window dressing. Maybe there was a time when there was actual public input into government, but that is long passed. The Administrative State, probably the more accurate description, controls all aspects of government. It is why reform likely is impossible. People don’t want to turn over the applecart while they are warm and fed, but when the day comes that… Read more »

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Agreed, with the exception that is not a Cloward-Piven strategy, which would have been to increase funding to USAID until USG could simply not afford to keep doing so.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Point taken.

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

So call it a “Reverse Cloward Piven” strategy.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

I agree with your logic, but it’s scary to think how high funding would get before USG could no longer afford it.

TedX
TedX
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Agreed on the “Administrative State” which is why I highly recommend the following 2 books which predicted it almost 90 years ago:

‘The Managerial Revolution’ by James Burnham
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.17923/page/n3/mode/2up

‘The Technological Society’ by Jacques Elul
https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  TedX
17 days ago

I’ve read Burnham but thanks for the Elul recommendation. Related and along these lines, Michels’ IRON LAW OF OLIGARCHY, which predates them and even Wilson’s introduction of the administrative state, was quite visionary.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Why does Z Man have this persistent need to assert that the deep state doesn’t exist but “permanent Washington” and the Blob do? It’s a distinction without a difference that he feels the need to protect.

My best guess as to his motivation is that, for him, the term “deep state” implies an active malevolence towards traditional whites while permanent Washington and the Blob just want “the preservation of their class.”

For some reason, Z Man wants to protect permanent Washington and the Blob from being seen as hating traditional whites.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

I noticed he qualified with “imagine it,” which is not quite the same as saying it doesn’t exist. The Deep States simultaneously does hate whites as a group and wants to protect its class, to be clear.

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

The heart of the Deep State is not penny ante outfits like USAID, it is the DoD and the myriad intelligence agencies. They are the product of the American Empire that developed during and after WWII. I have not seen that Trump is inclined to cut back any of that stuff, except DEI (he wants to throw another $150 billion at the DoD). He has failed to negotiate an end to the disastrous Ukraine War and has escalated our military commitment to Israel. He wants to take Greenland by force, if necessary. I guess it’s no fun to be emperor… Read more »

RealityRules
RealityRules
Reply to  Dutchboy
17 days ago

None of us know for certain what is true. Logic dictates that they are all serving the same interests though each faction has its own motivation. There is no doubt that the fundamental goal of this new Carthage is to eradicate nations – particularly the nations whose history entails massive bloodshed in order to secure an ordered liberty and fight tyranny. This enables them to enact total replacism. Every sack of flash can be reallocated, redistributed and/or liquidated anywhere to squeeze more blood from the rocks. At the same time, all identity is erased and replaced with appetite for temporary… Read more »

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Dutchboy
17 days ago

Except that the “the DoD and the myriad intelligence agencies“ are precisely where we do want our tax dollars to go. We want better weapons than anyone else, so that no one will even dream of attacking us. And we want better intel & communications than anyone else, so that we can know well ahead of time precisely who will be attacking us, and how successful their plans will eventually prove to be. What we don’t want are perfidious little would-be-Napoleonic parasites, ostensible brothers-in-arms, who secretly yearn to suck the blood right out of the nation. Having a powerful and… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  NoName
17 days ago

“Once dissemblance & mendacity become the coin of the realm, our situation quickly deteriorates into the untenable.” And such seems to describe our MIC. Trump seems to confuse “increased budget” with increased “effectiveness”. When I see the progress wrt military prowess of our sworn adversaries who fund their militaries on funding that amounts to a small percentage of our current military budget, I can’t see where feeding the beast is the best place to start shoring up our declining military. Perhaps we need to take a lesson from private business here. First replace the management, reorganize the business, then go… Read more »

Lakelander
Lakelander
Reply to  NoName
17 days ago

“Except that the “the DoD and the myriad intelligence agencies“ are precisely where we do want our tax dollars to go” It seems to me we have been shoveling our tax dollars to the MIC for decades without much to show for it. No hypersonic missiles, aging and increasingly ineffective air defenses (See the Houthis strike on Ben Gurion Airport), grossly overpriced and vulnerable aircraft (F-35), but at least they have a panoply of diverse flag officers! I would agree that we want our tax dollars going towards a strong military and defenses, but not while the current national security blob remains… Read more »

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  NoName
17 days ago

No powerful group anywhere anytime can resist helping itself to just a little bit extra, eventually leading to corruption and contributing to the whole system falling apart. Human Nature 101: kill the Golden goose because you’re sure there’s a wealth of eggs inside it.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
17 days ago

You may be right, but it makes any attempt at reform futile.

Stephanie
Stephanie
Reply to  Dutchboy
17 days ago

So much for ‘No War’, even the left doesn’t believe that bs anymore. There is always a war going on and you should decide, by the grace of God, to win it.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Because he is harmonizing this with managerialism and emergent behavior. I agree with an implication of the middle paragraph, but nowhere does the last paragraph appear in his works – he regularly writes about this animus.
Z argues society is akin to a computer system. I disagree, but the distinction is not one without difference, particularly when written in the context of a larger belief system.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Eh. That’s a bit harsh. Usually, when Z writes about the Blob, his primary concern is delineating its organizational structure and its modus operandi. But that does not mean it doesn’t espouse an ideology and work its wiles against whites. As the case of this Salem witch demonstrates, a key imperative of the Blob is to submerge whites in a sea of mud via open-borders initiatives. Z pointed that out. And, in other pieces, he has discussed the more general anti-white agenda.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Why does Z Man have this persistent need to assert that the deep state doesn’t exist but “permanent Washington” and the Blob do?”

I also had the same reaction. A distinction without a difference is how it struck me.


Pozymandias
Reply to  TempoNick
17 days ago

“Deep State” and “The Blob” conjure up different associations for me. A deep state would be a highly structured and hierarchical and covert thing existing within the overt state. It might even have some of the same personnel playing drastically different roles in each. A file clerk in the overt state might be the director of an entire agency in the covert one. The Blob is something much different (and probably more sinister). It’s a hive mind that seems to coordinate its efforts without obvious hierarchy or chain of command relying on something that looks like telepathy. A deep state… Read more »

c matt
c matt
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Maybe the aversion to the term Deep State is the implication it is all government actors. I’m fine with the term, and the op seems to use it interchangeably with blob, managerial state, admin state, etc.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  c matt
17 days ago

Maybe the aversion to the term Deep State is the implication it is all government actors. “

This is how I took it too. Every time I see “Deep State” it involves some sort of obvious MAGA hat fan theory that always high personal/paranoid and misunderstands how the world works.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Wiffle
17 days ago

I hadn’t thought of that before: affirm permanent Washington and the Blob but disavow the existence of the deep state to disavow Q-Anon, which any observant person would want to do.

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

He feels a deadline pressure every single day. That’s another reasonable explanation, which I’ve often thought about. He can’t score a home run every single day.

But what you just wrote makes a lot of sense too. It’s a self-organizing system with a lot of resilience, but not as much coordination as we often assume, despite the appearance of it if you follow the lying media.

Last edited 17 days ago by Tom K
Stephanie
Stephanie
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Because they laugh at you thinking there are somebodies in control of the blob and steering it’s will. They compare it to you thinking a virus is alive and has will like a human does.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Because Zman is not a hu-ight nationalist and is, in his own way, a gatekeeper. A deep state / managerial state with hatred toward hu-ights is deserving of violence in response (destruction) and forcible expulsion of all its creatures and especially its tens of millions of pets. Probably 100MM total. So downplaying that is helpful to gate-keeping. Zman’s bipolar points for years have been: “All we need to do is regain freedom of association.” (manic) and then, “There is no fixing the system.” (depressive). The first is a cope & the second is correct, but Zman shies away from the… Read more »

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  roo_ster
17 days ago

Not sure where he ever said, “All we need is free association.” He talked about the death of free association as the cudgel we are beaten with, and he also discusses the only way forward is separation. But I don’t believe what you said is true, at all.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  Eloi
17 days ago

You have not been paying attention. It has been a common theme of his. I happen to agree that freedom of association is a Good Thing and that loss of it was a tragedy. But regaining it won’t cure what ails us & thinking it will is a cope to avoid needful Badthought. Zman’s depressive take is, sadly, the more accurate.

DLS
DLS
Reply to  roo_ster
17 days ago

That’s harsh. Zman is not responsible for the problems he describes, and talk of violence is an easy-pass to the gulag. Saying “there is no fixing the system” implies overthrowing the system.

roo_ster
Member
Reply to  DLS
17 days ago

You misspelled “a reasonable take, given his output over the years,” using the letters H A R S and H. Common error. Where did I claim Zman is responsible for this mess? I enjoy his writing, but that does not preclude reading it with a gimlet eye. I enjoyed WF Buckley’s writing, too, especially the supercilious turns of phrase. After he wrote his literary stab in the back WRT Buchanan & Sobran, that did not keep me from reading his work carefully and making observations annoying to WFB’s fanbois.

Ben the Layabout
Ben the Layabout
Reply to  DLS
17 days ago

Not necessarily. The the system may well collapse of its own accord. Merely being one of the survivors might make you a winner.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  Ben the Layabout
17 days ago

Modern America is full of rebels who have to “do something”. Even before Christianity, there’s advise to wait by the river for your enemies to float down by it. Christianity only doubles that advise. We’re clearly in the red gaseous state of Deep State/blob whatever.

iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

I took him to mean that deep state implies some group that operates under cover whereas he says it’s structural and at every level so not really separate and apart. Seems like a trivial difference but if you’re brain storming how to approach this issue, the deep state would mean rooting out a few bad actors. Fixing the permanent Washington problem means burning the entire thing to the ground.

Pozymandias
Reply to  iForgotmyPen
17 days ago

I just posted a very similar idea above. Hopefully, it’ll be out of approval jail soon.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

Back when “deep state” was a political-science term of art* I avoided using it because “state” carries the implication that it’s an institution—subject to reform, or not—not a list of names. The regime is just people who know each other and hate you, I know enough of them to know. (Yes, they pay each other with our money. It’s a given—their right. It’s not a motivation. We are born in infinite debt to them, in every sense, they believe. Most of them believe it consciously. Z’s wrong about this.) Now I avoid “deep state” because it’s a dipshit shibboleth. “Managerialism”… Read more »

bunions
bunions
Reply to  Hemid
17 days ago

Logos means “organising principle” rather than “the word”.

Stephanie
Stephanie
Reply to  LineInTheSand
17 days ago

To be fair, systems do create blobs, a soul less machine that runs with no one in charge. Then it goes haywire and no one can get a handle on it, and here we are.

Frip
Member
Reply to  LineInTheSand
16 days ago

Why does Z Man have this persistent need to assert that the deep state doesn’t exist.”

It’s likely just a writer’s way of kickstarting a piece…a take…on a subject by presenting something to argue about. In the case of the deep state, he presents a semantic. So he can either literalize or metaphorilize the term, in order to expound on how, “It’s not really that. It’s this.”

Tars Tarkas
Member
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

To me, Deep State is an excellent name for what is going on. It is deep as in it is permanent and is not affected by elections and seemingly impervious to changes in leadership. The one major vulnerability it has is the vast sums of money required to run it. USAID was a good first step, but far more needs to be done in order to starve the beast. The whole deep state as a massive conspiracy with shadowy figures controlling the whole thing is what is the fiction. In fact, it’s probably a media invention meant to discredit the… Read more »

Tom K
Tom K
Reply to  Tars Tarkas
17 days ago

“Starve the beast” I haven’t heard that one in a while. Quaint idea. Trump is the first to actually try it, marginal though his efforts may be. At least we now know what the scope of the problem actually is. That’s progress I suppose.

LineInTheSand
LineInTheSand
Reply to  Tom K
17 days ago

Literally no Republican, even the holy Reagan, ever really tried to cut total federal spending. We were duped by those mendacious promises for 50 years. I feel so gullible.

From what I gather, Trump is increasing the total budget as well. Whatever he may be cutting with DOGE, he’s spending on the wars.

One might infer from our history that cutting the federal budget is as impossible as finding a married bachelor.

Last edited 17 days ago by LineInTheSand
Curious Monkey
Curious Monkey
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

It is important to understand the blind spots in the conscience of our domestic enemies but the time to indulge them has ended. It is true that from the point of view of a member of the deep state there is an alibi to the accusation, they are just working for NGOs that service the public. They can be charitable in name or facilitate international relations. But in reality they are ways to steal money from the state and give it to activists and people connected so they can live cushy lives doing things that are basically treason. The same… Read more »

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Deep State does exist but rather than a tiny cabal of people running things, it’s more about just the ingrained culture and way of doing things. The US government is like a sick corporation that can never turn itself around because of this inertia, unwillingness to change and inability to get rid of the people responsible for the cancer. It is self-perpetuating.

Last edited 17 days ago by TempoNick
Ivan
Ivan
17 days ago

“Imagine if the Church of Scientology had infiltrated the government.”

Substitute Church of Scientology with Jews and you’re on to something.

Hun
Hun
17 days ago

The problem with these “rackets” is that they do real damage. It’s hard to believe that these people are just cynical money makers, when their activities have such monstrous consequences. It’s more likely that they are true believers. They just “know” that bringing in Somalis or Arabs into your neighborhood will make it a better and more vibrant place. The fact that they can make a lot money doing this is a bonus that confirms that they are right side of history.

fakeemail
fakeemail
Reply to  Hun
17 days ago

Just like the billion dollar house & feed the bums racket.

These are the worst criminals in human history. they must be punished.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Hun
17 days ago

Right, and I think that’s probably why you see the mainstream sects so involved in it. Most sects had already been taken over before the Civil Rights Act and the Hart-Cellar Act. The faithful (and in some cases, their great-grandparents) had been indoctrinated via the pulpit, so it is only natural they entered the (reverse) “crusade” filled with moral certainty.

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Hun
17 days ago

True Believers are drones. Malice and greed are the motives for those who make this possible.

Hun
Hun
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Right, the drones just believe the “beautiful” lies. The other, more malicious true believers believe in the necessity of polluting White countries with the mud of the world.

Ride-By Shooter
Ride-By Shooter
Reply to  Hun
17 days ago

How can you blame the malicious true believers? The arrogant “white” man refuses to abandon his obscenely evil civilization and the sophistries with which he defends it. How can he be stopped? How can something so complicated and resistant to correction be overcome?

It’s exhausting to work out a plan which preserves the perp, who defeats every attempt to love him. So the chosen solution, extinction, is accepted less for its merits than as a matter of mental economy and strategic simplicity.

Hun
Hun
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
17 days ago

Kindly remove yourself from the gene pool and take the rest of Tel Aviv with you.

Last edited 17 days ago by Hun
Steve
Steve
Reply to  Ride-By Shooter
17 days ago

Pro-tip: Upgrade from a Tiny Language Model…

usNthem
usNthem
17 days ago

Mx. Salem has the exact smug libshit mug that you’d expect. And to think there are millions more exactly like her – good grief. Further, who would have ever known the “refugee resettlement” business was so massive. I guess the old “invade the world, invite the world” was no freaking joke. An epic flood is going to be required to clean out these stables…

David Wright
Member
Reply to  usNthem
17 days ago

It is soul destroying reading a few interviews with her and her fellow travelers. They really do believe they are changing the world and our country for the better. Especially women.

“A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world-and might be even more difficult to save.” C.S. Lewis

Last edited 17 days ago by David_Wright
Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  David Wright
17 days ago

“I’m a good person” is one of the biggest red flags a person can utter. Along with variations thereof, such as “he’s a bad person.”

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

That is what you said when you were five and in trouble, 10, maybe 15, and then one day after countless arguments with your dad, you wonder what am i even saying? What does that mean? But only if you’re on your way to becoming an adult

Shotgun Messenger
Shotgun Messenger
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

Likewise use of ‘human’ as a noun, outside of a zoological/ecological context.

Hemid
Hemid
Reply to  Shotgun Messenger
17 days ago

In a letter from William Burroughs to Allen Ginsberg c.1960 he found the lesser young writer’s faddish use of “human” as a noun a worrying sign of degeneracy—enjoy the irony—perhaps signaling a fading vocation, a loss of self to the times. Ginsberg never wrote anything interesting again (and joined NAMBLA).

Burroughs, an anthropologist by study and habit, a field now typically defined as “the study of humans,” the discipline in which you’re most likely to encounter “man (sic),” found it strikingly off. Even the OED, always keen to own the word-chuds, finds little earlier usage.

Telling tidbit, maybe.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

For such folk, the highest good is immiserating their own people. As Noel Ignatiev so pithily put it, treason against the white race is a service to humanity. Ergo, inflicting harm upon whites is proof of one’s goodness. That is, needless to say, a deranged definition of the good. Among the mutants, spite is goodness.

Charming Billy
Charming Billy
Reply to  David Wright
17 days ago

As I wrote before, choose either Pleasantville, or Bartertown.

ray'
ray'
Reply to  David Wright
17 days ago

Bingo. Plus they are their own religion.

Zfan
Zfan
Reply to  usNthem
17 days ago

Infuriating that I pay that f***’s salary when I presume she disdains everything I care about. The only sliver we share on a Venn diagram is a preference for White neighborhoods and croissants over frosted cake donuts. I doubt she is living down and dirty among either American or imported proles.

Urbanist
Urbanist
Reply to  usNthem
17 days ago

The Slaughter of Cities: Urban Renewal as Ethnic Cleansing

E. Michael Jones wrote about internal refugee resettlement that occurred decades ago. He noted the impacts of Lutheran Family Services and others on driving wedges into the Catholic communities of so many Eastern and Midwestern cities.

ShortshanksDaley
ShortshanksDaley
Reply to  Urbanist
17 days ago

Here in Chiraq, the Catholic Charities have a leadership veneer that is Irish Catholic. The next layers are nearly all jewish women until you go down to the weeds and it’s darkly-hued women at that level. The Irish fundraise sociably and the jews run the show.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  ShortshanksDaley
17 days ago

It’s likely that those Irish Catholic are only culturally Catholic. As in Ireland herself, all that remains currently is only façade of the faith. The Jews successfully also remind the Irish of their less than kind treatment by the English/Church of England. They encourage them to hold a grudge/see themselves as perpetual victims, which is not difficult unfortunately in modern times.

ray'
ray'
Reply to  usNthem
17 days ago

There are millions like her and they are the enemy, like it or not.

Mow Noname
Mow Noname
17 days ago

“Hard times breed hard men and easy times breed perfidious women incapable of maintaining the structures of power.”

Or as today’s WSJ reports, the air traffic control system “isn’t working”. Maybe they need more women or Somalians or women Somalians.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
17 days ago

I don’t know how you stop this. There are so many of these people throughout every one of our institutions in the West now. It’s been occurring for decades, and schools have been churning out these types for at least two decades as well. It’s an entire priesthood and there are hundreds of thousands of them throughout our society. Let’s say we make NGOs and quangos illegal in the US tomorrow. Overnight, they’re all out of work. Do they sit at home for the rest of their lives? Obviously, they won’t. They’ll find other avenues to eat away at the… Read more »

Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

It only gets solved one way, and most here won’t like it “What sense can we make of James Madison’s famous Federalist No. 10 today? This is his essay on the danger of divisive and controlling factions to government, and how the Constitution would guard against them. His solution was to eliminate the problem by encouraging factions and fragmenting them, so that none of them could abuse its influence and upend the system, and by structuring the scale of the republic so that no faction could have undue influence and deprive others of their rights. It’s not clear, from Madison’s point of view, just… Read more »

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Mr. House
17 days ago

The factions seem to be the nomenklatura, which seems blithely unaware or disinterested that their world is going away, and the high stakes grifters looting at an ever-accelerating pace because they know it is not sustainable. There have been hints that the theft is unfathomable.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Do they sit at home for the rest of their lives? Obviously, they won’t. They’ll find other avenues to eat away at the nest.”

Either that or they will have to find ways to put food on the table and pay the mortgage, like everyone else. Mostly, the only ones who will find ways to eat away at the nest are the trust-fund babies.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Ah, yes, they will start combing the “help wanted” sections of the local paper. They’ll just have to act normal, like everyone else.

This was the strategy conservatives employed with higher education after the 1980s. “Let ’em take basket weaving as a major. They’ll never get a job. Let the universities churn out useless homeless people with degrees in African feminism. Eventually they’ll just have to settle down and get a mortgage. No sweat.”

Worked out superbly, don’t you think?

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Did OK until The Chimp made student loans easier to get. The basket weavers got jobs at drive thrus. Then Obongo both took over the whole thing, plus created “jobs” programs to pay the unemployable to do what their training prepared them for, which was mostly infiltrate and agitate.

That’s why stuff went to heck so fast in recent years. Obongo made sure the least competent and most ideological among us were the ones calling the shots.

Last edited 17 days ago by Steve
TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Remember the trillion dollar Obama “stimulus?” I’ve read that this was added to the baseline budget and spent in every year since. Plus annual cost of living increases from the baseline.

Is it any surprise that they aren’t passing budgets anymore?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  TempoNick
17 days ago

Absolutely correct. The lack of a budget allows all these emergency expenditures to continue long after the emergency—ad infinitum. People seem to think we need to deficit spend $2T per year, when in reality such was not the case before Obama and the Great Recession. Most of the current “budget” is nothing but graft given to constituents—and yes, that includes Boomers and the like. Compared to our current budget expenditures, USAID was an honest broker of their funds.

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Compsci
17 days ago

Just that ongoing stimulus is responsible for $15 trillion of our debt. Then add stupid wars and we might be down to about $15 trillion, which sounds downright quaint.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  TempoNick
16 days ago

Maybe it was used to build the underground tunnels and cities that Catherine Austin Fitts has informed us cost over $21 trillion (conservatively). It might turn out that most of your money went under the ground for use after aboveground is no ground.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

This began in the 1980s, when Obama was still in high school. Allan Bloom saw it at both Cornell in 1968 and was quick to recognize its recrudescence in the 1980s, which led to “The Closing of the American Mind.” It is important to understand that this isn’t about a poorly-designed bridge or municipal scandal that can be pinned on one person on a specific date. This has been civilizational. The Frankfurt School, it is said, academized politics. Conservatives, Sam Francis wrote, were the Stupid Party. You are surrounded by degeneracy and the rotting remains of a once-Christian land with… Read more »

Jack Dodson
Jack Dodson
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Yes. It is why reform is likely impossible. Throwing a wrench into the system, which is what the Trump Administration is really doing, is the only viable option. They think it can save the system but it might help neuter it, which is the best-case scenario.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

The best I hope for is a temporary put off of collapse while public perception grows wrt of the shenanigans of “democracy”.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  Jack Dodson
17 days ago

Most of the economic objections to Trump I’m seeing amount to: “Well, this needed to happen but with a careful 10 year plan.” I’m old enough to realize that for big reform projects it’s “Rip the bandaid off as fast as possible and accept at least some extra damage along the way.” Otherwise it will never happen.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Wiffle
17 days ago

I’m still amazed his tariff plan worked as well as it did. Several promises, but the lack of signed treaties is a bit concerning.

Thing is, you build your economy around barriers and tariffs, you get a lot of businesses that will be non-viable in the absence of those barriers. So are those countries really willing to destroy all those in their countries, or are they playing for time, getting on Trump’s good side, hoping he changes his mind?

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Who knows on both sides? I’ve also given up on Trump mind reading, other than to try to stop under estimating the man’s tenacity. He makes the correct people cry/go insane, so that’s as much as I’m going to understand of this until it’s over. I do know that if Trump implements tariff that amount to a protectionist scheme that exist at the end of his regime, it’s likely that they will stay. We’re clearly at the “fossilizing” stage of empire. Before WWII, we were changing the Constitution like it mattered. Now it’s under glass and walked by in hushed… Read more »

Last edited 17 days ago by Wiffle
Mr. House
Mr. House
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

And if anyone liked that last one, this one is also good. Its funny, they were written over a decade ago and nothing has changed. This one talks about that:

https://deflationland.blogspot.com/2013/10/why-i-stopped-worrying-and-learned-to.html

Xman
Xman
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

You don’t fix it any more than you could “fix” Constantinople in 1440 or the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires in 1914.

As Derbyshire so eloquently put it, “We Are Doomed.” It’s gonna get “fixed” by some unanticipated, exogenous event. Not reformed from within.

I actually hate to take that attitude, frankly it’s un-American. Americans were once practical, roll-up-your-sleeves and git-‘er-done people. But it’s a realistic attitude.

As the old saying goes, “It’s too late to fix anything, but too soon to shoot the bastards.”

CorkyAgain
CorkyAgain
Reply to  Xman
17 days ago

Americans were once practical, roll-up-your-sleeves and git-‘er-done people.

They still are. But they’re not the ones running things in the country that once was theirs.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

This is what late stage empire looks like, unfortunately. You can’t rely on the system to reform itself. It can only fail. The rate at which it fails is dependent on the circumstances of the empire. In the case of the United States, it has extremely defensible borders, no nearby enemies, no real global threat, and a magic money printing machine that can (literally) paper over problems. It can last a long time and likely will last a long time. But we are already starting to see the signs of fissure as the Romans did in the late 200s and… Read more »

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

I basically agree. However, whereas Rome still had another two centuries after the cracks began showing, I cannot imagine AINO will hold up another half century. The pace of destabilization is far more rapid in 2025 than it was in 325.

Wiffle
Wiffle
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
17 days ago

In fairness, the rise of the US was also much faster as well.

Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

You can’t stop this. The infestation is too comprehensive. You mentioned the institutions, and that’s the key. It’s not just the sorry vermin in DC, it’s their kindred spirits throughout the educational system, corporate business, the media, and Hollywood, not to mention cultural entities such as museums, libraries, symphonies, etc. It is impossible to root all these people out. If we assume we are stuck living in AINO with the Spiteful Mutants for the foreseeable future, about the best we can hope for is to get in a word edge-wise, which means inserting a sizeable number of our own people… Read more »

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Ostei Kozelskii
17 days ago

Yes, it is everywhere. It won’t be gone until long after I’m gone. Might not be long, if they get all their wars. Perhaps debasing people for 80 and turning them into drug-addled slop junkies was necessary so that the Cloud People could dispose of us with as little guilt as possible. People used to be beautiful, it would have been very hard to pull off what they have been doing to us when every woman seemed to look like Doris Day and every man Cary Grant.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

A person’s opinion about the Khashoggi incident (which I feel pretty certain I still haven’t been told the whole truth about) is a very reliable baizuo litmus test. This one killing makes the entire Saudi regime and nation into evil personified (so goes the narrative). Denounced as such by the denizens of AINO, whose GAE has never killed anyone, and are thus entitled to judge. See this a lot among golf fans, references to LIV “blood money.”

Dutchboy
Dutchboy
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

BTW – NOBODY likes Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are a particularly offensive mix of wealth, arrogance, and hypocrisy.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Dutchboy
17 days ago

A lot of that has to do with the presence of the two holiest sites in Islam among the Saudi dunes.

The lack of these make the Emiratis and Qataris somewhat more tolerable.

Tykebomb
Tykebomb
17 days ago

Deep State as a concept was introduced into Right Wing Thought by a guy called William S. Lind. He used Turkey as the defining example. The Turkish military inherited the spirit of Kemalism. For Muslim societies to function in the modern liberal world, the nilitary/government agencies have to ruthlessly enforce liberalism against the will of the people. Mustafa Kemal did a classic “Young” nationalist coup in 1919 and set the pattern. This means that every couple of decades, the military had to coup the newly elected extremist Muslim government. Ironically a few years after this popularization, the Turkish military failed… Read more »

Reader
Reader
17 days ago

zman and readers, what is the rationale for increasing the military budget to 1T and more? Isn’t that another node of corruption? Or does trump and his admin members think that it will always remain a friendly node and thus deserve rewards?

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

Not complicated. Pentagon wants more money, tells president they want more money. President, being BoomerCon writ large personified, believes increased defense spending is always the greatest good. So Pentagon gets more money.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

As mentioned before I read your comment, Trump equates more money with effect. He will get poor returns with that thinking. He needs to clean house first in the military—and that starts at the Pentagon, not the trannies in the ranks. That’s just a distraction for the rubes.

Last edited 17 days ago by Compsci
iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  Compsci
17 days ago

Don’t worry though, Pete Hegseth is on the job! He’ll ensure that we only do good stuff, and no bad stuff!

NoName
NoName
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

If One Trillion Dollars per annum prevents the Chinese/Russians/North-Koreans/Pakistanis/Etc from attacking us, then I wholeheartedly support a Trillion Dollars or more for the Pentagon budget, every year from now until the end of time.

An indomitable military is PRECISELY what our tax dollars ought to be purchasing.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

There is something to what @Jeffrey Zoar says, but the lion’s share of it is the Ukraine War, and now, Yemen. The Bidet regime emptied the arsenals and it will take a decade or two plus a fortune to get them back to where they were. Ran into a guy who just finished one hitch in artillery, and he said they aren’t training with dummy rounds anymore. They don’t even have those. They just go through the motions, pretending to load and fire. Assuming anyone in MIC has half a clue, they’ve seen the effects of drones and hypersonics, for… Read more »

Montefrío
Member
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Your final paragraph says it all. Would that it were universally understood and acted upon! Alas, I think one must be older to understand the wisdom of turning inward.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

…and stop making $500 drones or $300 artillery shells into $50k boondoggles.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

Trump is a boomer who believes in that “peace through strength” malarkey. Even if that were true, our military is a paper tiger at this point that exists to procure weapons and make contractors rich. So Trump says “our military sucks how does it get better”, the Pentagon tells him that it can be done… if they get more money to buy more weapons. That is by the way the Pentagon’s answer to every question.

Last edited 17 days ago by Mycale
The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

“Peace through strength,” is a direct lift from at least one Reagan speech.

Citizen of a Silly Country
Citizen of a Silly Country
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

The US can no longer project power against all but the weakest of players. Air defense has negated our navy and air force. It’s why we won’t attack Iran.

The world is a different place than just a couple of years ago. Trump can give the MIC all the money that it wants, but that won’t change our new situation.

Horace
Horace
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

It’s not just that the MIC can’t deliver the hardware for a revitalized modernized US military. It’s that US military substantively isn’t American anymore, and absolutely does NOTHING to defend the actual American people. The army just cut 80,000 billets. Why? Because while some white boys came back, not enough did to even maintain the old level of force structure. The Marine Corps had already fixed their shortfall with force structure cuts some time ago. Modern militaries require even the lowest levels to have a minimum level of intelligence/capability to learn complex tasks/behaviors. Most 3rd-worlders who are capable aren’t willing… Read more »

TempoNick
TempoNick
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

And why should we attack Iran? Like a fairly significant country dating back to the seventh century BC needs a country that produces McDonalds and KFC and simps for Jewish billionaires to push it around?

Last edited 17 days ago by TempoNick
Ostei Kozelskii
Member
Reply to  Citizen of a Silly Country
17 days ago

It think we’ve crossed over the threshold whereupon the Blackberry Fruitcake Empire’s economic force is demonstrably more potent than its military force. This may have actually happened as early as the mid-90s.

Jeffrey Zoar
Jeffrey Zoar
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

Peace through strength isn’t wrong, but there seems to be some confusion over what constitutes strength. For regime purposes, usually whatever enriches the MICOM the most = strength.

Mycale
Mycale
Reply to  Jeffrey Zoar
17 days ago

The US has been in a more-or-less constant war footing since 1941. Where is the peace?

iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  Mycale
17 days ago

When you’re a hammer every problem looks like a nail. It’s going to take a revolutionary thinker to reform our military and Trump ain’t it.

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

According to Mr. Anglin: “Trump was allowed to win the fake election because he is the perfect figure to reframe the American culture to make it into something that is maybe capable of doing a big war. It’s the biggest war budget in the history of any country. To what end? Where is the threat? America cannot be invaded and insofar as there are interests in the Western hemisphere, any of these countries can be bullied with psychological operations and special forces squads. Trump’s administration is doing a Hitler-style military buildup but Hitler actually had people trying to destroy his… Read more »

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Trump’s administration is doing a Hitler-style military buildup but Hitler actually had people trying to destroy his country. 

Anglin is a Chinese mouthpiece these days.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Templar
17 days ago

Regardless, there is a lesson here seemingly unlearned. Hitler was a fanatic wrt his tanks. He had to have the biggest and baddest. The Russian’s had to have the cheapest and most reliable. They built 50k T-34’s to Germany’s 8k Panzer IV’s. If we are on the road to war with a military buildup, it won’t be won with expensive, technical boondoggles.

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

The 1T military budget is to prep for a three or four front WW3 scenario.

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
17 days ago

Our current budget is close enough to $1T now, and we can’t fight a war effectively anywhere, much less against a modern adversary. Prep for a 3-4 front conflict?

The Wild Geese Howard
The Wild Geese Howard
Reply to  Compsci
17 days ago

Compsci-

Well, I never said the folks who came up with that budget are realistic about current US military and industrial capacity!

iForgotmyPen
iForgotmyPen
Reply to  The Wild Geese Howard
17 days ago

The current planning is for two major fronts, not 3 or 4. The only way to handle multiple is if they’re brush fires, not major hostilities with peer or near-peer adversaries. Those who have seen these plans know that even 2 fronts with significant threats is not going to happen. So $1T goes mainly to personnel costs, acquiring new systems, and maintaining (very poorly) our current inventory. Even a cursory audit was failed miserably, but hey not to worry, we’re defending democracy!

Reader
Reader
Reply to  thezman
17 days ago

That makes most sense.

Xman
Xman
Reply to  Reader
17 days ago

“what is the rationale for increasing the military budget to 1T “

Trump thinks he can return the nation to 1961.

TomA
TomA
17 days ago

Nothing changes until the environment changes. Systemic infection can only be cured by systemic remedy. Diagnosis is not remedy. You cannot talk or vote your way to a cure. You cannot indoctrinate or bribe a virus into submission. Laws do not eliminate crime. Ukrainian men are learning that you cannot win a war with a snazzy internet campaign. The United States was founded by men who were realists and bled in pursuit of that goal. Only tangible action can save us, and we must be smarter about it.

Arshad Ali
Arshad Ali
17 days ago

“It is not a deep state so much as a broad state that overlays everything.” We’ve been over this terrain before. You seemingly have this fixation of deep state as an evil cabal whose members fiendishly rub their hands as they hatch some new diabolical scheme. But if I used terms like “blob” or “status quo” you would have no objection. People are invested in the status quo — their livelihoods and status depend on it. And they are invested in the status quo — dare I say the “deep state” — to different degrees. There’s an outer party and… Read more »

terranigma
terranigma
Reply to  thezman
17 days ago

Yes, words do have meaning. For Deep State: “an alleged secret network of especially nonelected government officials and sometimes private entities (as in the financial services and defense industries) operating extralegally to influence and enact government policy” – Merriam-Webster “Deep state are potential, unauthorized and possibly even secret networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agendas and goals. Although the term originated in Turkey, various nations have developed their own interpretations of the concept. In some contexts, “deep state” is used to refer to shadowy conspiracies, while in others it describes concerns… Read more »

John Donald
John Donald
17 days ago

Unfortunately limiting the federal government to enumerated powers only not will get us to where we need to be. It will take more. It all looks like calculated opportunism to me. Hard to quell those types of mindsets. Choking off the money should help. Visible prosecutions appropriate to the obvious criminality will also. I like the idea of caning prior to any jail time followed up with one last cane strike before release. Can any of us really go Galt? I don’t think so. Well, maybe.

Last edited 17 days ago by John Donald
karl von hungus
karl von hungus
17 days ago

well funny enough Scientology did infiltrate the federal government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Snow_White

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  karl von hungus
17 days ago

Scientology’s methods and their extremely pervasive effects on the minds of its own cult members only truly begin to make sense when understood within the context of the non-redacted history of founder L. Ron Hubbard, including the Church’s primordial Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation connections to the intelligence community, and Hubbard’s own intelligence career. His role in under-discussed operations, on the behalf of US Naval and other intelligence agencies, include Hubbard’s work at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. in the 1930s –– the hot-bed of psychiatric research during Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke, the precursors to the infamous MK-ULTRA program… Read more »

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

As an aside, Parson wrote to Hubbard that he created a homunculus in the Trinity test site – in that metal container right beneath the blast (Jumbo). The occult rabbit hole is a deep warren.

(((They))) Live
(((They))) Live
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Hubbard was a drug fiend and an Alistair Crowley fan, that’s pretty much it, all his BS stories about Asian mystics. Indian tribes, CIA, US navy record 1% true 99% BS

His scam made him rich, so in that regard he was a big success

Arthur Metcalf
Member
Reply to  (((They))) Live
17 days ago

How about those fellas at the JPL, though? Parsons and others. Then you have guys like Michael Aquino, a high-ranking Satanist, in charge of major propaganda programs for the US military for 20-some odd years.

Read that piece I linked. That’s not fiction.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

Michael Aquino is also the one who ran the base right next McMartin Preschool, where the “Satanic Panic” began. But nothing to see here!

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  Eloi
17 days ago

Presidio school, sorry

ray'
ray'
Reply to  Eloi
17 days ago

Nothing to see, just ‘conspiracy theories’.

3g4me
3g4me
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

In 2021, I bought my friend a copy of “Sex and rockets: The Occult World of Jack Parsons.” She had been mentioning the subject for years, but no one else believed her. When people in her office saw the book, they were gobsmacked. Could not believe what she said was not ‘tin-foil hat’ nuttiness but based in fact.

ray'
ray'
Reply to  3g4me
17 days ago

Rocket Jack and his friends . . . that’s a deep rabbit hole.

Eloi
Eloi
Reply to  (((They))) Live
17 days ago

Someone who, based on the parentheses in his name believes in secret cabals, is so ignorantly dismissive of those theories that do not fit into his narrative, should reflect on his arrogance. Yes, Hubbard was a druggy. He was also a lesser acolyte compared with someone like Parsons. That is what makes him a more visible member of the usually opaque.

ray'
ray'
Reply to  Arthur Metcalf
17 days ago

All in the family, hm?

RealityRules
RealityRules
17 days ago

Time to go full Saudi on the hyphenators?

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
17 days ago

“increasingly incompetent and corrupt”

We all hope so.

Wiffle
Wiffle
17 days ago

Excellent analysis. People, especially online, tend to forget the group patterns come from individuals working from individual motivations. The Blob is produced by upper middle class people from the globe doing their individual technocrat jobs. It is private club and the ordinary American is not in it. But it’s equally important to note that from their POV, the blob are the normies too. In fact they want to feel normal, particularly in our “democratic” world, which is why Kamala Harris is so cringe. Their collective effect in my mind is better thought of as the zombie horde effect, who are… Read more »

Marko
Marko
17 days ago

It is not a deep state so much as a broad state that overlays everything. Every silo of power is controlled by people who believe the same things.

In other other words, Washington is a company town and they want America to build cars while the rest of us want high speed rail.

Templar
Templar
Reply to  Marko
17 days ago

I thought it was more like they wanted rail and buses (for us) and cars for themselves…

Stephanie
Stephanie
17 days ago

Linked-in link says, “page not found”.

Robbo
Robbo
15 days ago

Hard times breed hard men and easy times breed perfidious women incapable of maintaining the structures of power.” Never a truer word. Can I “borrow” that one?!

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
16 days ago

You are absolutely correct – Trump is the SYMPTOM of the problem, not the cause of it. Hitler was a SYMPTOM of the problem, his ascent to power is a direct result of the conditions prior to his ascent. If the Weimar (biden) government had run things properly (e.g. just barely in favor of We The People), they would still be in power, and Cheeto Jesus would not have gotten as many votes as he did. Which also begs and begets the question – why did they let him win (this time)? I think anyone w/ 2 warm brain cells… Read more »

Stephanie
Stephanie
17 days ago

They didn’t think it meant them, the “Great Reset”. lol

Steve
Steve
17 days ago

Hard times breed hard men and easy times breed perfidious women…

And hard men breed perfidious… never mind.

Greg Nikolic
17 days ago

Every government in the Western World operates a bureaucracy that is immune to change. They work steadily at pushing papers to present an image of industry. Perhaps 1 in 10 is really necessary, although they would have you think otherwise. The civil servant, hunkered down in his office or cubicle, moves with his peers like the cells in a jellyfish. And, like a jellyfish, he is spineless. The slightest hint of controversy makes him curdle up and die — he lives and dies by the public-relations sword — and he assiduously avoids career danger. It is a boring life being… Read more »

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Greg Nikolic
17 days ago

Note: Greg-AI blows it by changing genders of the described hypothetical bureaucrat he rails against it the last three lines of his comment.

Steve
Steve
Reply to  Compsci
17 days ago

I’m not very knowledgeable about things like this. How long does it usually take to change genders?

Compsci
Compsci
Reply to  Steve
17 days ago

Well, in today’s world, about as long as it takes you to go to the nearest thrift store and buy a secondhand dress.