[The following article represents solely the opinion of the author and no one else.]
When I first heard it, I didn’t understand what “deep state” meant, except that whoever was using the phrase seemed to convey a sense of foreboding, implying a hidden cabal of people who want something that will cost “us” in turn. Somehow, the “deep state” is supposedly really in control, and its intentions are malicious.
A little research from our great friends at Wikipedia reveals that this phrase is at least thirty years old. And the concept itself–of an intransigent, willful government bureaucracy that does what it feels like, no matter who was elected–goes back to the moment there was such a thing as a paid government job. That was June 14, 1775, when money was appropriated from the colonies-turned-states to fund the creation of the Continental Army. From that point to now, working for the government, paid by the taxes collected from the country’s citizens, has been the chosen career of countless millions. Actually, we can count them.
According to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and the Office of Personnel Management, as of October 23, 2020 there are about 2.8 million people employed by the federal government, starting with the elected officials, their staff, the various cabinet departments and their staff, all the people who work in the judiciary, the law enforcement agencies, the border patrol, the people who collect the taxes at the Internal Revenue Service, etc. This doesn’t count the people serving in the military. That’s another 1.4 million, for a total of 4.2 million people. Sounds like a lot, until you realize that’s only 1.3% of the U.S. population, and only 2.6% of the workforce.
Pretty thin, for a deep state.
But one might argue that even a small percentage of people, working coherently together to thwart the democratically elected leaders, could steer our country towards compass points none of us would want if we knew about the nefarious plans of the Deep State. If we want to test the hypothesis that this dynamic is going on, perhaps we can look at recent evidence of how government employees, career civil servants who devote their working life to the public, have behaved in their roles. Let’s start with the 2020 election.
There were millions and millions of votes cast, in person and by mail or drop-off, at thousands and thousands of polling places and ballot submission stations, in every county in the country, over a period of a few weeks. These modestly paid, or even unpaid workers aimed to get the count right while under intense scrutiny from both the knowledgeable and experienced, as well as the uneducated and inexperienced. All these election workers, election commissioners, secretaries of states, mail carriers and volunteers focused on not doing what some of their elected officials wanted them to do, but focused instead on doing what the laws of the land required. They stood fast to follow the rules of our democracy.
It has been proven that there has been no massive, coordinated electoral fraud. There have been errors, and some intentional acts of voting illegally. This has gone on in every election probably back to the very beginnings of the nation. As compared to the 161 million votes cast, the incidence rate of error or individual fraud attempts numbers in the hundreds to perhaps a few thousand. And most of those are caught before they are counted.
This is because of the Deep State. All those career civil servants, working their butts off in the midst of shouting crowds, peering cameras and hostile observers, did the most courageous, patriotic thing–they followed the law of elections in their jurisdictions. No matter that some of their elected leaders were trying to get them to do something else.
How about the intelligence community? There are thousands and thousands of people working in the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, the Secret Service and related military operations who have spent their careers in civil service. Their politically appointed leaders change. The people in the White House change. This section of the Deep State pursues their collective mission of keeping our country’s citizens alive. That’s their hidden agenda. How do I know this? Well, me and my family are alive, we are free to choose where and how we live or work, and we don’t know but a tiny fraction of the harm that these Deep State operatives have prevented.
Let’s see. Who else would be part of the Deep State? Ah yes, the State Department. Here we find thousands of people, spending their lives learning the cultural, political, religious and economic dynamics of the nation to which they are assigned, so that they can help elected and appointed leaders of our country make the best possible decisions regarding foreign policy so that, once again, Americans are safer than they would otherwise be, now and in the future. These Deep State operatives know how to find common ground in an earthquake.
And then there’s the Post Office. Hundreds of thousands of people conniving daily to bring messages and packages to one citizen from another. With shrinking budgets and, this year, thousands of watts of public attention.
What about the Justice Department, though? Surely this corner of the Deep State is to be viewed with suspicion. The evidence, however, is that the career civil servants in this branch of the government actually did their jobs, as the law established those jobs to be. Like in other branches of government of late, many of them got fired for doing so.
If this is the evidence of a Deep State, then it’s a Deep State that has my back. And yours. Our democracy is periodically tested, ever since its founding. This year has been one of its most serious tests. Thanks to the Deep State and its unswerving dedication to following the law, and nothing else, our democracy has survived the test.
But I’m glad we had this test of democracy. I’ll bet citizens are more knowledgeable about the laws of elections, the branches of government, the balance between state versus federal governance, the design of the Supreme Court, the powers of the two legislative bodies, the balance of authority between the branches of government and why it’s critical. If nothing else, most of our citizenry is involved more than we have been in our entire lives.
We can thank the Deep State by staying involved. They put themselves on the front lines for democracy. We can do no less.