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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29150 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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A motte for the term: The deep state

Without endorsing any particular theories here, perhaps the best way to think about the deep state is that it is simply parts of the government that have developed their own distinct political goals and capabilities, and are involved in the political process in ways that may or may not be visible, legal or proper. In some vague sense, a "deep state" may simply be a function of a government. Any government that remains stable for long enough will develop capabilities that do not require a given person at the top, since the leaders change over time. Those abilities will then be put to use in service of whatever political goals unite that part of government.

This becomes more open and more contentious in a democracy when parts of the government revolt against elected leaders.

My friends in the military will talk, disparagingly, of we-be's: we be here when you got here, we be here when you gone. They're the civil servants that just loiter in a position or a department for years and know how to slow-roll or be maliciously compliant with any policy change they don't like (or that threatens their own job security). Since firing a civil servant in the federal government requires the same amount of work as a full time job (at least the way the people I know describe it) a we-be is nearly immune to anything beyond a slap on the wrist. The we-be's then shape policy and culture to suit their own ends rather than the ends of the organization / society they're allegedly in service to.

Edit: typos

The we-be's then shape policy and culture to suit their own ends rather than the ends of the organization / society they're allegedly in service to.

I think the crux between this and the 'deep state' narrative is whether they do that in a coordinated and goal oriented way that leads to large impacts on the final output of the system, or if they each do it randomly based on their individual whims in a way that mostly adds noise and friction and inertia?

The former is what it feels like people are saying when they talk about 'the deep state did X', the latter is more just 'bureaucratic gridlock' and sounds like what I would expect from the poeple you're describing.

Can't it be both? It's not that there's some Comintern issuing instructions and directing people. But they're also not totally atomized - they share a broad ideology that shapes their motives and judgment

It certainly could be in between, but...

they share a broad ideology that shapes their motives and judgment

Do they?

Surely some of those individual people are democrats, and some are republicans, and some are libertarians, do all of them actually share a broad ideology with each other? Some of them are in the military and some are in the education department and some are in the parks department, do they all share a broad ideology with each other?

That's sort of my point, I'm sure it's true that you could name like 5 or 10 ideologies that large portions of them share and which are specific enough to vaguely predict the actions of the portion under that ideology. But 'the deep state' is used as a unitary term, and I don't think there's any single ideology that unifies their efforts in any way.

Is there a rubber room for we-bes? Probably the most elegant solution.

This in itself is a problem, because it saps resources that could be better used elsewhere. Based on what I've been told by friends who worked in various positions in the Trump administration, some departments were never able to operate above about 50% capacity because half their employees were actively sabotaging their efforts and had to be given bullshit makework projects to keep them busy. There are fundamentally fewer resources available to politicians who want to shrink the administrative state because their own employees can't be trusted. And so the one-way ratchet continues unabated.

Which agencies were these and what were the responsibilities of those who weren't doing their jobs?

I don't want to get too specific, but my anecdotes are from Education, Interior, and Transportation. They would do what they could to give those people administrative or otherwise apolitical tasks. It was a lot of people sitting around with 20 hours a week worth of stuff to do, with the ideologically sympathetic employees having to put in extra time to make up for the lack of support on substantive matters.

I'm more interested in what the policy prescriptions were that these people found so odious.

The solution is to go external for the ressources. Reagan replaced the air traffic controllers, but recent events show that even getting the military to replace civil servants is not likely to be an improvement, as resistance to the Trump administration's goals also came from within the military. Contractors would be the solution, but the reaction from the administrative state would be intense as that would rightly be seen as an existential threat. So whatever administration puts it in motion is likely to be in for an even rougher time than Trump's was.

Sounds like you would need to not only fire everybody, but also move the capitol so you are hiring from a completely different workforce. Somewhere like Wichita Falls, Texas might work.

That seems infeasible. Wikipedia says that it took the FAA 10 years after the PATCO strike for staffing to fully return to normal, and that was only about 10,000 employees. The DoD employees 16,500 employees in D.C. alone, and 738,000 civilians worldwide; also, see how many quality applicants you get wanting to live and work in Wichita Falls.

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