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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28356 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.

The "deep state" is a motte-and-bailey where the motte is public choice theory and the bailey is that a cabal of civil servants controls the USG.

I'll happily defend what you think is the bailey as my motte. I used to subscribe to "structural" theories providing mundane explanation for dysfunctional behaviors of institutions, and dismiss "conspiracy" theories, but the last few years have utterly discredited the former, and I haven't actually heard a good argument to dismiss the latter.

The good argument against it is that it would be something that would likely produce tons of evidence of it's existence, and we have no such evidence, despite tons and tons of scrutiny on the matter? Which is pretty much the standard argument against most conspiracy theories.

Unless you do have evidence you want to cite, in which case, we'll probably disagree on what 'cabal' and 'controls' means. Obviously people have influence over things, and obviously when there's only two political parties some of those people will be political allies with each other, but I think 'cabal' and 'control' are both big stretches for the things that are already part of the public record.

The good argument against it is that it would be something that would likely produce tons of evidence of it's existence

Sure.

and we have no such evidence

Now that's weird, because almost every President has constantly been complaining about exactly this problem to degrees that are extremely well documented. Some even had to build parallel organizations just to allow themselves to pursue an agenda the administration didn't like.

It seems zany to say that there is no evidence of the deep state in a world where we know for a fact the CIA almost succeeded to force Kennedy into a war with Cuba he never wanted. Where Trump had generals disobey his direct, legal and specific orders with zero consequence, and where Eisenhower plainly stated that there was the makings of such a thing and we should be careful not to let it happen.

I won't mention every program that congress and the executive only learn about way after the fact, the list is too long, though honorable mention to the current UAP craziness and the Pentagon's creative accounting that has billions of dollars magically pop in and out of existence on the regular. But the evidence that the administrative state lives its own life unburdened by control from democratic institutions is anything but nonexistent.

Yup, as I predicted, I'm happy characterizing all that as 'various people and organizations having lots of influence over various things', I think calling that 'a cabal controlling the government' is misleading.

But w/e, if we agree on empirical reality and disagree on semantics, that's not always an unimportant distinction, but it's almost always a boring one.

I denounce this distinction as without difference.

Cabals are groups of people having influence. If you wish to place the difference at coordination, we also have clear evidence the factions inside the administration are coordinating. Read for instance the twitter files for a recent example.

It seems to me that you have simply decided to define conspiracy as something impossible and that any sufficiently proven coordinated covert action just gets to be outside the definition because it's no longer impossible.

This isn't a useful way of looking at world. Working oneself backwards from dogma such as "conspiracies never happen" is a strictly worse model than discarding axiomatic categories of things that never happen and conceding that conspiracies are a thing that does happen sometimes. If only because it requires less complexity.

There may well be some number of individual cabals, they may well be influencing some number of things. Conspiracies absolutely exist; as you say we have evidence of many of them, and I happily acknowledge those.

But this is again a motte and bailey thing. Or a thing about being so casual with your language that what you communicate is qualitatively different from what you meant.

'Sometimes some cabals exist in the government and influence some things' is pretty much true.

'The Deep State is a secret cabal that controls the government' is not that.

It implies there's one single unified long-term-stable cabal, not lots of disparate and completely unrelated individual ones that spring up and fall apart in response to specific issues and opportunities.

It implies that this singular eternal cabal controls the entire government, that everything the government does is a reflection of their will and nothing else matters ('controls' is a much stronger claim than 'influences', what else could that word choice mean?).

And these claims are not just slightly different from each other, they produce massively different empirical predictions. Like, if there's a single cabal that controls everything about the government, then it should always have consistent goals in everything it does, it shouldn't break down along artisan lines, there should never be different internal factions bickering and working against each other, who you elect as representatives should never have ab effect on what the government is doing, etc. None of these things are actually true.

To me it just sounds like a straw man. Every human organization, including a conspiracy, has factions and internal politics. And all the factions of permanents government are not shy about acting in their common interests and coordinate.

To take a normal feature of any group and say that because this group has it, it's not real means that you are assuming your conclusion.

I repeat myself but to you a conspiracy is not a real object and any real large scale collusion can't be a conspiracy because it must somehow imply unreal features like perfect cooperation between all agents.

If you're not willing to call the bolcheviks a conspiracy against the provisional government, you don't have a serious definition of conspiracy.

More comments

The good argument against it is that it would be something that would likely produce tons of evidence of it's existence, and we have no such evidence, despite tons and tons of scrutiny on the matter?

That's not a good argument, that's a terrible argument!

First of all, you surely heard of survivorship bias, well there's also it's opposite. Just because you shot down all those airplanes doesn't mean there aren't some that evaded your fire. There might even be stealth airplanes you never saw coming.

Secondly, there are conspiracy theories that did end up getting backed by evidence - see Epstein's Island and his prostitution ponzi scheme.

Unless you do have evidence you want to cite, in which case, we'll probably disagree on what 'cabal' and 'controls' means.

Indeed, that has been my experience. You can drop the craziest idea like "the global elites are deliberately coordinating to spread LGBT ideology around the world", and everybody calls it a conspiracy theory and demands evidence. When you provide evidence, it magically doesn't count, because you have evidence.

Obviously people have influence over things.

This refutes the idea that the Deep State boils down to public choice theory.

but I think 'cabal' and 'control' are both big stretches for the things that are already part of the public record.

Well, you can just not use these words when you're criticizing conspiracy theorists.

When you provide evidence, it magically doesn't count, because you have evidence.

Yes, the "deep" modifier of "the deep state" suggests such layered institutional presence that "the deep state" controls what counts as "evidence," making it therefore impossible to prove its existence within deep state-controlled venues.

That's not true. "Deep" suggests a parallel power structure within the official government one, as in: "a state within a state".

Also, I was talking about all conspiracy theories, not just this one.

And you can't say "if it's true there would be evidence" and "if there's evidence, it's not true". The latter is nonsensical on it's own terms, but together it's just a plain contradiction.

Editing this out because I missed the last portion of your sentence somehow, and that means my objection is meaningless. Preserving it as a quote in case someone is working on a reply already.

Uh, no? As someone who uses the term deep state and has a rough idea of what I'm talking about when I do, there are mountains and mountains of evidence that this deep state exists. They have a level of influence over the media and society but their power isn't total. If you want an example of something that I'd view as direct action by the deep state, look at the Hunter Biden laptop letter that was signed by various members of the intelligence community. We now know that the people who signed that letter were actively lying and knew they were lying in order to shift an election, but what matters is that there is direct and primary evidence that the deep state is both real and using their influence to shift public opinion. There's been polls and research done which suggests that if the Hunter Biden laptop story wasn't suppressed it would have changed the outcome of the election.

That's a clear example of the deep state in action - they aren't the Learned Elders of Zion or the Stonecutters meeting in shady rooms, they are another power bloc competing for influence in the government. They have a lot of power in some respects but substantially less in others... but they really don't have the ability to decide what counts as evidence outside incredibly specific circumstances (FISA courts etc).

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