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Notes -
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...
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.
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