I'm old enough to remember when talk of the "Deep State" was relegated to the margins of the conspiracy and parapolitics worlds.
And so is your toddler nephew.
When a meme like "the Deep State" hits the mainstream media like that- in such a big, bad way-- it's no accident. It's been committee'd and workshopped and war-gamed well in advance. The Deep State generally avoids the sunlight and has worked very hard for the past 40 years to make sure that journalists look the other way. So why are we hearing so much about them-- everywhere-- all of a sudden?
It's one thing to read about the Deep State on InfoWars-- or even Breitbart --and it's quite another when mainstream pundits start talking about it.
That gets my antennae up.
Former Bush I official Catherine Austin Fitts said well in advance of the election that Trump wouldn't win unless there was some powerful faction of the Deep State behind him. Which makes sense given how many power players were dead-set against him.
I admit I never took Trump seriously, and never expected he would win, but I can say this is the only explanation I can think of to explain why he's sitting in the White House at present.
But when he did I thought very seriously about CAF's prediction. And when Trump began stocking his cabinet with hardcore military and corporate figures (and not with the kind of Fox News leftovers I expected) I began to look at what I call the New Praetorians, a group of powerful military, intelligence and corporate bigwigs using Trump as a stalking horse for their own agenda.
I began to notice -- a bad habit of mine -- that while Trump kept the outrage machine cranked up, these serious-as-a-heart-attack men like ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and former CentCom Commander Gen. James Mattis -- the deepest of Deep Staters -- seemed to going about their business unimpeded.
I began to notice that the Vice President Mike Pence seems to operating a parallel administration while his ostensible boss takes all the brickbats.
I guess I'm not supposed to notice things like that in this environment.
The other night I had the surreal experience of reading liberal Democrats on Facebook (many of whom are my friends) praise newly-installed National Security Adviser Gen. HR McMaster, a thoroughbred military hard-ass to the core. Someone they probably would be horrified by under other circumstances.
I suppose they were just following the MSM, who've been falling over each other singing this guy's praises. That, my friends, is weird. It gave me the same vertigo feeling I got when I saw the Hollywood types in the Hamilton Elector video agitating to get Mike Pence put in the Oval Office. Someone they definitely would be horrified by under other circumstances.
Was I imagining things? Was I sensing patterns that weren't there? Was I sensing a game not actually afoot?
Maybe. But then this pops up on USAToday, um, today:
President Trump's foreign policy is going surprisingly well abroad, whatever might be happening on any given day at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
The president deserves no sympathy for his tirades, tweets and White House turbulence. But while his domestic policy ideas seem quite outside the mainstream, his national security team is performing much better than it is being given credit for.
To be sure, it is far too soon to breathe a sigh of relief about this administration; Trump's mercurial temperament has not abated since his inauguration. For whatever the reason, though, he has chosen a national security team that appears excellent — and that has already calmed many nerves around the world.
The most recent news, the appointment of Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser, will reinforce this trend. None of the world’s crises is about to be resolved any time soon. But let's give credit where it's due relative to what are reasonable expectations for the first month of any new administration, especially one run by a populist non-politician known for three decades of extreme rhetoric.
Let's do a quick tour of the world:
On East Asia policy, Secretary of Defense James Mattis took the administration’s first overseas trip to visit Tokyo and Seoul. He made the case for strong U.S.-Korea and U.S.-Japan alliances, endorsed the stabilizing Obama policy to defend Japan's Senkaku islands from any military moves by China (snip)...So who exactly is playing whom here?
I can say this for sure, the entire "Resistance" is a reverse cult-of-personality and is only about Trump. Its backers may wish otherwise-- ostensibly, that is, you can never really tell what these billionaires are really after-- but if Trump goes (and I have a very strong feeling that the plan has always been for him to leave before his full term*), all the air goes out of the tire. The entire multibillion enterprise that has arisen against him vanishes overnight.
For the time being, the Praetorians simply let Trump be Trump and do whatever work was intended to be done when they hitched their wagon to his horse in the first place. After all, nothing is going to take the spotlight off Trump, not in this superheated environment. He's too irresistible a target.
There's a game being played here-- an operation-- I simply haven't been able to guess at the intended outcome yet. I only know it's absolutely not what it appears to be. And the reason why I know that is that there are two very different stories coming out of this Administration, one you don't hear much about and one that hammers you over the head everywhere you look.
That reminds me of nothing else but prestidigitation.
* Gordon tells me that the astrologers predict a career change in Q3 of this year for Trump. So take that for whatever it's worth.
