Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Am I quoting Glenn Greenwald? My God, I am, because he has a point about the fundamental conflict between the Deep State and President Elect Trump.

The Deep State Goes to War with President-Elect, Using Unverified Claims, as Democrats Cheer

This is the faction that is now engaged in open warfare against the duly elected and already widely disliked president-elect, Donald Trump. They are using classic Cold War dirty tactics and the defining ingredients of what has until recently been denounced as "Fake News."

Their most valuable instrument is the U.S. media, much of which reflexively reveres, serves, believes, and sides with hidden intelligence officials. And Democrats, still reeling from their unexpected and traumatic election loss as well as a systemic collapse of their party, seemingly divorced further and further from reason with each passing day, are willing -- eager -- to embrace any claim, cheer any tactic, align with any villain, regardless of how unsupported, tawdry and damaging those behaviors might be.

The serious dangers posed by a Trump presidency are numerous and manifest...

But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst kind. Demanding that evidence-free, anonymous assertions be instantly venerated as Truth -- despite emanating from the very precincts designed to propagandize and lie -- is an assault on journalism, democracy, and basic human rationality. And casually branding domestic adversaries who refuse to go along as traitors and disloyal foreign operatives is morally bankrupt and certain to backfire on those doing it.
...
All of these toxic ingredients were on full display yesterday as the Deep State unleashed its tawdriest and most aggressive assault yet on Trump: vesting credibility in and then causing the public disclosure of a completely unvetted and unverified document, compiled by a paid, anonymous operative while he was working for both GOP and Democratic opponents of Trump, accusing Trump of a wide range of crimes, corrupt acts and salacious private conduct. The reaction to all of this illustrates that while the Trump presidency poses grave dangers, so, too, do those who are increasingly unhinged in their flailing, slapdash, and destructive attempts to undermine it.
FOR MONTHS, the CIA, with unprecedented clarity, overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton's candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump.
...
In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump --- through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction -- posed a threat to it.

Whatever one’s views are on those debates, it is the democratic framework -- the presidential election, the confirmation process, congressional leaders, judicial proceedings, citizen activism and protest, civil disobedience -- that should determine how they are resolved. All of those policy disputes were debated out in the open; the public heard them; and Trump won. Nobody should crave the rule of Deep State overlords.
Yet craving Deep State rule is exactly what prominent Democratic operatives and media figures are doing. Any doubt about that is now dispelled.

This analysis seems on the mark to me.  Up-Chuck Schumer warned Trump about crossing the CIA, and he was right, but then again, when has Trump ever shied away from a confrontation?  We will see what Trump will do, but whatever it is will be unconventional and perhaps even unpredictable.  I for one wouldn't be all that sorry to see the CIA, for example, be abolished and it's true core functions folded into some other agency, or a wholly new one.  Either way, putting the fear of de facto institutional execution into the deep staters can only be a good thing.  They need to know unequivocally that they work for us, the people, and not the other way around.

4 comments:

  1. Despite all of Trump's undeniable faults and despite however he may fail in office in the future, by his mere in-your-face demeanor and his take-no-prisoners attitude, he has blown the covers off the rot that lies in the crevices and corners of these agencies & shone some bleaching sunlight on it. He has caused the media to reveal the venomous hatred with which it regards the "unfavored."
    Bless 'im, and he's not even sworn in yet. :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm still waiting for the rest of the Snowden revelations.

    ReplyDelete