Where’s The Deep State When You Need It?

47 thoughts on “Where’s The Deep State When You Need It?”

1. The proper solution, it would seem, would be for the courts to administer justice in a timely and objective manner, and *lock him up”! However, given Trump’s demonstrated ability and willingness to manipulate and corrupt our justice system, and foment politicalviolencein furtherance of his aims, while i wouldn’t countenance political violence, i do think wishing for a natural event to remove Trump from this world…or sufficiently disable him for the rest of his sorry days…is not unreasonable.

   1. This scenario is text book fascism, with anticipatory timeline and next steps.

      Please recall that Hitler was jailed…before he was elected.

      Trump is a ‘special’ phenomenon….bit he is still more of symptom than thr disease.

      (And as we can see, there are plenty of mini-Trumps of all shapes, sizes, and hues ready to take the baton).

2. “ …it’s up to voters.” Paul Campos at Lawyers Guns & Money has a good post up saying that SCOTUS will rule Trump eligible and that will be all that’s needed for must people to say J6 wasn’t a big deal.
   “…for the voters who will decide the 2024 presidential election — the Supreme Court will have determined that Donald Trump didn’t do anything wrong, or seriously wrong, in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and that Joe Biden’s claims that Trump is an imminent threat to the survival of liberal democracy are just a typical politician saying typical politician things because that’s politics, which is a bunch of lies anyway.”

   1. A republic, if you can keep it, eh?

3. Our lack of a “backup plan” to block a politician’s candidacy if SCOTUS fails to do so is our #1 differentiator as a country, part of why everyone wants to come here despite our problems, with the hope that we’ll one day grow into and live up to our ideals. I get how inconvenient and scary this lack of authoritarian power can be, especially if you view a political candidate as a real danger, and if you don’t trust voters to “make the right decision”. The problem with backup plans is the “next time”, when the incumbent is like Putin and the guy whose candidacy is blocked is like Navalny (I’m sure you don’t like the analogy but the point is, “next time” you don’t get to pick who gets blocked from running). In my view, you can’t vote for an 80 year old with obvious physical and mental decline and then expect the courts to block the bull in the china shop. No matter how it plays out, we get what we deserve.

   1. He is the Putin. How do you not understand that? I’ll ask this again: WTF is wrong with everybody? He stood there on national television and stoked an insurrection. We all saw it. He’s on tape in Georgia instructing state officials to fabricate votes. We all heard it. He’s at rallies telling people that he’s going to abuse his powers if he gets back in. He says it all the damn time. He shouts about it. Into a microphone. At stadiums. His lawyers argued, in court, that if he’s president, he can gun down random civilians (literally shoot them, for no reason, personally) with no consequences. That’s real. They argued that. And they were dead serious (no pun intended). Last time, Michael Cohen testified before Congress that if Trump lost, there wouldn’t be a peaceful transfer of power, and Trump’s allies said “Oh, that’s ridiculous.” Look what happened. What happens if, in 2025, during a second term, he executes a random citizen on The White House lawn and the Supreme Court he stacked decides he’s immune? What happens then? We get what we deserve all right, and on some days, I hope he does win and does something totally crazy once he’s president again just so everyone has to look back and say “God, I was a silly, naive idiot.”

      1. Oh, I remember now. The commenter I’m responding to here is the SCOTUS fan among us, or at least based on his/her remarks during the student debt relief debate. Well guess what? At least one of them is hopelessly corrupt in the opinions of some court experts, and in my opinion, two of them are clerics masquerading as judges. The idea that a panel of robed jurists should be de facto able to do things like strip women of their rights is backwards, crazy and cost the GOP dearly in the last midterms. That abortion decision is one reason why some people don’t want to come here anymore. Now, those same robed jurists, surely with the votes of the two clerics and one man whose wife was in direct contact with the Trump administration during what the Justice Department alleges was a scheme to defraud the country, are about to clear the way for a man whose disdain for the checks and balances you love so much knows no bounds, to be president again. I can’t say this enough: Half of this country has gone nuts, and the court (as well as dozens of members of Congress) are engaged in a coordinated effort to overthrow the republic all to placate a reality TV show host who inherited his money and who, prior to becoming president, was a laughing stock.

         1. Well, as you said, there are about 30% of the American voters who want to give right wing authoritarianism a try. At least as long as Trump is hurting the people he should (https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/8/18173678/trump-shutdown-voter-florida : “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”)

            And 15-20% hate the Dems so much they’ll tolerate anything on the assumption that it can only be better than the Dems. And you got to admit, Trump’s first presidency wasn’t that different from a standard GOP one, except for all the media chaos and the excess COVID deaths.

            1. And 15-20% hate the Dems so much they’ll tolerate anything…
               In other words, as long as they think something will hurt someone else more than them, they’re just fine with it.

         2. Maybe HRC’s “deplorables” comments wasn’t so far off the mark after all… She just said the quite part out loud and it cost her dearly.

            1. Which takes my mind to Al Franken resigning over a staged picture of him not touching the breasts of a woman who makes her living in part off of them and whose breasts were safely beneath multiple layers of clothing, including a flak jacket. This is the problem. HRC calls it as she sees it and it turns out to be disappointingly accurate and is excoriated for it forever. Trump says hateful, disgusting and incriminating garbage constantly, both on purpose and also just mindlessly (as may be his natural state). But I feel like the stupid one for thinking that any of these things — the serial rapes and assaults, the misogyny with Epstein and even his own daughter, his billion dollar record taxpayer loss or de minimis tax liabilities, his buddying up to Russian oligarchs, being a prime banking client of Deutsche Bank, stealing classified documents, ordering political reprisals and on and on — I’ve reached the point of never getting my hopes up anymore despite a steady stream of new opportunities. I’m fascism fertilizer at this point. I’m putting all I got left on a massive coronary. hopefully mid-Tweet, during his morning unconstitutional (sic). Maybe only a figurative diaper change is all that stands between us and the coming American Devolution.

      2. “ I hope he does win and does something totally crazy once he’s president again just so everyone has to look back and say “God, I was a silly, naive idiot.””

         His disenfranchised and undereducated base have a selective memory, and a desire to always be the victim, that should keep feeling silly or naive from happening. It’ll be someone or something else’s fault.

         1. That.

            You still have people, including supposedly smart people, saying Putin was given no choice but to declare war in Ukraine, that it’s all the West’s fault…

            At this level, nothing can pierce that wilful craziness.

            1. Sadly, I acknowledge you are likely correct that some of the willful crazies will not be reformed by any sort of logic or experience. To let this injustice go forward just to teach them a lesson will not work. I reference cases such as Jim Jones, Shah of Ira, Hitler, Confederacy etc. to make this point.

               So the only humane action is to embrace those who would truly exit the propaganda bubble, knowing that some are charlatans who are intending to gather intelligence. We also need to hold people accountable to the law, knowing while we are removing only the few it is likely the craziest of the crazies. The most productive action is what is happening here in these pages, alignment with others who are rationally outside the bubble of these crazy minorities. There is hope in this last strategy and a strong likelihood of success.

               What we lack in the above is motivation, fire is the most effective weapon of fire. Fear underlies the message propaganda of these we deplore. We need a healthy does of risk assessment (rational fear fighting tool) to hopefully be practiced by all who are motivated to do nothing and wait for others to make the world a better place. Biden is correct to highlight the risks.

   2. Like, Trump isn’t in mental decline?!

      Look, Trump looks better physically than Joe. But, intellectually, not even going into the initial differences in IQ levels, Trump is slumping way faster than Biden…

      1. Trump was out on the stump on Friday. Here’s an excerpt of his remarks:

         “Remember this: the currents, both sea and air, they fly right over our country. The current, the water comes down the Pacific, right out of China, so when they dump their garbage in the Pacific it comes right down along our coast, on the West Coast past Los Angeles.

         “Much of it pours onto our land, but our waters are very dirty because they dump their garbage in the ocean and it’s about a four or five day journey. The tides bring it by. Nobody ever talks about that.

         “When they fire up their plants and all of that pollution comes over the seas and it comes right over our land. And then they want us to have clean. I said wait, ‘We’re gonna be clean but it’s all flying.’ Just remember that. Does that make sense? [Ed note: Zero.]

         “In other words, it’s all coming through the currents, through the air, it all comes. They can name it, they can say exactly where it’s going to be and when.”

         1. I get what he’s getting at but indeed don’t tell me that’s the mark of a sharp mind…

            And, fwiw, Trump used to be able to speak normally. Check his 20 or 30 year old interviews, he was a lot sharper (if still Trump)

4. Even before the election of 2020 alarm bells were ringing, warning about increasing threats of violence from Trump’s political supporters. When Trump and his allies launched an all-out effort to overturn the election, we all watched the so-called “Stop the Steal” movement and its rallies, threats of civil war, and the Trump team’s legal and political efforts to defy the Constitution, overturn the results, and keep Trump in power. And we remember the calls for Trump to declare martial law and the documented calls for violence at a Jan. 5 rally in Washington, D.C. and on pro-Trump social media.
   Trump’s relentless effort to undermine faith in our elections and his increasingly authoritarian rhetoric affirm the truth: The Jan. 6 Insurrection should have been no surprise, and neither should the next right-wing coup attempt.
   We continue to witness the threat to democracy. For example, from Trump’s pledge to bring martial law-promoting Michael Flynn into a new Trump administration.
   Perhaps things would be different today if all of those people who stormed the US Capitol had been hosed down with 35,000 PSI water cannons. But they don’t do those kinds of things to white people.

   1. They’d be martyrs.

      You cannot water hosed people in submission, let alone 30% of the population. You either need stronger medicine or you need to check mate them.

5. There is a huge financial risk for an autocrat seizing power. Autocrats have historically acted without regard to moral decency, if a narcissist autocrat feels slighted they can react with devastating consequences. It is the insider wealthy and corporations that bear most of the risk. In ancient history it was the brown shirts that paid a precious price. DIsney was a Florida favorite, it might be sobering to see how much the Santis-Disney spat has cost Disney. Disney losses could be a drop in the bucket should an autocrat seize the presidency and say for instance decide Home Depot has slighted him.

6. For the record, I genuinely hope that Trump dies. I don’t feel the least bit badly about this wish.

   If all of what everyone has said is true, why did Newsome come out and say that Trump should be on the ballot? 1) He is more beatable than Haley? 2) Doesn’t matter in California anyway?

   I’d love to hear some thoughts on this.

7. I agree with your assessment of Trump, particularly related to his machinations in 2020-2021 and if he’s a candidate, I won’t vote for him, and have never voted for him. However I think a plain reading of the 14th amendment holds that he can only be barred from running if convicted of insurrection, conviction being the threshold to determine whether he “engaged” in insurrection. There has to be an objective measure that others can be held to in the future. This is the rule of law, and why we have survived for 240 years. I can assure you there are plenty of lawyers and judges who would attempt to convict him of insurrection if there was a technical case. If you want to advocate to lower the bar to, say, “what we all saw”, or “common sense”, fair enough, but I think lowering the bar is dangerous bc, as I’ve written, next time it may very well be the “dangerous guy” in the White House and the challenger candidate, the one who will “save us from a tyrant”, is the one who gets barred for an unconvicted insurrection

   1. To be fair, I’d really like an answer to those 2 points.

      1) Has Trump engage in insurrection? I agree with our host (and Dana above quickly summarized key events) that he plainly has.

      2) This being so (Trump is clearly guilty of attempted insurrection), why are the courts taking so damn long to convict him and thus make it possible for the 14th amendment to apply?

      1. Yeah, people are just being deliberately obtuse because they don’t want to deal, head-on, with a difficult decision. This isn’t about due process. This is about everyone being scared to tell this guy enough’s enough and to tell his supporters the same thing.

         1. Seems indeed the most likely explanation.

            … but which lead me to the thing the Deep State (TM) or the Dems COULD do – say quietly to the judges etc. “Look, come what may, we will have your back. You will be physically protected and you will be taken care of if the Republicans still manage to win”.

         2. The other thing that people forget is that Bannon already laid out like tactically in terms of the seats of power that they would need to be held by followers/ Republicans that would help enable/embolden their agenda once back in power.

            Another even scarier truth is a very large contingent of law enforcement and the military buy into what Trump’s saying on some level. Who’s to say next time instead of Eugene Goodman leading rioters away from the chamber, what if where “Officer” Jacob Chansley pointing to Nancy’s office… “They’re right over there guys! get’em”

      2. As to Q2, because they are deathly afraid of him.

         1. If they are afraid now just wait till he and his supporters regain power. I am likely to move to a state/area where he holds little sway.

      3. I feel what he did was close enough to insurrection that I wish he’d be convicted of it and therefore barred from running. And I’d be tempted to turn the courts and secretaries’ of state into a Caesar to wield the power to make it so. The reason why his “insurrection” failed is because state legislators, both houses, and Pence all followed the process, in the end. The process being the objective thing, the rule of law, the thing that many concerned citizens want to do away with today to remove him as a threat. The most dangerous thing about trump is how he’s radicalized his opponents into thinking the entire system and process isn’t trustworthy and therefore we must fight fire with fire and effectively creating a self fulfilling prophecy of destruction of the rule of law and our institutions (despite the fact that those very institutions buckled but ultimately held the country together in 2020). Our only option is to cling to and defend our institutions and hope they hold. Destroying them to defeat the guy who wants to destroy them is obviously the wrong path. Not sure how reasonable center-left folks can’t see that.

         1. You’re right that, in the end, it was a handful of Republicans who did their duty and saved us (well, you, I’m not American). But they’ve now been thoroughly purged to make sure no one ever stand up to the Orange menace.

            And we don’t entirely disagree with you. But as I believe someone said, “without people, institutions are just buildings” (paraphrasing) i.e., you need those judges to do their f%cking duty, just like those Republican officials did. So far, they seem unwilling to. What then?

8. This article, perhaps more than any of your other recent articles on the topic, really hits nail to the head in identifying the problem we face as a nation. I honestly believe that at the core of our dilema is the fact that a large portion of Americans, many who can be described as rational and intelligent, are in complete disbelief and paralyzed by the events we are witnessing. Many of our fellow citizens are in shock, they simply can’t believe that a man like Trump, who simply decided to hijack the system, can get away with dismissing 248 years of democratic tradition and respect for the rule of law (at least most of the time for the privileged among us). Many have bought the American exceptionalism story without realizing it takes actual work and commitment to avoid descending into the default state of human society: chaos, violence and de facto benefits solely for the lucky few in power. Equality before the law, upward mobility, and free speech are not the norm in our planet, it takes constant effort and vigilance to suppress our worst (and truest) instincts. We are witnessing the decay of our empire, and like other empires before ours, the ultimate enemy surged from within, democracy will die at the hands and under the fee will of American voters.

   1. We’re going to have to get over the idea Trump voters want a democracy because most of them want a theocratic white supremacist state.

      1. And they’re thinking there is always the chance they’ll get to become members of the Trumpfen Sturmabteilung.

      2. Then give it to them. Very few people really want the realities of a Christian theocracy. But most people (namely white older, mostly Republican men) are insulated from most of those effects. Remove the insulation.

         H mentioned this in a previous post. Biden has this belief we’re just a tweak or two away from all singing “Kumbaya” and holding hands clinking Coke bottles. It’s the most “senile” thought he has. Democrats always hold this belief that by education and debate Republicans can be taught empathy. They can’t. Real change occurs when policy effects begin to really hurt the white middle, upper middle and wealthy classes. Democrats need to make these Republican policies hurt people who don’t believe it will affect them.

         1. Agreed: it took a second term of born again George Bush Jr to not only have 2 ongoing wars but enable the wrecking of the global economy – literally on the brink of the Great Depression 2, before Obama (black american but don’t ask Birther Trump) was allowed to save the rich white people.

            Trump’s incompetent (and corrupt) response to Covid was only saved by his incompetent ability to block anybody else – otherwise the country would have tried “herd immunity” with hydroxychloroquine and crashed the US harder than a black plague flea market into middle ages hell.

            1. … especially as the Fed etc. still acted for the greater good.

               TBF, Trump was absolutely willing to spend money to help people during COVID. That’s one of the most pronounced difference between populists and “conservatives” – they don’t care about fiscal rectitude. Not one bit.

            2. fredm421 — it doesn’t really matter at this point, but Trump’s Covid spending proposal was for $50 billion and focused on tax cuts for business. Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, barely kept a straight face while they immediately dismissed his proposal as grossly inadequate, then passed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act about 2 weeks later.

9. BTW, Mike Lee, the senior senator from Utah, seems to have lost his mind and his team is offering a reward — $9.99 — for its return.

10. Your political diatribes become tiresome. I only hope you can keep on message this next year and do your job. The monthly handwringing liberal columns are at least sweet and literate, even worthy of the effort … in reading… I take them in and think. And often acknowledge the point, but this sort of thing I’m sure only infuriates half your readership for its wild accusations… and democratic socialist leanings. We are not all DEI enthusiasts. Meritocracy is still something most of us aspire to despite Obama’s insidious pronouncements .

    1. Kiss my ass. Is that “sweet and literate” enough for you? If not, I can come up with some even “sweeter” language.

       Also, I don’t have a “job.” I don’t need one. If you do, then I guess the meritocracy didn’t find as much value in what you had to offer as it did in my contributions.

       1. Glad you feel that way. No I retired young when I saw one out of ten of my fellows going under every year and i had had a few years of winning hands. There after i write for myself and read widely… including you. And will continue to do so as it’s the only way to keep real. It’s the bubble that will get you (not you ’em particularly ) in the end. Just sometime I’m afraid your head might explode like the meme if and when Trump is elected and that is an important point… ELECTED. That would be a shame as i might have to listen to Bloomberg and CNBC and Fox Business again if you self imploded, and you are more reasoned, accurate and timely. It would be a shame.

          1. Yeah, it’d be a shame if liberals like me lost their heads and did something crazy after a lost election — you know, something crazy like going half-naked to the Capitol armed with bear spray and wearing an animal fur headdress, screaming about hanging the vice president and kidnapping the house speaker.

    2. Be silent and “do your job” eh?

       1. Like Laura Ingraham’s “shut up and dribble.”

          It’s so predictable. And so stereotypical. I could’ve written that guy’s comments ahead of time and attributed them to “generic Trump supporter projecting his own anger and inclinations to insanity onto other people.” It’s the same thing Trump does. Whatever he preemptively accuses other people of doing (or planning to do) is an infallible window into what he’s doing (or planning to do). Same with that commenter. “Don’t let your head explode” (said to me) means that guy might lose his mind this year.

    3. Trump is the antithesis of meritocracy and effectively a nefarious version of Homer Simpson. I think Frank Grimes said it best: “I’m saying you’re what’s wrong with America, Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you leech off decent, hardworking people like me. Ha! If you lived in any other country in the world, you’d have starved to death long ago.”

       1. Yeah, the irony of the commenter above (“Rlindenb”) suggesting Trump is an example of meritocracy and Obama of freeloading is too stupid to be true. If it were a standalone comment (i.e., without the rest of the comment) I’d seriously have taken it as dry humor. It’s truly hard to fathom how gullible ostensibly intelligent people are in this country. I honestly don’t understand how some folks make it through a single day without being swindled out of every dime they have.

11. One of the best bits of advice I received from a mentor was once you sniff a sociopath particularly of the appeal to emotion variety, flee from the odor.. There’s an ever growing percentage of the populace that are lacking this olfactory intelligence. We can’t ghost this dude, in this case the contempt card is trumped.