Little by little, Robert Mueller, the Senate Intelligence Committee, whistleblowers and investigative reporters are piecing together the story behind the plot to subvert democratic government in America. The picture that is taking shape includes President Trump and the creatures around him, but the conspiracy is far wider than the 2016 election, and goes back much further.
According to the fever dream of the right, there’s a Deep State that secretly rules America, an organization akin to earlier fantasies such as the Illuminati, the Freemasons, the Trilateral Commission. And the idea has been sold so incessantly that a recent poll showed that 74% of American believe in the deep state, defined as “a collection of unelected officials running policy.”
Well, yes, I suppose. That’s called the civil service of the government of the United States. These are the people who turn on the lights and sweep the floor in government buildings, inspect the meat we eat and the drugs we take, staff the parks we visit and do all the daily tasks beneath the dignity and salary demands of the four thousand political appointees that change every four or eight years as new administrations take over.
Without them your Social Security check would not be in the mail, your passport request would not be processed, the CDC would not monitor the latest contagious disease outbreak or FEMA show up after the tornado, hurricane or earthquake.
But if the Deep State is a fiction, there really is a Deep Anti-State that works in the shadows. The philosophy of the Deep Anti-State is libertarian with nativist and isolationist elements. Its roots go back to anti-communist extremist groups like the John Birch Society and the works of Ayn Rand.
The gospel they believe in is a species of self-serving social and economic Darwinism. The very rich believe the fittest are those with the most money. In their view, government is largely a tool used by the inferior to steal money from those who earned it. Communism was up front about it, but in their eyes all governments are the enemy and hide their motives under egalitarian, altruistic, communitarian rhetoric.
The unceasing aim of the Deep Anti-State is to undermine the government of the United States, especially its power to tax and regulate, the better to keep power (and money) where it belongs — in the hands of unelected oligarchs and their tools. It numbers many millionaires and billionaires among its members. In the last several decades many of them have worked to create an elaborate Deep Anti-State infrastructure of publishing, media, propaganda, lobbying think tanks and educational institutions.
Funding for these endeavors has come from many wealthy families, funneled through, for example, the Olin, Bradley, Sciafe and Koch foundations. They work through entities that do not bear their names but churn out spin and policy prescriptions they favor. These fronts boast anodyne, patriotic names like The American Enterprise Institute, The Cato Institute, The Ayn Rand Institute (they like the word institute), The Heritage Foundation and The Tax Foundation.
Misleading advertising in favor of cutting taxes, cutting deficits and cutting spending on safety net programs are designed to persuade average voters that legislation that will actually be bad for them will be good for them. It is run by front groups with populist names like Americans for Prosperity, Concerned Veterans for America, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, and the Heartland Institute.
The Citizens United court decision in 2010 made the funding of elections and propaganda on issues on a vast scale by a few very wealthy individuals legal. Hiding their hands to disguise their power became increasingly important, lest the average voter conclude the game was rigged against his interests, as it was. Under the leadership of the Kochs, The Donors Trust was created whereby plutocrats could pool their money and hide the source of the funds from prying eyes. By 2014, 100 oligarchs contributed more to influence elections that the 4,750,000 people who gave $200 or less to elect the candidates of their choice.
And it has worked. Starting at the grassroots, Deep Anti-State money has elected many pliant legislators and governors at the state level. They in turn have passed laws to gerrymander districts to favor more Deep Anti-State candidates and to suppress the votes of groups unlikely to favor their agenda, including minorities, the poor and the young.
Courts have struck down some of these laws, but that may change. The Deep Anti-State funds The Federalist Society. It has outposts in most of the country’s law schools and powerful legal practices, grooming like-minded lawyers for appointment to the bench. Trump, like Republican presidents before him, has chosen his court nominees from a list approved by the Federalist Society. As of the beginning of 2018, he had named eighteen judges from the Federalist list, and four of the nine Supreme Court justices were members of the fraternity – Roberts, Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch.
The Donors also play a long game by contributing money to universities to slant the teaching of history and economics in favor of their belief system. Recipients include Brown, SMU, UNC-Chapel Hill, Baylor, Catholic University, NYU, Indiana Tech, Ohio State, Utah State and many more.
Despite all this firepower and success in infecting the body politic with their Deep Anti-State ideas, drawing districts to favor their candidates and suppressing the vote of their foes, by 2013 it became apparent that what they were selling was unpopular with the majority of middle class voters. Barack Obama was re-elected, and many people hurt by the Great Recession did not believe unfettered capitalism and small government were in their best interest.
It turned out they wanted affordable health care, a clean environment, opportunity for all, not just profits for some, rights for workers, good public education, and a minimum wage. All anathema to the Deep Anti-State.
The oligarchs began to retool their strategy leading up to 2104, and a new weaponized means of corrupting the vote emerged, using high technology and the low road of treason. Next time: The Deep Anti-State and the Mercers, Breitbart, Wikileaks, Putin, Cambridge Analytica, and Facebook.