by John Kendall Hawkins
"By repetition, each lie becomes an irreversible fact upon which other lies are constructed."
-John Le Carre'
Author and former British spy, John le Carre', a rightwing fave, is regarded as the coiner of the expression Deep State -- what he described as "the invisible labyrinth of power" outside of government that actually controls the operations of a nation's background machinations. Most powerful nations have one. In the US, we often refer to this State as the Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC), after Ike's farewell speech in 1960, in which he references the expression. Not necessarily malignant, the Deep State does complicate the open workings of government by privileging the needs of corporations and the military over democratically expressed desires (such as a modernization of the social safety net to include universal health insurance, free tuition and loan forgiveness). Usually, the needs of the MIC amount to illicit money-making.
It's difficult for Lefties (real ones) to know what to do in these situations, as they're loose, linguistic, and work themselves up to strike back at the Right-Wing bullies calling the shots, stealing the game plans, like the cheating Patriots, and end up in court, all hoo-haa, slapping their tormentors with horsefeathers, earnest Marxists up against Romulus and Remus from the social Darwinian set, with predictable results: They get stalked, locked in and barrel-laughed at, until, finally, linguistics failing them, the Lefties are at each other's throats.
Beginning in the 80s we really needed a lift from the Lefties, but by the time the decade was over, Gorbachev's Wall was down in Berlin, and keychained as souvenirs (still available on eBay), the neo-Gold Rush East was on, Moscow fell to Mickey D's in the spring of 1990 and a Buffoon installed as president; the Chinese, looking on, with their long game face, heaved Mao for Money and, instead of a self-defeating arms race with the US Opioid Warriorsb, beat them at their own Cappie game, so that Americans may soon be heaving Das Kapital for Communitarianism (see "democratic socialism"). Sigh.
And back home, in the 80s, political con men had convinced the blue collar bees to join Reagan's self-immolation of democracy, and turn on (no, not that way) the Left, who had always, in theory and platitudes (End Welfare As We Know It, and, Hope and Change to fist-pumpin' Mandela music), had their backs. Now the Reagan Democrats were trickling down on the scraggly "hippies" left over from the 60s, and not even knowing it, high on I-beams, they were so far above the folky Left now.
Well, over at The Intercept ol' James Risen, finally released from the shock corridor called the New York Times, where he'd won that Pulitzer he so craved (in fairness: they all do), and proceeded to solve a murder upon transfer to a new asylum, but at a cost, it seems, was now at work likening the recently released Senate Report on the investigation into Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election to a John le Carre' novel. He writes,
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