"We can speculate that some of these progressive elements view Trump with disdain for all the same reasons those outside the Deep State disdain him, but their decision tree is simple: if you want to rid America's Deep State of toxic neocon-neo liberalism before it destroys the nation, you hold your nose and go with Trump because he's the only hope we have".

::::::::

How can you tell? Charles Hugh Smith has a good take on getting to the question and it just isn't that simple, or is it? He sheds a perspective on what many refer to as the "Shadow Government or "Hidden Hand" and other attempts to place blame. There has been a coup of representative government here in the US with reverberating effects across the globe on citizens' Treasure, Commons and Inalienable Rights.

Krugman is a vocal neo liberal, the CIA is vocally neocon: two sides of the same coin.

This leaves us with the question if it can be wrested back by citizens and how would that happen? As very intelligent people try to understand and implement bottom up, term limits, political contracts with their citizens and the list goes on. Why don't these approaches have any success?

Smith delves into what is a murky world for the past 40 years and has been writing about it for the past 10 years.

"Suddenly everybody is referring to the Deep State, typically without offering much of a definition. The general definition is the unelected government that continues making and implementing policy regardless of who is in elected office."

We equate the Armed Forces as part and particle of the MIC which is not entirely true. Only the Generals who become spokes persons (lobbyist) for the MIC which is only one of the profit-making arms of the deep state. The others are the elected state, the shadow state, the national security state, the public private state and the institutions of propaganda.

"Rather than being the bad guys, as per the usual Liberal world-view, the Armed Forces may well play a key role in reducing the utterly toxic influence of neocon-neoliberals within the Deep State".

For the past few years, Mr. Smith has been suggesting there is a profound split in the Deep State that is not just about power or ideology, but about the nature and future of National Security:

"In other words, what policies and priorities are actually weakening or threatening the long-term security of the United States?" He proposes "that there are progressive elements within the sprawling Deep State that view the dominant neocon-neoliberal agenda of the past 24 years as a disaster for the long-term security of the U.S. and its global interests (a.k.a. the Imperial Project)."

"There are also elements within the Deep State that view Wall Street's dominance as a threat to America's security and global interests. (This is not to say that American-based banks and corporations aren't essential parts of the Imperial Project; it's more about the question of who is controlling whom.)"

"So, let's dig in by noting that the warmongers in the Deep State are civilians, not military. It's popular among so-called Liberals (the vast majority of whom did not serve nor do they have offspring in uniform--that's fallen to the disenfranchised and the working class) to see the military as a permanent source of warmongering." (It's remarkably easy to send other people's children off to war, while your own little darlings have cush jobs in Wall Street, foundations, think tanks, academia, government agencies, etc.)"

"These misguided souls are ignoring that it's civilians who order the military to go into harm's way, not the other way around. The neocons who have waged permanent war as policy are virtually all civilians, few of whom served in the U.S. armed forces and none of whom (to my knowledge) have actual combat experience."

"These civilian neocons were busily sacking and/or discrediting critics of their warmongering within the U.S. military all through the Iraqi debacle. now that we got that straightened out--active-duty service personnel have borne the brunt of civilian planned, ordered and executed warmongering--let's move on to the split between the civilian Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the DoD (Department of Defense) intelligence and special ops agencies: DIA, Army Intelligence, Navy Intelligence, etc."

"Though we have to be careful not to paint a very large agency with one brush, it's fair to say that the civilian leadership of the CIA (and of its proxies and crony agencies) has long loved to "play army". The CIA has its own drone (a.k.a. Murder, Inc.) division, as well as its own special ops ("play army" Special Forces), and a hawkish mentality that civilians reckon is "play army special forces" (mostly from films, in which the CIA's role is carefully managed by the CIA itself: How the CIA Hoodwinked Hollywood (The Atlantic)"

"Meanwhile, it's not exactly a secret that when it comes to actual combat operations and warfighting, the CIA's in-theater intelligence is either useless, misleading or false."

"If you want documented evidence of this split in the Deep State--sorry, it doesn't work that way. Nobody in the higher echelons of the Deep State is going to leak anything about the low-intensity war being waged because the one thing everyone agrees on is the Deep State's dirty laundry must be kept private. As a result, the split is visible only by carefully reading between the lines, by examining who is being placed in positions of control in the Trump Administration, and reading the tea leaves of who is "retiring" (i.e. being fired) or quitting, which agencies are suddenly being reorganized, and the appearance of dissenting views in journals that serve as public conduits for Deep State narratives."

"Many so-called Liberals are alarmed by the number of military officers Trump has appointed. Once you realize it's the neocon civilians who have promoted and led one disastrous military intervention (either with U.S. Armed Forces or proxies managed by the CIA) after another, then you understand Trump's appointments appear to be a decisive break from the civilian warmongers who've run the nation into the ground."

"If you doubt this analysis, please consider the unprecedentedly politicized (and pathetically childish) comments by outgoing CIA director Brennan against an incoming president. Even if you can't stand Trump, please document another instance in which the CIA director went off on an incoming president-- and this after the CIA spewed a blatant misinformation campaign claiming a hacked Democratic Party email account constituted a successful Russian effort to influence the U.S. election--a surreal absurdity. Let me translate for you: our chosen Insider lost the election; how dare you! A number of observers are wondering if the CIA and its Deep State allies and cronies will work out a way to evict Trump from office or perhaps arrange a "lone gunman" or other "accident" to befall him."

"Given my thesis of a profound disunity in the Deep State, and the emergence of a progressive element hostile to neocons and neoliberalism (including Wall Street), then it's not much of a stretch to speculate that this rogue Deep State opposed to neocon-neoliberalism has Trump's back, as a new administration is pretty much the only hope to rid the nation's top echelons of the neocon-neoliberal policies that have driven the U.S. into the ground."

Rather than being the bad guys, as per the usual Liberal world-view, the Armed Forces may well play a key role in reducing the utterly toxic influence of neocon-neoliberals within the Deep State."

"If you have wondered why academics like Paul Krugman and the CIA are on the same page, it's because they are simply facets of the same structure. Krugman is a vocal neoliberal, the CIA is vocally neocon: two sides of the same coin. I invite you to study the chart above with an open mind, and ponder the possibility that the Deep State is not monolithic, but deeply divided along the fault lines of Wall-Street-Neocons-Neoliberals and the progressive elements that rightly view the dominant neocon-neoliberals as a threat to U.S. national security, U.S. global interests and world peace."

"We can speculate that some of these progressive elements view Trump with disdain for all the same reasons those outside the Deep State disdain him, but their decision tree is simple: if you want to rid America's Deep State of toxic neocon-neoliberalism before it destroys the nation, you hold your nose and go with Trump because he's the only hope we have'.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2017

Does a Rogue Deep State Have Trump's Back?

Charles Hugh Smith

Also, see:

Why Outsiders Need Insiders To Get Anything Done

January 19, 2017

You need Insiders who are loyal to an Outsider and an Outsider agenda to accomplish any real reforms.

Going to War with the Political Elite You Have (May 14, 2007)
To paraphrase the recently departed Secretary of Defense: "You go to war with the political elite you have.They're not the elite you might want or wish to have at a later time, but as you know, it's always the same elite."

Wait--what did you just say? Let's consider this thesis:

The "two-party system" is a travesty of a mockery of a sham, a con perpetrated for the consumption of the peasantry.

I am a peasant, so I say this without irony. It is not demeaning, it is reality. What makes me a peasant? Do I own sufficient means of production or capital to live well without labor? No. Do I owe a vast sum of money? Yes. Do I pay more tax than a hedge fund manager who "earned" $360 million? Yes. (When the 15% FICA self-employment tax has no ceiling, and 15% of that $360 million goes to FICA, let me know--but don't hold your breath.) Am I politically powerless? Yes. I could go on, but you get the idea.

ERIC ZUESSE| 17.01.2017 | OPINION

US Senators Are Even More Neoconservative than Are Trump's Appointees

ERIC ZUESSE | 08.01.2017 | WORLD

US Aristocracy Panics that Maybe Trump Is Serious

Authors Bio:

George King has been involved in civil rights and started protesting government as a US Marine protesting the Vietnam War in 1967.

He has owned and operated as a small business owner of Coffee Houses and later Sporting Goods. He was employed as a millwright and project expediter building manufacturing and chemical plants in the US. After NAFTA killed manufacturing in the US attended St. Petersburg College for a degree in Computer Science. After the India Caucus (US Representatives junkets to India) struggled to keep work as a computer science programmer due to the outsourcing of jobs to India and Indian Green card visas allowing for foreign workers to compete at undercutting (cheap) wages against US citizens at home.

I stay active in trying to be vigilante on world events and at home in defending against the loss of self government to transnational banking and corporations undermining Democracy. I believe in the FDR New Deal direction that regained control from Bankers and Corporations establishing good relations for workers and abolishing child and slave like working conditions.

I am in agreement with Pope Francis on inequality and the environment.