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United States of Hapsburgs
It may be that our national decline has much in common with inbred imperial dynasties. The inbreeding is figurative (we presume), but since George H.W. Bush became Vice President in 1981, power in American politics has become focused, clubby, dynastic. And it has produced a declining series of leaders with one exception — the only fresh blood in a generation or two, and the only “never done politics before” fresh-blood in likely a great deal longer.
The fascinating part is not the natural progression of routine concentration of power — that’s a built-in function of organizations without controls to prevent it. What I find more interesting is the apparatchiki who defend the thing, who enable, and in fact, demand it. The functionaries and bureaucrats who know where the butter on their bread comes from, and who ferociously fend off any outsider — from either party. President Tulsi Gabbard would get the Trump treatment from her party’s Paul Ryan contingent.
The Deep State is a cross between a state-within-a-state and a praetorian guard. It has so surrounded and overshadowed the actual elected power that the weakness at the center has become a donut-hole in the political landscape, with the real tools of policy held out of reach from the center by the courtiers and rentiers.
No leader leads without a staff; no ruler rules without an administration, but our inattention to the Constitution (remember when over a decade ago Pelosi actually laughed when asked if a given law was Constitutional) has allowed the creatures of the government to take it over. A copy of a copy of a copy effect, as the government is literally the creature of, the “thing created by” the Constitution. Government has escaped the Constitution, and now the bureaucracy has escaped the government. The bureaucracy outnumbers, outweighs, and has in fact outmaneuvered the government. It is in the bureaucracy’s short-term interest to foster the concentration of power into as few hands as possible — fewer hands are more manageable, both in simplicity and effort. Yet that short-term interest is relative to an individual bureaucrat. For the bureaucracy itself, the concentration of power is also in the long-term interest, so short-term political adventurism is not discouraged by the more senior “professionals”.
The Bushies love the Clintons and the Obamas. I’m all for some collegial, sportsman-like (dare I say statesmanlike?) good conduct, but these folks are too alike for any competition or meaningful distinction to be drawn. I am reminded of the Armchair Economist’s (Steven Landsburg, Amazon link, no affiliate, honest) explanation of why he hates bipartisanship. When two gas station owners agree, it is only to collude against the customers, and so on for two political parties. Chummy bipartisanship is much-admired these days, but it serves us poorly, particularly the half of us whose end of bipartisanship involves alternately being polite and getting slaughtered. It costs the politicals of “our” side nothing to treat us this way — the only threat to those folks is in disturbing the imperial hangers-on and fixers.
You say the Emperor is an inbred moron? That generations of political consolidation have desiccated the pool of ideas and outlooks? Well, we have these people programmed. They need us, and we farm them. No way are we rocking the boat. Funding, farming, helping, harming — it just doesn’t matter. The machine keeps running and it keeps producing the desired outputs. Neither party actually matters anymore, as they have utterly merged. They are proud of their heraldry and their ancestry, and will fight to defend their perks, but not against each other. They fight against We The Subjects while the machine no longer responds to the party’s respective inputs any more than it does to “ours”, whomever we are anymore.
Both parties might as well be hostages in the castle, but held “captive” in such comfort that the last thing they want is rescue. And Heaven knows — they cannot survive outside. Why then they would have to face — us.
Published in General
There was a two very revealing quotes about the US foreign policy establishment aka ‘Foggy Bottom’ aka the deep Stare at State. That the quotes are separated by 60 years mens nothing except to highlight how long this has been going on.
Quote 1 is really a paraphrase from (I believe) George Kennan’s Cloud of Danger. He tells a story that exemplifies State’s imperviousness to any outside influence. Apparently the new Kennedy administration wanted State to produce a position paper that would reflect the new administration’s departure in thinking about nationalist movements in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. After months of meetings and memos and phone calls there was still no position paper. The Kennedy team went from wanting a paper reflecting their thinking to hoping for a paper containing any position at all and were grateful when they finally received something that – despite their best efforts – looked remarkably unchanged from what had gone before. This was Foggy Bottom’s professional opinion and no Boston Johnny Comelately was going to change that…election be damned.
Fast forward to this Sunday. One of the talking head shows had on Senator Amy Klobuchar. She was asked about FJB’s Putin regime change gaffe. Her response was right out of 1961. There is no change in US policy … “We know the policy of our country. We know what it is.” Regardless of what FJB said or wants … he’s just the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief (saints preserve us) but what he wants is beside the point. There is an agreed policy within system and no one is changing it.
(Note – this should not be construed that I’m supporting FJBs handling or mishandling of affairs. But whatever his actions are if they have taken place they have been blessed by the machine.
Yup. This gives and takes, of course, and I’m glad that there is a machine for stability. Yet, I’m dismayed that it has taken control. The infernal thing is much more powerful now than it was even then. Great quote from the JFK time — I didn’t know that.
In large, this is the same as the issue with unionization of government employees, which even FDR famously opposed. Too far left for FDR! A President cannot run the Executive if he cannot fire ranking personnel at will, and push direction through the system in a reasonable time-frame. Congress and the Executive are supposed to legislate and direct the functioning of the apparatus — there was no check specified for the bureaucracy to defend itself because there is no balance. The profusion of “as the secretary may determine” laws is another facet of this conquest.
Ever watch the TV series Scandal? I have a terrible feeling it wasn’t that far off from reality (a secret organization called B-613 is actually running the country, and they give orders to the president. Anyone who becomes inconvenient is disposed of and they have a staff of hitmen).
Thinking about it, there’s certainly a good argument that Obama was an outsider. Yet he had long-standing support from way back in the Alinsky/Ayers/Dohrn/Davis wing of things. Trump had none of that.
I don’t want to diminish what was new about Obama, and race was only a part of that. Our first foreign President, for example. That’s “not for nothing”, ha-ha. But it was also the DNC/DLC split, which despite a lot of surgery, is still an attempt to create Siamese twins from two non-compliant individuals and use a single name.
Never even heard of it. I don’t own a TV. Well, my wife maintains two at our overseas house (and I may or may not have captured one of them to play Fallout 3 on XBox), but in my temporary abode, no such thang and Heck Yeah!
That seemed to be the impetuous behind Trump’s first impeachment. Some staff officer was upset that the President wasn’t following his or the foreign policy and got his panties in a bunch. He then leaked information about the call. How dare the President set policy.
MINOR EDITS TO OP: Got popular quick, figured I ought to clean it up.
I remember an interview in which Gore Vidal said that he sometimes believed that at the first briefing a president-elect received the future president was shown a film clip of Dealy Plaza taken from a specially positioned camera.
Here! Here! Commoners! Bow and scrape before our anointed
Kings and Queenser- Presidents! and their Brave and ever powerful Department heads!Our latest elected ,not by inbreeding of course, is a little off in the head as one might expect of the Hapsburg Elect. By we Commoners should never question our anointed Overlords for they know what’s best for us!
That’s why they hated him and that’s why we need him back. And this time he needs to fire everyone in the place and start over.
Yes, I thought I was the only one left on R> who thinks Trump is the guy. Firstly, he’s been there and done that, and has seen the duplicity first hand, and still he’s coming back for more. And he’s had time to arrange for the safety of his family. I think he’s at the top of the learning curve and anyone else would wrongly still give a shred of the benefit of the doubt to the deep state and do things only by half measures. Secondly, no one else has his unique abilities and determination, and he’d have the drive and the plan to properly deal with things.
For example, I don’t think any other prospective candidate has ever had a bullet into his bedroom stopped by newly installed bulletproof glass. Nor have they had to.
No, you are not the only one. From what I’ve seen DeSantis is a serviceable substitute, but only he is. If the GOPe nominates someone other than Trump or DeSantis, I’ll vote Constitution Party yet again.
You wouldn’t even vote for Romney to save the Republican party? :)
I wouldn’t vote for Romney to save my investment portfolio. Such as it is ;-)
He wasn’t my guy in the primaries. I thought it was some kind of P.R. stunt. But when he won the nomination I was behind him 100% , and he never disappointed. He was exactly who we needed when we needed him. Mean tweets? So what. Slept with a porn star? Well duh he’s Donald Trump. Nothing they can ever dredge up about him will ever matter because he’s not a politician and never was and he wasn’t holding public office when any of it happened. Every time he does something like that, he reminds us that this guy is no politician. And that’s why we need him.
Have you ever seen the Britcom “Yes Minister”/”Yes Prime Minister”?
It’s best when considered as a documentary rather than a comedy.
My wife loves “Yes Minister” but I find it too depressing to watch. It is too real. I can’t laugh.