Oh the conspiracies! 8Chan & QAnon and what's with all the resignations?

As America bleeds yet again from paranoia-propelled madmen, let me dive today into the weird illogic of conspiracy sites and theories. We'll get to the web side of this insanity. Also, we'll also ask, what's with the wave of "retirements" from Congress and the Administration?

For starters though... The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat. The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate. The FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.

The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.”

But that's all "deep state" propaganda, right? Riiiight. Half a million civil servants, two million teachers, a quarter of a million journalists, a million scientists and science-related workers, a quarter of a million intel and military officers and FBI/law professionals... all in on it together, with a degree of secrecy and competence never before displayed by any government. Uh huh.

== Our Hearts Bleed ==

After every mass shooting, everyone trots out their own nostrums and prescriptions. Oh, I agree on the top priority: defeating Trumpism and the Putin-puppeteer behind it. 

My own proposal is that we weaken the opposition to reasonable gun laws by actually listening to what passes for moderates in the gun-clutching opposition. We'll make better progress if we offer a a way to resolve gun owners' fear of a "slippery slope to confiscation." There's a germ of a reasonable fear that we should at least try to understand.

 But my own top contribution has for 25 years been a demand to punish attention-seeking murderers by taking away their NAMES. The Greeks understood this. After the New Zealand shootings, it looked as if the idea might take hold.

== Bleeding Red ==

Let's move on to another kind of bleeding -- the accelerating flight of every remotely sane individual from the Trumpist mess.  “Will Hurd, the House's Only Black Republican, Won't Seek Re-election In 2020.” And that makes what? Nine GOP representatives retiring, six in the last week? 

Are these gestures? Acts of honor? Buyouts? Or might something else in the offing? Stated Hurd: "I left a job I loved in the CIA as an undercover officer to meet what I believed to be a need for new leadership in Congress on intelligence and national security matters…. I want to use my experience to focus on these generational challenges in new ways. … I will stay involved in politics to grow a Republican Party that looks like America." 

There are volumes worth pondering in each of those sentences And yes, I sniff something I’ll hint at, below. But one factor is that Texas is becoming unfriendlier to the Party of Cheating that gerrymandered its lock on power over the Lone Star State. Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones, an Air Force veteran has already announced she was seeking this Texas seat again. In the mold of Amy McGrath, who is America's best chance to chase away the nation's worst traitor. Proving yet again my earlier point that this is time for a broad coalition, not splitter puritanism. 

But the bleeding continues. What is to be made of the sudden departure of the US Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coats? And the even more sudden retirement of the current deputy director of national intelligence, Sue Gordon, who Trump banned from some White House briefings? To be clear, the new appointee, Joseph Maguire, the current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is a retired admiral and an apparently solid guy. (I always find the Navy reassuring, as when Adm. Mullen joined Def.Sec Gates, replacing Donald Rumsfeld during those almost-as-treasonous Bush years.) 

Ah, but here’s a question we never used to ask. Who will be the acting director? Sue Gordon was a career CIA officer who should have - by law - been made acting DNI. Apropos to a reality star president, Trump has turned to “acting” officials who are not always vetted by Congress. Think about that.

Also leaving, U.S. ambassador to Russia John Huntsman, a former Utah governor and 2012 presidential candidate, who served as ambassador to China in 2009. A sometime libertarian candidate, as well, Huntsman is known as something of a non-foxite (i.e. somewhat sane) Republican. “Huntsman's departure comes as Fiona Hill, the top official on Russian affairs at the National Security Council, is also expected to leave her post this month.”

And yes, there must be more to this recent wave than just professionals unable to stomach things-Trump anymore -- a “great judge of character” who has been later “betrayed” by the same “great guys” more often than any ten other administrations, combined.

Shall I tell you what I sniff? Watch. Watch for a move at least partly led by Mitt, some time in the late fall or winter.

== The Last Gasp of Sane Republicans? ==

Oh. Keep an eye on the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Intelligence, which released Volume 1 of its report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns and Interference in the 2016 U.S. Election; it states that “the Russian government directed extensive activity, beginning in at least 2014 and carrying into at least 2017, against U.S. election infrastructure at the state and local level.” 

Read this report about the report, which elaborates and confirms Robert Mueller findings of all-out war against our institutions. One chilling quote: "… pro-Kremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign, #DemocracyRIP, on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton's victory.’ …If Russia's preferred candidate does not prevail in the 2020 election, the Russians may seek to delegitimize the election.”

Relevant to today's topic -- this report was issued by one of the few islands of sanity left in the Republican-controlled Senate, a committee wherein a cabal of Democrats and a few residually adult-sane Republicans (RASRS) refused to be controlled by Moscow Mitch McConnell, and instead did their duty.

== Conspiracy madness and our ruined immune system ==

Okay, now down to the promised stuff... conspiracies! We need to get ready for the tsunami of election interference, meddling and lies, much of it in the form of deep faked images etc. Our salvation will come from experts who appraise lies with modern tools… which is why Fox/KGB shills wage all-out war on fact-checking services.  To see how bad it can be… and how some of YOUR friends on YOUR side may be susceptible, read about QAonon: 

“Traditionally, the audience for conspiracy theories are those who feel marginalized from ordinary politics and are disengaged. Now the most prominent conspiracy proponent is, arguably, the world’s most powerful person.”  

This article about QAnon is so (scarily) consistent with what I’ve said in The Postman, in Earth and in Existence and also The Transparent Society.… that webs of citizenship have to be built upon some sense of common narrative and the sort of trust that arises out of open information flows.

“Much as there’s a robust online community extending the narrative of virtually any TV show, movie or beloved work of fiction, QAnon’s bakers are taking the narrative sketches offered by Q (the mythical, John Galt-like supposed Trump insider who offers QAnon tantalizing bits of Truth)  and extending them into a rich and detailed fantasy world. While there’s ample fan fiction about well-loved stories like the Harry Potter series or Star Trek, many fanfic aficionados choose to extend flawed texts, fixing their shortcomings and amplifying their strengths. It’s far more fun to write fanfic for a bad show than for a perfect one, and the narrative put forward by Q on 4Chan and 8Chan is deeply flawed. It is filled with events that haven’t transpired and predictions gone wrong.

“What is perhaps most remarkable about QAnon is how resilient it has been to obvious setbacks, including the inconvenient truth that neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama have been arrested.” … “Most of the popular QAnon podcasts feature sponsored advertising, notably products like emergency flashlights designed to help listeners survive the social upheavals destined to come about during The Storm.”

Ah, Holnism.

“With revelations about the use of Facebook groups by the Russian Internet Research Agency to create conflicts between groups of Americans and force cleavages within left-wing movements, it’s clear that the social media/news loop is being manipulated. What may be more relevant is the fact that these systems are also useful to those acting “in good faith”—i.e., not misrepresenting their identities or intentions—towards horrific ends.”

The author of this piece - Ethan Zuckerman - speaks of this ever-expanding tide of dangerous fantasy as “the Unreal.” He cites Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway in Merchants of Doubt — that the strategies employed by tobacco companies about the harms of their product or oil companies about anthropogenic climate change were not designed to sway audiences to the corporate narrative, but to generate sufficient doubt to paralyze effective action. But clearly the conspiracy-nutter vanguard of the Unreal has surged beyond any constituency’s mere need for status quo protection. We are in a realm where the only possible outcome may be the chaos I described in The Postman.

Zuckerman concludes with 1-paragraph summaries of a number of earnest books and studies of the problem of what I call “online Nuremberg rallies” — echo-chambers of the fervent seeking only reinforcement of their drug high of sanctimonious rage.

== Soulutions, anyone? ==

Alas, the one thing we do not get from Zuckerman, or any other commentator on this problem, is a plausible proposed solution. Fact checking services like Snopes can support the majority of citizens who believe in such things, and perhaps nibble some of the more-sane out of those rallies. Dedicated debunking sites like QAnon-Anonymous can help a little. But they will not penetrate any major infection scabs with cleansing light.

What this author lacks - along with almost every other paladin of enlightenment - is any clue about the emotional dynamics and vulnerabilities at work here:

- Soa - Suspicion of Authority.  We all share this reflex, trained by generations of Hollywood films. We may differ over which pack of elites are conspiring to become Big Brother, but we’re all sure it’s somebody!  Start with this premise and you can forge a connection with your beloved, conspiracy-nut uncle. If he’s at all within reach of redemption, then try this first! You might draw him into an actual, actual (and maybe even fun) argument!  

Ask him what’s more plausible, a conspiracy by Wall Street cheaters, KGB agents-turned-Russian-mafia-oligarchs, casino moguls, slumlords, Saudi princes and inheritance brats… 

...or a conspiracy by all three million members of the so-called “deep state” of civil servants, teachers, journalists, scientists, FBI-intelligence officials and members of the U.S. military officer corps? 

Well, when you put it that way, both scenarios seem utterly insane plots from a bad 1970s thriller! Only…

…only the first one is proved to be true, top to bottom, with mountains of open evidence. And such an alliance of oligarchies and criminal gangs is wholly consistent with 4000 years of brutal feudalism that the American Revolution was all about escaping. 

Your uncle may not be convinced, but starting with your shared fundamental reflex — SoA — will give you an opening. 

On the other hand, if he’s a real QAnon asshole… go after his other main driver.

- Machismo - a desperate need for a manly, stalwart self-image, standing up the the rising tide of nerds and uppity females. There is a direct answer to this sort of small-ball overcompensating macho bluster. The counter-meme that I have found most effective is wagers! 

The one area where these guys accept the primacy of verifiable fact is in bar bets. So, demand that he escrow $5000 with an attorney for stakes, then settle on a fact-based bet revolving around something verifiable/falsifiable. 

I suggest ocean acidification, which can be tested with simple tools... a straw and a glass of water and a swimming pool test strip. A trip to the local beach.

 “If you’re so sure that climate change is fake, then why not offer up fair stakes, then take my money?  Any weaseling out of this means you don’t actually believe any of your bluster.”  

Nothing demolishes macho better than the devastating word: “coward!”

A long one. Collusion, conspiracy, corruption - and the one absolutely undeniable fact about Donald Trump.

First a quick announcement:  My uplift novel Brightness Reef - beginning to answer your many questions from Startide Rising and The Uplift War - is now on sale at BookBub! And on ebook daily and Bargains. Ideas galore, an awards nominee and Michael Whelan cover, all for just $2.99.

"Refugees from six alien races - including strange "earthlings" -have made their home on the forbidden planet Jijo… but a mysterious starship may soon determine their fate, linking it to chaos in the Five Galaxies."

Now on to a nation and world so weird it might be Serling's The Twilight Zone, or Heinlein's The Crazy Years. This will be a long one, in hope that some of you can use bits as weapons against the madness. 

But action speaks louder than blogs! The most-effective thing you can do in a red or purple state is find a nearby swing district for State Assembly or State Senate and work for that candidate.  It's where the fight is most important. It's where one more volunteer could make a difference and the candidate may remember your name!  And if you live in a deep blue state and district? Well, then seriously. Money. Now.

== The Undeniables ==

Let's put aside for now the furor obsessing everyone else -- the Brett Kavanaugh mess -- which has artfully served the political purposes of Rupert Murdoch and the Fox cabal. As evidenced by a rise in electoral enthusiasm on the far-right base. Terrified of a blue wave, they need that base to come out, bringing vote tallies close enough to tip over with cheating.

You will not win over your mad uncle with arguments about Brett Kavanaugh's youthful crimes or indiscretions, or even last week's smorgasbord of lies, under oath. No, you must turn to facts which are so clear, so self-evident that Fox doesn't even try to come up with magical incantations against them, only distractions.

Call these pure bullets "The Undeniables," in a blatant riff off of the Untouchables. Here's a powerful one:

For a fellow who brags that he is a great judge of people, who “always picks the best,” and who puts loyalty (to him) above all, Donald Trump sure winds up hating on his appointees and staff and counselors. 

I mean, it’s almost Shakespearean how often he plaintively howls: “I’ve been betrayed!” I would put money that he has been "betrayed" by more appointees and staff in the last year than any ten or twenty presidents in U.S. history, combined. Perhaps all of them, combined.

Now, any one case may be an honest mistake. One or two or three appointees or aides might be suborned by the Deep State, or 'bribed by the Clintons,' or prove unworthy of the "Best!" title that DT hands out like candy. But seriously, even if your MU (mad uncle) adores everything Two Scoops rails at rallies, don't we know by now that he's an awful judge of character? 

Ponder something scary in this context. His "falling in love" with Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin and other dictators, just for having flattered him. 

It's an undeniable.

== Why does nothing change their loyalty? ==

In contrast to DT's appointees, the topmost endearing trait of our conservative neighbors is loyalty. It's handy when you need to borrow a lawnmower or get help against a zombie horde! Alas, they've been coaxed into giving tribal devotion not to the world, the future, their children or America, but to a narrow partisanship that portrays black as always black. White as always white. (And take that as you like.)

As things progress with the Mueller probe - or the Kavanaugh Offshoot - another tactic that sometimes works on a RASR (Residually Adult-Sane Republican) but not on a mad uncle is: WODI: "What if Obama had Done It?" 

So now Donald Trump tries to order a halt to those investigating him? (As Nixon did.) Imagine the shrieks if Clinton/Obama tried that? Dig this well. Half a billion dollars of mostly our money was spent — across 25 years — investigating them, the most thoroughly probed humans in history. Every document scrutinized, every micro assistant grilled or offered "whistleblower rewards." Half of all subpoenas issued by GOP Congresses were for that futile, desperate search. But Clinton/Obama never demanded the investigations stop.

Okay, you've seen some of this rant before: George Bush diverted federal investigators from anti-terror duties, before 9/11 (which should have been a huge scandal) to sift every federal filing cabinet for some smoking gun. Fox offered lucrative commentator posts. And what did we wind up with? A husband fibbed about some third base adult-consensual infidelity in a hallway... and the wife was caught using exactly the same sort of email system as Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Mike Pence, George Bush and Jared Kushner. 

That's... it. Zero indictments or convictions. Zero aides "ratting out."

Compare that to Mueller already filing almost a hundred charges against almost two score individuals with confessions and convictions already piling up. And that leaves out secret meetings with hostile dictators, ongoing acts-of-war against our elections and infrastructure, and top GOP tiers filled with pedophiles, drunken frat-boys, playmate-bribers, casino-mafiosi, kremlin-stooges and monopolists.

Now Fox howls against our 250,000 loyal professionals in the FBI, Intelligence Agencies and US military officer corps, as part of open war against every fact-centered profession. And every national strength that won us the Cold War is being systematically demolished, as if by an enemy occupier.

WODI?

Okay then, shall we switch to MAGA? Ponder the Greatest Generation that defeated Hitler, contained communism, built the great American Middle Class, joined strong unions, broke up monopolies, built strong alliances... and adored FDR. And now comes supporting hard evidence from the Evonomics site. "They Go Together: Freedom, Prosperity, and Big Government: Countries with larger government sectors tend to have more personal freedom."

But worst of all... what a whiner! The U.S. president with a friendly Congress and Court , moans daily that "the government" is after him in order to ... to show the people what's been hidden from them. That's it. "Stop revealing stuff!"

WODI. You wanted a birth certificate? How about you release the tax returns. Better yet, tell the IRS to verify that there's an 'audit'... at all.

== Hiding which foreigners gave $100 million to... the NRA? ==

In this article, Michelle Goldberg ponders the “servility of congressional Republicans before a president many of them hate and believe to be compromised by a foreign power. Yes, I know they’re thrilled about tax cuts and judges. Given how Russia has become a patron of the right globally over the last decade, some Republicans might welcome its intervention into our politics, believing that the Democrats are greater enemies of the Republic. And some are just cowards, afraid of mean tweets or base blowback.

“But that doesn’t explain why, for example, Speaker Paul Ryan, a Russia hawk who is retiring in January, allowed his party to torpedo the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election. Ryan, after all, knows full well who and what Donald Trump is. In a secretly recorded June 2016 conversation about Ukraine, obtained by The Washington Post, the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Far from disagreeing, Ryan said, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” If he were patriotic — or even if he just wanted to set himself up for a comeback should Trump implode — he would have stood up for the rule of law in the Russia inquiry. It’s hard to see what he got in return for choosing not to.”

Goldberg goes on to ponder preliminary evidence for what may have them terrified… that the corruption goes deep, e.g. the House GOP voted to shut down all hearings about  Russia / NRA connections. That same week, the Trump Administration suddenly issued rules allowing the NRA to keep secret their sources of major foreign funding.

“The N.R.A.’s political spending increased by more than $100 million in 2016." Um, are your neighbors even slightly curious where that money came from?

Want more irony? One of the few Republicans going into these matters is George F. Will, syndicated columnist and man whom I call “the worst American.”  Not because he is one of the craven toadies – he’s not. In fact, most of his recent articles are cogent and make excellent ammo for you to use, in peeling away one or two residually sane American conservatives from the  Murdochian treason.

==  They used the left against us… now it’s the right ==

More undeniables. The Kremlin and KGB remain the same, With the same goal, to undermine the western experiment in open-fair-accountable rule of law. This enlightening article compares Moscow's current cozy support of the U.S. radical right to their 1930s subversion via the American far-left. There are no essential differences. Indeed, some of the very same men are using some of the very same methods against us, as they did back when they wore hammer-and-sickle pins and sang the Internationale.

This time, though "it’s not a proletarian revolution. Instead, it’s a kleptocratic coup d’état: The modern Kremlin project seeks to undermine Western democracies, break up the E.U. and NATO, and put corrupt relationships rather than the rule of law at the center of international commerce."

Another excerpt: "Precisely because the analogy is so exact, it’s worth remembering why Golos and his network failed. In large part, it was because the center-left — especially the anti-Soviet wing of the American trade union movement — rejected Soviet-style communism in the United States. It’s also because, in the 1940s and 1950s, the American political establishment, Democratic and Republican, unified around the need to defeat Soviet-style communism in Europe. And it’s because, even in the depths of the Depression, the majority of Americans were never beguiled by the appeal of authoritarianism.'

Indeed, as I point out elsewhere, the most powerfully anti-communist element in the US was the American labor movement... the AFL-CIO etc., which pushed for containment of the USSR, not just isolationism. It was the Greatest Generation - and their favorite living person, FDR - who won the fight against extremism of right and left and led us into the most productive and free era in history.

But back to Anne Applebaum: "It’s not at all clear that we are in the same situation now. A wing of the Republican Party is preparing to double down and support the Russian autocracy, which it believes, mistakenly, is “Christian.” While the Pentagon and parts of the bureaucracy — the State Department, the FBI — certainly understand the need to push back in Europe, the White House certainly does not. Which side the Republican Party will end up on is anybody’s guess."

Oh, we are past guessing. It is down to individual Republicans, now. If just one million of them decide to turn away from Rupert Murdoch's raving-traitorous teat and rejoin an advanced, adult, scientific, fact-centered, compassionately practical civilization, then we'll prove we are not lesser men and women than our forebears, but worthy of the title, citizens.

== Hack the voter ==

On his estimable blog site - Stonekettle Station - combat veteran and man of many rural virtues, Jim Wright, powerfully skewers the alt-right, infowars insanities and treasons. For example, from his posting Critical Path:

“Information Warfare can, and is, used as a primary warfare area, as powerful or more so than any bomb. I've done it myself in combat. But when used in this manner, as the Russians are using it against us right now, it is a warfare support function. An enhancer. A force multiplier, one that makes other weapons, both kinetic and political, work better.

“You don't need to hack election machines, if you can hack the voter. You don't need to hack democracy if you can hack the citizen. You don't need to physically destroy the United States if you can make Americans distrust the fundamental institutions of their own republic.

“If you show that the election machines are vulnerable before the election and you do so in a manner that is purposely detectable – that you know will be detected and thus reported hysterically to the population by the target’s own media -- then you don't have to hack the actual elections themselves. You only have to show that you can.”

His postings are long but riveting and less frequent than my endless firehose. Jim Wright continues:

“You don’t have to destroy America, when Americans are willing to do it for you.

“Now, the most effective countermeasure in this particular example should be obvious. Secure the election. By whatever means necessary secure the election, paper ballots, secure isolated non-networked machines, validated public audits, whatever methodology of validation and integrity is most provable to the population. Instead of closing voting stations, open more. Get citizens to polls. Make it easier for the population to vote, not harder.”

If the Democrats win the House, no other priority should be higher, and we must put fire to the feet of the waffling “human” GOP senators like Collins and Murkowski. 

And if they have any sense, they will expand this by passing my FACT ACT.

Heck, we could do much worse than to have some rambunctious new congress-critter summon, as a vital aide, Jim Wright.

== More than a bit of hypocrisy ==

Those claiming that the president's acknowledged immaturity, narcissism and moral turpitude are "irrelevant" should read these op-eds by Mike Pence, back during the MonicaGate Scandal (so charmingly limited in scope.) Pence wrote:

"If you and I fall into bad moral habits, we can harm our families, our employers and our friends. The President of the United States can incinerate the planet. Seriously, the very idea that we ought to have at or less than the same moral demands placed on the Chief Executive that we place on our next door neighbor is ludicrous and dangerous. Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms." It’s unclear whether Pence still believes what he wrote in his old essays. Trump is accused of multiple extramarital affairs and coverups with hush money payments. And he was recorded bragging about sexually assaulting women."

You can bet that when ... not if... Pence replaces his boss, he will claim there's no hypocrisy! That he had been merely biding his time and sing hosannas that a decent man is in office! And fools will rush to proclaim relief, unaware that our danger will then multiply a thousand fold.

== After- thoughts ==

Some readers of this web-log send in cogent observations. For example, one of you pointed out: “Trump has spent an order of magnitude more of OUR money playing golf than Mueller's investigation has cost so far. And much of that golfing money got funneled back to him because he's charging us to have his security detail and entourage stay at properties he owns. The levels of corruption and graft are staggering.”

Another made a cogent observation about the recent Helsinki summit.  “In meeting Putin, Trump did not act in the capacity as a private person, but rather as the official representative of the United States (all expenses paid by U.S citizens). Then why do we not have an official record of the meeting? No president since Washington ever made ‘agreements’ with a foreign power, let alone a hostile one, without some transparency, records, and involvement by skilled professionals.”

Well, I can think of one time. Though Ronald Reagan was not yet president when he secretly agreed with the Ayatollahs to keep Americans hostage till he was elected and inaugurated.

The whole trend on the right is toward Private Armies. Blackwater and so on. And any U.S. conservative who has not noticed all this and realized where it leads, should consider carefully. 

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear.

Next comes one whom they despise and defy.

When a leader trusts no one,

no one trusts him.

The great leader speaks little.

He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest

and leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say

“We did it ourselves.”

Lao-tzu

Tao Te Ching

Revenge of the Deep State?

"Deep State" is a buzz phrase that's been around. It stands for the obstinate obstruction that political reformers may face - even when they win elections - from a nation's civil servants, bureaucrats, contractors, influential stakeholders and - especially - the security apparatus.  The term was used for many years on the left, citing the last moderate Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, who warned of excess influence by a "military-industrial complex." But the term faded a bit into the worm-eaten woodwork of paranoid fringes.

Now, "Deep State" is back, big-time. Suddenly it's being pushed by the far-right to explain the hostility they face, not just from bureaucrats but from all of the security services and "entrenched elites." Or, as my neighbor, Jordan Greenhall put it recently, in a highly circulated posting, we find ourselves in a manichean struggle  between a conservative “Red Religion” vs. the liberal “Blue Church” globalist establishment -- our current “Deep State."

As Greenhall put it: "My assessment is that the Trump Insurgency has identified the Deep State itself as its central antagonist and is engaged in a direct existential conflict with it."

Now, to be fair, Jordan's chief points were about communications flaws in the blue side's messaging, that might have made members of the "red religion" and "Trump Insurgency" immune to hearing or seeing. Others who have critiqued flaws in Democratic/liberal messaging include the always-cogent George Lakoff, whose explanation for the election is most on-target. Still, right here and now, I am discussing some the underlying "givens" that Jordan and many others base their arguments upon. These givens -- like Deep State -- are powerful meme-bombs, in their own right. 

For a very different take on the Deep State meme, see: "How the Trump regime was manufactured by a war inside the Deep State," by Nafeez Ahmed, who traces how Donald Trump's Goldman-Sachs-Bushite (Skull n' Bones) cabinet may be at war against other elements in Washington. Ahmed's detailed listing of administration appointees and their ties is unmatched.  

(Note: The latest battle in the War on Science has shifted into high gear with administration efforts to muzzle science that make the Bushites seem subtle, by comparison. "Do we want America to mimic failed regimes of the past, where knowledge and science were suppressed to benefit a few or to funnel more profits into dying industries?")

== What underlies the under-lies ==

Of course, there is an element of basic human psychology, here. We all have been trained - by Hollywood - to view ourselves as heroic and insightful rebels against some authoritarian elite. The meme - and I talk about this a lot - is called Suspicion of Authority (SoA) and we were all raised, suckling its core premise.

But which authority? If those on the left dread Big Brother arising from conniving oligarchs and faceless corporations, conservative Americans fret over different "controlling elites," ranging from snooty academics to faceless bureaucrats. Alas, both wings ignore the plain fact, that they share an underlying reflex that is especially American. A very well-founded fear that - yes - freedom does have enemies.

This reflex has been manipulated though. Today's "Red Religion" (to borrow Greenhall's term) lumps together as hate-targets every profession in U.S. society that deals in facts and knowledge. Their narrative is that these professions -- maligned for decades in right wing media, from science, teaching, economics, skilled labor and journalism to the civil service, law professionals, medical doctors and judges -- have colluded to create a truth-bending, Orwellian cabal! Yes, all the people who know stuff ... those whom you trust to cure your cancer, teach your kids, keep the electricity running, investigate corruption, ask questions, explore the laws of nature, invent better phones, catch criminals, deliver honest justice, make or inspect your cars... they are all conniving haters of freedom and truth! They are all your enemies.

 And now, two of the last knowledge castes have been added -- members of the Intelligence Community (IC) and the U.S. Military Officer Corps (MOC).  See: Is Michael Flynn the first casualty of a 'deep state' coup? from Salon.

This Deep State - the story goes - has been responsible for both liberal tyranny and American decline from greatness.  

== Believe! By ignoring inconvenient facts ==

Never mind that these same professions empowered the great burst of creativity and invention and entrepreneurial drive that multiplied our wealth a hundred fold, since the Second World War.

Never mind that every metric of U.S. national health improved, across the spans of both the Clinton and Obama Administrations, while nearly all such metrics plummeted across both Bush regimes. That only makes statistical "facts" the enemy.

Moreover, the lack of any significant foreign-planned Islamic Terrorism on U.S. soil can only be explained by conspiracy among roughly a million highly competitive journalists, cops, jurists and security experts who all magically agreed never to mention the true, bloody rampage.

Never mind that American lives were statistically safer, under President Obama, than at any other time in the history of the republic. Or that blue cities take in most of the refugees, yet blue citizens don’t feel in much danger.

Or that Iranians have harmed U.S. lives or interests far, far less than the graduates of Saudi-financed madrassas. So, why is almost every member of the Trump administration beating a drum for war (of some kind) with Tehran? Michael Flynn was a leading drummer. Indeed, if you want a more plausible “deep state” conspiracy theory, how about you start with the fact that no one in our military wants an Iranian War? 

I'll admit, when you compare the different ways that Democratic and Republican presidents wage war, any sage officer would loathe the idea of a GOP commander-in-chief, ordering our troops into battle. 

== Notice the trial balloons ==

Articles like this one – denouncing the “Deep State” – are trial balloons that test possible justifications. Sales pitches to rally the confederacy. They set the stage for actions against all the knowledge castes, but especially security professionals. And more harbingers have blossomed in recent days. 

“President Trump is considering tapping billionaire friend and New York financier Stephen A. Feinberg to lead a broad review of U.S. intelligence agencies…. The appointment of Feinberg would send shock waves through the intelligence community, a frequent target of Trump’s ire both as a candidate and as president,” reports The Washington Post.

“Feinberg rarely gives interviews and once said of private equity executives, “We try to hide religiously. If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,” Feinberg told shareholders in 2007, according to Rolling Stone magazine. “We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”

Even allowing for polemical exaggeration, the zeitgeist here seems chilling. Now look up the word: “Cerberus.” Dang, these guys aren’t even trying to be subtle, anymore.

The trumpists and other murdochians know it will be dangerous to try pulling Erdogan-style purges of the IC and the MOC. Those officers whom they fire will make lovely recruits for the Democrats to run in Red congressional and assembly districts. (I'll speak more about this, later.) 

Moreover those who remain will continue to be sources of leaks that (betrayal!) keep the public informed. And yet, what choice have the alt-righters, but to attack? Among all the despised fact-based professions, the IC and MOC are cadres who present the greatest obstacles to any oligarchic putsch. If forced to choose between the Chain of Command and their oaths to the Constitution, the People and the republic... a choice they desperately want to avoid... I put my money on their oaths.

Conservative by temperament, their resistance only drives home a key point that we all must remember: This civil war just isn't about "liberal-conservative" anymore. 

It is now blatantly revealed to be what it's always been. Culture war between an anti-knowledge Confederacy and the forward-looking, scientific and progress-seeking Union that it periodically betrays, about once per generation. Jordan Greenhall uses "Blue Church" cleverly, but he and others know that is a way of using the blue-scientific side's own fears against it. The implicit insult is as inaccurate as it is unfair... as it is devilishly clever. Like the "deep state" meme.

== The ("Evil") Empire Strikes Back ==

We should have no energy crisis, now that Ronald Reagan has joined Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Dwight Eisenhower and Teddy Roosevelt, all spinning in their graves. But Ronnie is whirling at 50,000 rpm.  Why?

There is another buzz term that you'll get to know, promulgated in this article. "Anti-Russian hysteria." The notion being that the Deep State is rife with mongerers trying to re-ignite the Cold War, or worse. This despite the fact that a U.S.-Iran War is both a top administration goal and lusciously desired by the Kremlin. (And, in truth, it is desired by the Iranian mullahs, who see it as a rationale to crush moderate-secular elements in Persian society.) This catch-phrase -- along with "Deep State" -- will spew forth.  

(Oh, the richness of pleasure watching the silly confeds at CPAC waving little Russian flags with the word "Trump" on them!)

And yet…

…And yet, I have to figure that the murdochians have gone too far, this time.

Do you remember what finally brought down the equivalent of Steve Bannon, back in during the 1950s heyday of the Greatest Generation? The sceeching firebrand Joe McCarthy? It was when he attacked the U.S. Military Officer Corps. But, weaned on stereotypes, movie clichés and pop-paranoid philosophers, I doubt that Bannon has a clue who he's leveling his lance against. The best-educated, most-pragmatically grownup and loyal clade of men and women in American life.

(You lefties, if you reflexively spit on these crewcut men and women, then you will be the fools. We need them, now, more than at any point in the last human lifetime.)

Moreover, whenever I think of those folks, I can sleep at night, and so should you, knowing that they are -- deep in their guts and bones -- on our side.