I do not hold The New York Times in very high regard. I hold the opinion section of the New York Times in even lower regard. This article and video by Adam Westbrook and Lindsay Crouse demonstrates why.
As the headline suggests, the authors view the "Deep State" — the loose confederation of government entities and bureaucrats who maintain politically incestuous relationships that keep Washington and by extension the whole of our political system a cabal of self-serving elitists who live off the backs of average Americans — as "kind of awesome."
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Naturally, they do not talk about the sort of people who come to mind when we say "Deep State." The first man they interview is Scott Bellamy, who in 2022 pulled off something as close to the movie "Armageddon" as we will see in real life, minus the sheer stupidity.
Mr. Bellamy and his team were able to alter the direction of an asteroid headed for Earth by flinging a spacecraft at it. The projected path of the "moonlet," as the Medal of Service to America website described it, was close enough to our planet that it retained the chance of hitting. So yeah, props to Bellamy.
Next, they interviewed Radhika Fox, Assistant Administrator for Water at the Environmental Protection Agency (according to "The Simpsons Movie," the least-successful agency in government. Also, Fox is stepping down). Still, Westbrook and Crouse highlight the fact that Fox "led an operation to make our drinking water lead-free in ten years." Yes, lead in water is bad. Sure, we should replace water pipes made of lead with something less toxic.
Related: The EPA Is About to Outlaw Your Car
But what does this have to do with the Deep State?
Westbrook and Crouse know exactly what they are doing when they say the Deep State is "awesome" by only focusing on the people who do things that are actually beneficial to the United States. This is not what is meant when conservatives speak of "the Deep State."
The Heritage Foundation's Mike Gonzalez describes what the Deep State is best at in a recent column of his. In a nutshell, the Deep State is the result of Congress abdicating a lot of responsibilities to Federal agencies and the President's Cabinet, giving them undue influence over governance. Hence why everybody views Congress as a bunch of people who don't actually do anything but run for reelection and talk big.
And as with any organization, be it a government, a business, the mob, or a kid's lemonade stand on the corner, the ultimate goal is to survive — just as it is for the human animals that are part of it. So when someone like Donald Trump comes along and intends to cut back on how many pencil pushers are in government, the organized groups of pencil pushers resist. Whether they do it through insubordination, covertly sabotaging efforts to implement policies, or working around ones they dislike, the organized groups of pencil pushers fight to keep their jobs.
It is also why so many of these groups maintain such close connections, looking out for their own and ensuring the ones who do end up fired or get caught in too much trouble can take up cushy jobs elsewhere.
That's not an endorsement, just a fact of life.
But the problem, as mentioned, is that those at the top have undue influence over how our government is run, and with the way things are going, yes, we do need to clean house.
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