Let's Talk About the Real "Deep State"
We don't need that chilling Steve Bannon interview or more breathless reporting about the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Project to know that the Hard Right has an obsession with what it calls the Deep State. Depending on the slant of the particular panjandrum who is ranting at any one time, it can mean either a particular set of administrative powers or a bunch of "liberal elites" who all know each other and are in cahoots to oppress so-called "real Americans," or both at once. Whatever it is, it's presented as an evil that's got to be washed away in the coming red tide of MAGA revolution.
Such talk about an oppressive Deep State plays well. It suits the paranoid style that Richard Hofstadter long ago identified as a key hallmark of U.S. politics. Poll after poll confirms how sensitized most white Americans are to the idea that government at every level is both heavy-handed and incompetent at what it does. It now seems, in fact, that the surges of public approval for government interventions that occurred during the Progressive and New Deal periods were exceptions to the rule, brought about by widespread perception of truly egregious abuses by the rich and powerful. Because that is the other, albeit often hidden, face of power in America: the power of great wealth and the vast and growing privileges enjoyed by private corporations.
How is it that, in our time, corporate power can literally get away with murder, with barely a murmur of protest, whereas at least half the American electorate appears eager to crush the mild-mannered professionals who staff such harm-reducing agencies as the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Health and Safety Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food & Drug Administration?
My answer is that the real Deep State, comprising the aggregated infrastructure of the varied instrumentalities deployed by wealth, enjoys multiple advantages in the ideological contest and has pressed those advantages to the limit. Wealth also continues to win by being ever mindful of the danger of exposure and ever adept at avoiding it, especially now that top tier's share of total national wealth is higher than ever before: higher, even, than at the pre-Crash height of 1929.
Another way to approach this: monopoly capitalism's successful onward march depends on maximum ideological conformity and the mental subjugation of a significant majority of the people. Capitalism's often wrenching permutations require somnolence and passivity on the part of those who might otherwise be asking sharp questions. Here, the adumbration and repetition of reassuring formulas have always been helpful to economic elites. It is for this reason that we hear the many mellow minions of the overclass doling out comforting mantras and memes like "choice," "innovation," "flexibility," and (that old reliable) "opportunity" in hopes of obscuring the realities of isolation, intimidation, competition, and (that old reliable) exploitation.
Deployment of the well-worn catchphrase "America: Land of Opportunity" has exceeded expectations on these shores, just as "England: A Nation of Shopkeepers" used to succeed brilliantly across the water, before most Britons rejected it as a Tory-propagated myth. Here in the States, it hardly matters that social mobility is now practically non-existent; our capitalists understand that what matters is what people believe—and chanting about "opportunity" still solidifies belief.
Admittedly, U.S. capitalism enjoys special advantages in gaining widespread social acceptance, even social adoration. As I have discussed elsewhere, a very significant part of ostensibly "Christian" belief here has long consisted of adherence to the Gospel of Wealth. As early as the 1830s, foreign observers (Tocqueville, Crevecoeur, Dickens, and others) could see that the American self-declared passion for democratic ways was exceeded only by the demonstrable American passion for making money. These same observers could also see that racism and white supremacy made a mockery of the white people's democratic pretensions.
Captains of industry and titans of finance have always been able to float their yachts, in part by cleverly parlaying the wages of whiteness and persuading the bulk of the people they exploit that they should be grateful to at least enjoy white skin privilege. More broadly, a strong argument can be made to the effect that U.S. capitalism's capacity to maintain ongoing loyalty and social control hinges very significantly on its capacity to sustain the White Way of Thinking, a whole complex of white fears, inhibitions, and willed ignorance.
It certainly seems to be working out that way. The massive offshoring of work taking place from the 1970s onward meant that efforts to change the subject—from naked corporate piracy to alleged threats to "traditional values" and white identity—would need to go into overdrive, which they did. Alpha predators, whose paychecks and dividends would soar from the hollowing out of American manufacturing, showed themselves fully able to meet this challenge. They did much more than change the subject by manipulating white anxieties and fomenting culture wars, however. The oft-recycled Thomas Frank and George Packer accounts of conservative dominance fail to do justice to the full extent and range of the strategic ideological advances achieved by a corporate-bankrolled conservative onslaught during these crucial years.
The last quarter of the 20th century saw the true Deep State—the Corporate State—achieve major new gains on five crucial fronts, all of which have served to reinforce pro-capitalist ideation while suppressing anti-capitalist ideation and thus blunting small "d" democratic organizing:
- Corporate interests effectively captured a second national political party. The "Republican-lite" achievements of Democratic neoliberals—welfare "reform," financial deregulation, NAFTA and the WTO, the beginnings of "liberal" school privatization schemes, etc.—all illustrate the point. Today's mainstream Democratic politics continue to lean pro-corporate by many measures.
- Corporate interests effectively established a very large footprint in intellectual life and public discourse through shrewd investments in think tanks, academic institutes, publications, and mass media. What had once been seen as risible and contemptible winner-take-all policies and practices gained intellectual respectability. Whereas once there was only the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, suddenly there were dozens and dozens of well-paid academics, writers, policy wonks, and televised talking heads willing to do the bidding of the overclass and even being propelled into the overclass through these enabling efforts. And this discursive triumph doesn't even include the cultivation and deployment of phalanxes of conservative pro-capitalist jurists: another huge gain for the overclass.
- Corporate interests, working through their political and propaganda agents, effectively sabotaged a range of public goods: public health, public schools, public transportation, public utilities, public recreational spaces, etc., in such a way as to severely shake public confidence in these goods and services. If "sabotage" strikes you as too strong a term, you can consult case studies showing exactly how it happened in each of these areas. Cut taxes; degrade and strangle public services; then use your propaganda tools—e.g., the bombastic rhetoric of the Ronald Reagans and the Rush Limbaughs—to discredit government to the maximum extent possible. Works every time.
- Corporate interests effectively created a new class of "junior owners"—relatively small-time investors—by promoting individual retirement schemes while disparaging and undermining collective benefit programs like Social Security. If I had to name the principal single source of white liberal somnolence, even complicity, in relation to the corporate takeover of the commons, I would probably cite the effectiveness of convincing so many people to check their retirement accounts every day, paying more attention to Wall Street than to Main Street.
- Corporate interests effectively spawned a wholly new culture of misinformationand distraction that makes marshaling organized opposition to the rule of wealth vastly harder. Here, of course, I speak of the growth of so-called social media vehicles, which quickly became sites of manipulation rather than liberation. The lords of Silicon Valley even managed to convince people that they—the lords—weren't really capitalists at all: they were merely cool dudes doing neat things in their garages. Only now, as AI's horrors come crashing down on our heads, are we waking up to the reality that an Eric Schmidt or a Mark Zuckerberg are really no different than a Jay Gould or a John D. Rockefeller.
These and other turns of the corporate screw may sometimes make it seem that resistance is futile. But here's the thing: overreach and arrogance do eventually get recognized and exposed. Forcing people to sign non-disclosure and non-compete agreements will eventually be seen for the bullying it really is. Bribing legislatures and buying votes to stop contingent workers from organizing and achieving a living wage is an ugly business that is hard to conceal completely. The overclass can buy and control some of the academic establishment and a good share of the mediascape, but never quite all of it. Constantly playing the white identity card and stoking new culture wars will finally be seen as the cheap mug's game that it is.
Awakening from our overlord-induced slumber isn't a sure thing, of course, but I believe it is a likely thing as long as enough of us keep ringing alarm bells and building the kinds of communities and networks where real talk can take place and real change can be incubated. A sclerotic and wealthy-white-tilted political system will remain a formidable obstacle, as will the ongoing ideological grip of a corrosive and capitalism-friendly individualism. But maybe—just maybe—the return of a certified reckless demagogue—and/or a massive economic collapse—will help to expose the entire system's utter corruption.
The grave dangers that would accompany either scenario cannot be overstated. But if we have to endure turmoil and suffering, we should be prepared to make the most of the opportunities we are given. And this time, when we see our opening, we can and must push on for what W.E.B. DuBois aptly called "abolition democracy": a genuinely people-centered regime that removes not just the superficial symptoms but also the structural sources of oppression.
Just because we have been down for a long time doesn't mean that it's game over for our side. The mighty have fallen many times before—and often just at the point when they smugly assumed that they had achieved total command.
May it be so in our lifetimes—and soon.
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
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