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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
They call me.... Prophet
The original concept of the deep state is that there are more layers of government than just the one in the election. Such as civil servants who don't get voted for and stay on the job from administration to administration. So you vote out the shallow state, but it's not a perfectly clean slate. As one Politico article pointed out, trump is mostly at war with said shallow state, namely the people he directly or indirectly appointed.
This concept of deep state has morphed over the years to basically mean invisible (often nonexistent) enemies. Trump is failing not because he sucks but because invisible enemies oppose him. Originally a term for frustration at implacable government, now its just conspiracy gunk. Notably, the British TV show Yes Minister also made fun of the Civil service in that way so its not even a purely US idea.
But the overall aim of deep state conspiracy is to purge said deep state. Regardless of what exactly is believed, in the end the aim is to stack government from top to bottom with cronies, sycophants and yes-men. I mean, true believers and patriots who won't obstruct the leader in enactinf his plan for glory.
Redmess
Indeed, there is such a thing as a deep state, and you could certainly have legitimate concerns about that, but it has little to do with the actual conspiracy.
A real criticism of the deep state is that they can be overly conservative in practice, by resisting change through bureaucracy, for example. Or that they are morally and politically bankrupt because they have to deal with the ever-changing political winds over the decades, as that Yes Minister episode about Humphrey's moral vacuum so aptly shows.
Speaking of which:
The deep state as a moral vacuum, believing in nothing but preserving itself. That can indeed be a problem of big government.
Edited by Redmess on Sep 17th 2020 at 11:10:53 AM
Optimism is a duty.
Redmess
The Late Show launched this website where you can get voter information per state.
Apparently I cannot visit the website, presumably because I am outside the US. I'm not sure what they're afraid of I'll do with their voter information, but okay.
Optimism is a duty.
Disasturbator
Its probably to deter Russians haxxors,somehow
Redmess
I hope it can withstand domain spoofing, then. Not to mention that this is, you know, public information.
Optimism is a duty.
I'm outside the US but could access the site. I like the "'USPS recommends sending it [your ballot] by' this date, to return your ballot by mail" part.
Redmess
Well, that's odd. I get an "Access denied: You do not have permission to access the page on this server." message.
Optimism is a duty.
Redmess
You may have heard Biden played Despacito during some rally in another episode of the Old Man Tries To Relate To Youngsters show (with a special theme of White Man Tries To Relate To Minorities for good measure). Fairly standard stuff.
But then Trump posted an edited version where Biden plays Fuck The Police instead. Not sure that is going to have the intended effect. I'd imagine that would do rather well with Biden's base. Trump is basically running the Biden campaign that the Biden campaign wouldn't dare running.
Optimism is a duty.
I had a similar thought. He keeps making Biden seem cooler than he is.
“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands." ~Anthony Bourdain
Redmess
Indeed. If Biden had played Fuck The Police, it would have been a scandal, but now Trump has made it seem like he did, Biden can get all the benefit without the backlash.
Thanks Trump!
Optimism is a duty.
This week's theme is Senate Republicans pretending the last four years never happened. After making bipartisanship their new favorite thing, now they're acting as if they never voted to strip healthcare away from millions of people.
NBC News: Republican senators in tough races obscure their position on pre-existing conditions
Sens. Gardner, Perdue, McSally and Daines are all running ads proclaiming support for the protections despite voting to repeal Obamacare and weaken them.
Republican senators facing tough re-election fights this fall are expressing support for insurance protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, running ads at odds with their own recent votes and policy positions.
Republican senators are fighting to maintain control of the chamber, and that has left many telling voters they favor the most popular provisions after they backed legislation that would have chipped away at the protections in the 2010 law. The replacement plans they've supported fall short of fully restoring those rules, say health policy experts.
"When you're in retreat it's best to do it slowly and not make it look like a complete spin around," said Tom Miller, a health policy expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
The worst might be Cory Gardner, who brought his own mother into an ad that lied about his record.
"Cory wrote the bill to guarantee coverage to people with pre-existing conditions - forever," she says, looking directly at the camera.
"No matter what happens to Obamacare," the senator adds.
But experts say the bill he cites doesn't do that.
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
It should be noted that the Deep State entered American politics due to its implementation in the 1930s by Fritz Julius Kuhn. The self-styled American Furher used it to explain why the United States had entered the Great Depression. He claimed it a Jewish Elite and secret organization of businessmen existing to keep the working white American down.
Yes, it was a term and concept created by Nazis.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 17th 2020 at 7:12:37 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
This needs to be pointed out to every single MAGA cultist every single time they drag the term up.
They need to be told that they are firm believers of a nazi-conspiracy and is as far from american as it can get.
You say that like you think they'd believe it and/or care.
You say that like they care about actual history.
![[nja]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/user_ninja_2074.png "[nja]"){kind=small}
Edited by PhysicalStamina on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:02:09 AM
We're talking about the same people who unironically thinks that America fought the wrong enemy in WWII.
Yeah, the only thing you'll get out of pointing out to MAGAs that "that's a Nazi idea" is "well, sure, Hitler had some good ideas".
Edited by RedSavant on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:20:07 AM
It's been fun.
Yeah, you all got a point.
These are the same people who thinks that the Trump concentration/extermination camps at the southern border is a "great" initiative after all...
Team Rocket Boss.
That's so depressingly true.
The deep state while deeply concerning, seems to be used as a boogeyman to justify Trump's own authoritarianism.
It says a lot that the KKK actually rebuked Nazis. That's how horrible Nazis actually are, and these idiots think otherwise.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Sep 17th 2020 at 10:24:38 AM
I'll teach you a lesson about just how cruel the world can be. That's my job, as an adult.
No, the KKK rebuked the Nazis because they were German. Not because they were offended by what they did to Jews or other races.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Redmess
Trump is going after Facebook and Twitter now that the two companies have stopped playing nice with him.
At this point, however, it seems clear that policy is not working out as well as Zuckerberg may have hoped. People who spread falsehoods, it turns out, tend not to be operating in good faith, and now Facebook faces even more criticism from all sides.
And when the article says fact checking centres are buried under a mountain of other crap you never use, they aren't kidding.
Basically, Facebook is asking spreaders of false information to play nice when these people are not interested in that, and their fact checking methods are ineffective and prone to being buried under other feature bloat.
It's treating symptoms, poorly, to a much bigger systematic problem that they won't or can't fix.
Optimism is a duty.
I thought the Nazis rejected the KKK because they weren't German.
"He keeps making Biden seem cooler than he is"
Remember "Biden plans to hurt God"? Great, make his sound like Asriel from His Dark Materials; why don't you just photoshop together a picture of him petting a snow leopard too?
What next? Is Biden an illegal alien sent here from a dying planet? Was he a smuggler in his youth, who helped militant radicals overthrow a far right empire?
Going after political enemies with sedition charges? Check another box on the dictatorship bingo card.
Optimism is a duty.