Deep State

My far-Right friends like to bandy about the term “Deep State”. I’m not sure what they mean by Deep State because the definition seems to vary depending on what group the person using the term identifies with. For example, to the Right the term denotes a hidden government-within-the-government and its conspiracy to undermine the Right. To the Left, the Deep State is much the same thing except it is anti-Left. Every group seems to have their Deep State Bogey-man and it is always attacking their group.

The far-Right seems to be especially caught up in this Deep State conspiracy, but then, the far-Right seems to get caught up in a lot of conspiracies, and some of them are pretty weird. Remember the conspiracy theory that had Hillary Clinton running a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant? There’s no way to know how many people believed that bit of incredible nonsense, but one man believed it enough to take a rifle into the restaurant and demand to be taken to the basement so he could rescue the children. When employees didn’t immediately take him to the basement, he fired off a few rounds from his rifle to make his point. But employees couldn’t take him to the basement because the shop didn’t have a basement. You can read about that bizarre incident here.

According to dictionary.com, the term Deep State originated in Turkey with the secretive network derin devlet. It has also been applied to other countries in the mid-East such as Egypt and Syria. There might really be a Deep State in some third-world countries, but by comparison to some of those countries, the governments of the U.S. and other first-world countries are models of transparency. Doubtless some chicanery goes on behind some of government’s closed doors, but to jump from political intrigue to a government-wide conspiracy is a stretch.

One of my friends is convinced that everything I write and post online is scanned by a shadowy government organization which allows my article to be published only if it has been reviewed and approved by this mythical Deep State. Who could believe such nonsense? Does anyone have actual evidence this is happening? Show me the evidence!