I think it’s time to say that the deep state is real, and that it’s trying to make us sicker, poorer and easier to control.

I know, I know. That sounds like a conspiracy theory. But that’s the complicated thing about the nature of conspiracy theories.

Some conspiracies are real.

I mean, what else are we to call the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”? It’s not a government department. (Technically, it’s an advisory panel.) It has no legal authority. Even Elon Musk, the billionaire who is allegedly running it, admits as much. 

Yet DOGE is exercising power no one alive has seen. 

It is firing people in the federal workforce in huge numbers, hollowing out whole agencies and departments, seemingly without rhyme or reason, all in the name of uncovering “waste, fraud and abuse,” we are told, even things that are absolutely essential, like the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

DOGE has infiltrated the federal government. It is dismantling services and programs that benefit everyone. No one knows exactly what it is. No one knows exactly who’s responsible. No one knows exactly why it’s doing what it’s doing. It’s secretive and shadowy. It’s undemocratic and unaccountable. And virtually everything it has done has been criminal. 

On Thursday night, a federal judge issued a ruling saying, according to the Post, that mass terminations “at several agencies, including the Department of Defense, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Science Foundation and others, were probably illegal.”

If that’s not “the deep state,” I don’t know what is.

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Of course, the term “deep state” is not usually applied in the way I’m applying it, because it arises from rightwing conspiratorial thinking. In brief, it’s the idea that a clandestine cartel of (probably Jewish but certainly anti-American) conspirators are working inside the federal government to usurp the democratic sovereignty of (white) Americans. 

You can see this everywhere in rightwing political thought: from the allegation that Joe Biden was a “puppet president” controlled by Barack Obama or another “alien force”; to the allegation that Hillary Clinton was the leader of a ring of pedophiles who drank the blood of children; to the allegation that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

In any case, here’s how Wikipedia defines it:

“The deep state is a type of government made up of potentially unauthorized, secret networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals. In popular usage, the term carries overwhelmingly negative connotations and is often associated with conspiracy theories.” 

Un hun.

DOGE has not found any fraud, according to Judd Legum, editor of Popular Info. “[Musk is] just cutting things he doesn’t like.” He is also cutting off funding for agencies and departments traditionally in the GOP’s crosshairs. The greatest cuts by far have been to the US Agency for International Development, which they see as too “globalist,” and the US Department of Education, which they see as too “woke.” 

According to one estimate, DOGE has fired more than 200,000 people, with another 75,000 voluntarily resigning. Overwhelmingly, these people worked in agencies and departments with broad mandates, which is to say, their explicit mission is to serve everyone equally. 

But the carnage is spreading beyond the usual targets of Republican animus. This week, DOGE fired about 800 people at NOAA. That’s the organization that every local weather forecaster relies on. DOGE even gutted NOAA’s two tsunami warning centers. As of Thursday, they are empty. The next round is set for the Environmental Protection Agency, which protects the country’s land, air and water. The president said that 65 percent of the EPA’s 15,000 people are going to be fired.

The carnage is spreading even to Social Security. The White House announced an “organizational restructuring” of the Social Security Administration. According to Professor Heather Cox Richardson:

It is not clear exactly how many positions will be cut; multiple outlets say half of the agency’s 57,000 employees will be let go, while an executive at the agency told … Government Executive that the initial number of firings will be 7,000. At least five of the eight regional commissioners whose offices oversee and support the agency’s frontline offices across the country are leaving, and former Social Security administrator Martin O’Malley warned: 

“Social Security is being driven to a total system collapse.”

Social Security, along with the other safety-net programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are seen as the “third rail” in Washington. Any attempt to change them usually results in electrocution, politically speaking.

But thanks to DOGE, the GOP is closing in on the dream of changing Social Security (to what end, I don’t know), without voting on it, without worrying about getting zapped. To get what they want, the Republicans ceded their constitutional authority, the power of the purse, to an unaccountable, criminal cabal of unelected bureaucrats. 

They created a real deep state – a “government made up of potentially unauthorized, secret networks of power operating independently of a state’s political leadership in pursuit of their own agenda and goals.”

And in the process, they are doing what they accuse their enemies of doing: making America sicker, poorer, more vulnerable and easier to control, and usurping the democratic sovereignty of its people. 

That sounds like a conspiracy theory.

But some conspiracies are real.