Two Cheers for the Deep State and Elitism

[The Frankish Reich]

1. The constitutional fabric held. It was disturbing to see how fragile it is when men and women of good faith (well, a man of bad faith) do not occupy the positions of power. But in the end the final attempt to stack the Supreme Court prior to the election so that it would reach a result-oriented decision in any election litigation failed. And the final, final attempt to bully the VP into violating his duty to report the electoral college result failed. And the final, final, final attempt to disrupt the operations of the Congress before that business could be completed failed, and failed miserably.

 

2. The Deep State is nothing more than a shorthand for "those in government who see the value in continuity." I honor that as a conservative value. The Deep State is nothing more than the people who understand how we got here, and who have an institutional interest in making sure that honor how that history and push back against wild disruptions in the separation of powers. To paraphrase Chesterton, a man who wants to tear down a fence ought to know the reason the fence was put up in the first place. Trump tore down a lot of fences without understanding why they were erected. Thankfully he was stopped before he was able to tear down the fences that control our electoral system.

 

3. It is easy to criticize elitists. And there's something there: up until Amy Coney Barrett, every single Supreme Court justice had attended Harvard or Yale (RBG attended Harvard, but then transferred to lowly Columbia to finish law school). This is preposterous. Up until Biden, the last President without an Ivy League degree was Reagan, who left office 32 years ago. Surely there is a pool of talent and good sense that hasn't been cultivated in that rarefied atmosphere. But if "elitism" is bad, it doesn't follow that its opposite is good. There is a lot of wisdom and common sense in the ordinary working men and women of America. There is also a lot of foolishness, short-sightedness, and petty, envious score-settling. And boy was that out in force on Wednesday. I have respect for the good sense and values of the common man. I just don't necessarily want him running my government, at least not without leaning heavily on the expertise and experience of the so-called "elite." That's what causes governments to fail miserably when trying to deal with a novel problem like a deadly pandemic. And I really don't want an elitist pandering to the masses by pretending he's one of them, and by rejecting experience and expertise because he thinks he alone is a stable genius.

 

Grow up, America. We need the "Deep State." We depend on "Elitists." There's a damn good reason our republic has lasted 230 years: it was designed by elitists.

[SoCal Deek]

Yawn

[The Frankish Reich]

Just now, SoCal Deek said:

Yawn

tl;dr

The good guys won; the idiots lost.

[SoCal Deek]

9 minutes ago, The Frankish Reich said:

tl;dr

The good guys won; the idiots lost.

And there it is:  The name calling, etc.

[SectionC3]

13 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

And there it is:  The name calling, etc.

 

Normally I would agree with you, but in this particular context I think "idiot" is an expression of fact.  The raiding of the Capitol is in a class of idiocy by itself. 

 

FWIW, talked to an "establishment" Republican in DC yesterday.  Let's just say this: there's going to be a long blacklist when this is over.  People are especially pissed at Hawley and Cruz, who are smart guys who should have known better.  And one of the reasons the "establishment" is so angry is that Trump/Hawley/Cruz et al. promulgated a lie to take care of low-educated, struggling middle class people and in some cases ruined their lives.   

[The Frankish Reich]

17 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

And there it is:  The name calling, etc.

Well, I did give you what I think was a pretty well reasoned argument.

You responded: Yawn.

Feel free to bring things back up a level or two. I'll gladly engage on that level. In fact, I'd actually prefer it.

[daz28]

4 minutes ago, SectionC3 said:

 

Normally I would agree with you, but in this particular context I think "idiot" is an expression of fact.  The raiding of the Capitol is in a class of idiocy by itself. 

 

FWIW, talked to an "establishment" Republican in DC yesterday.  Let's just say this: there's going to be a long blacklist when this is over.  People are especially pissed at Hawley and Cruz, who are smart guys who should have known better.  And one of the reasons the "establishment" is so angry is that Trump/Hawley/Cruz et al. promulgated a lie to take care of low-educated, struggling middle class people and in some cases ruined their lives.   

I'm not so sure that almost every one of them will be sacrificial lambs.  I mean which guy wants to appeal to seditionist Trump supporters after they saw how this worked out.  Will the seditionist Trump supporters even want them???  This is absolute worst case scenario for the Republican party, and it falls squarely on ALL of them for creating a monster they couldn't control.  Welcome to Frankenparty!

[SoCal Deek]

1 minute ago, The Frankish Reich said:

Well, I did give you what I think was a pretty well reasoned argument.

You responded: Yawn.

Feel free to bring things back up a level or two. I'll gladly engage on that level. In fact, I'd actually prefer it.

Happy to.  In general, the Deep State refers to an entrenched and ever growing bureaucracy. That is what Trump went to Washington to try and change. It's doesn't refer to some subversive bunch doing dastardly things. (Unless you consider protecting their own butts in lieu of serving the people to be dastardly.) The Deep State resisted him at every turn, just as would be expected. They like their big departments and big budgets...and just like you stated in your opening post "YES" I have no doubt that each government cubicle worker is doing 'something' that they feel is essential to running the country.  I can assure you that they are not.

[Big Blitz]

9 minutes ago, SectionC3 said:

 

Normally I would agree with you, but in this particular context I think "idiot" is an expression of fact.  The raiding of the Capitol is in a class of idiocy by itself. 

 

 

 

Hey @SoCal Deek why did you have to storm the Capitol!!!??

[daz28]

Just now, Big Blitz said:

 

 

Hey @SoCal Deek why did you have to storm the Capitol!!!??

Apparently that's what you do if you pretend the election is rigged.  It's not everyday that 5 states cheat you out of a landslide.  I think the people of Georgia now have to storm their capitol now too, because Trump and Kayleigh McEnany were tweeting the Senate runoffs were rigged, too.

[Buftex]

4 minutes ago, daz28 said:

I'm not so sure that almost every one of them will be sacrificial lambs.  I mean which guy wants to appeal to seditionist Trump supporters after they saw how this worked out.  Will the seditionist Trump supporters even want them???  This is absolute worst case scenario for the Republican party, and it falls squarely on ALL of them for creating a monster they couldn't control.  Welcome to Frankenparty!

Just watch Lindsay Grahams' stroll through the DC airport today.  The deplorables gave him a piece of their deluded minds. Like so many of them, he thought he was clever, talking out of both sides of his mouth...in the end...got him re-elected.  But two months later, he is loathed by all sides. 

[BillStime]

6 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Happy to.  In general, the Deep State refers to an entrenched and ever growing bureaucracy. That is what Trump went to Washington to try and change. It's doesn't refer to some subversive bunch doing dastardly things. (Unless you consider protecting their own butts in lieu of serving the people to be dastardly.) The Deep State resisted him at every turn, just as would be expected. They like their big departments and big budgets...and just like you stated in your opening post "YES" I have no doubt that each government cubicle worker is doing 'something' that they feel is essential to running the country.  I can assure you that they are not.

Trump lied to you, again.

 

Trump IS the deep state.

 

 

 

 

[daz28]

Just now, Buftex said:

Just watch Lindsay Grahams' stroll through the DC airport today.  The deplorables gave him a piece of their deluded minds. Like so many of them, he thought he was clever, talking out of both sides of his mouth...in the end...got him re-elected.  But two months later, he is loathed by all sides. 

Exactly.  These dummies ended up with EVERYBODY hating them, and now they get to sit there quietly while it's the Democrats turn to Moscow Mitch them(and trust me Shumer will).  Turns out that winning at all costs no matter how dirty you have to get was a really dumb idea.  You'd think after 250 years of it working, they'd stick with what worked, but they got greedy and stupid.  Now it's payback time, and the future couldn't look any worse.  Them Rhino's McCain and Romney were right

[The Frankish Reich]

5 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Happy to.  In general, the Deep State refers to an entrenched and ever growing bureaucracy. That is what Trump went to Washington to try and change. It's doesn't refer to some subversive bunch doing dastardly things. (Unless you consider protecting their own butts in lieu of serving the people to be dastardly.) The Deep State resisted him at every turn, just as would be expected. They like their big departments and big budgets...and just like you stated in your opening post "YES" I have no doubt that each government cubicle worker is doing 'something' that they feel is essential to running the country.  I can assure you that they are not.

I think we agree on the Deep State. 

Michael Lewis did a nice short book about what the Deep State means in a very mundane sense - it's what I'm defending here. It's people who know what they're doing in their fields of expertise. People who often toil behind the scenes just trying to make government run a little bit better, to anticipate problems before they arise, and to fix problems when they do. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fifth_Risk

 

The Trump transition basically shunted these people out of the way in many spheres of government. There was an arrogance there. The idea that if it's entrenched and bureaucratic, well, then it's bad and resistant to change. And then things went wrong. We saw that most obviously with COVID-19, where the Trump Administration thought an office of pandemic planning was just a bureaucratic waste.

 

There's a balance between continuity/preserving established ways of doing things and the need to allow experimentation and elected change to happen. Hence my "two cheers" post. We don't want to continue doing things a certain way just because that's how they've always been done, but we want to be careful that we don't throw away the progress we've made in certain areas just because it is associated with our predecessors. In retrospect, I view that as a squandered opportunity for sensible reform, and an America left in a far worse position than the one he inherited.

[Buftex]

6 minutes ago, SoCal Deek said:

Happy to.  In general, the Deep State refers to an entrenched and ever growing bureaucracy. That is what Trump went to Washington to try and change. It's doesn't refer to some subversive bunch doing dastardly things. (Unless you consider protecting their own butts in lieu of serving the people to be dastardly.) The Deep State resisted him at every turn, just as would be expected. They like their big departments and big budgets...and just like you stated in your opening post "YES" I have no doubt that each government cubicle worker is doing 'something' that they feel is essential to running the country.  I can assure you that they are not.

That is the part that is wrong.  He may have tried to change things, but it wasn't for any noble purpose, he just wanted the deep state to protect his grifting ways.  He was so proud of stacking the courts, not for any conservative values, but because he thought he was insuring himself a further life of unchecked, and unfettered criminality.  What he doesn't understand, whether liberal or conservative, many of the people in government are there because they are dedicated public servants...he lives in a world where anyone who isn't corrupt is a merely a sucker, and a weak link that he can use for his own benefit.  This notion that he just wanted to make anything better for the "everyman" is so absurdly laughable.  It is all part of the con.

[daz28]

3 minutes ago, Buftex said:

That is the part that is wrong.  He may have tried to change things, but it wasn't for any noble purpose, he just wanted the deep state to protect his grifting ways.  He was so proud of stacking the courts, not for any conservative values, but because he thought he was insuring himself a further life of unchecked, and unfettered criminality.  What he doesn't understand, whether liberal or conservative, many of the people in government are there because they are dedicated public servants...he lives in a world where anyone who isn't corrupt is a merely a sucker, and a weak link that he can use for his own benefit.  This notion that he just wanted to make anything better for the "everyman" is so absurdly laughable.  It is all part of the con.

Public servants are precisely what they are.  They're a mix of Democrats AND republicans who can do their jobs together for the good of the country without political bias.  Trump thought he could fire them all, and tried.  For all the wacky Trumpees listening, the REAL problem is the elected officials.  It was never the deep state

[Big Blitz]

40 minutes ago, daz28 said:

Apparently that's what you do if you pretend the election is rigged.  It's not everyday that 5 states cheat you out of a landslide.  I think the people of Georgia now have to storm their capitol now too, because Trump and Kayleigh McEnany were tweeting the Senate runoffs were rigged, too.

 

90 million ballots in the mail. 

 

I'm sure they're all legit.

 

Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee.  

 

Your cousin died in September?  But you have their mail in ballot mailed directly from the State! and I'm sure in no way does this even happen no way vote by mail for life...

 

 

Here is the NY Times before Year Zero:

 

 

Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises

 

By Adam Liptak

Oct. 6, 2012

 

...Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

 

“The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.”

 

The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.

 

In Florida, absentee-ballot scandals seem to arrive like clockwork around election time. Before this year’s primary, for example, a woman in Hialeah was charged with forging an elderly voter’s signature, a felony, and possessing 31 completed absentee ballots, 29 more than allowed under a local law.

 

In the last presidential election, 35.5 million voters requested absentee ballots, but only 27.9 million absentee votes were counted, according to a study by Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He calculated that 3.9 million ballots requested by voters never reached them; that another 2.9 million ballots received by voters did not make it back to election officials; and that election officials rejected 800,000 ballots. That suggests an overall failure rate of as much as 21 percent.

 

Some voters presumably decided not to vote after receiving ballots, but Mr. Stewart said many others most likely tried to vote and were thwarted.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html

 

 

This goes for both parties.  

 

Get an ID.  Show up.  Vote.  

 

If you can't or you over slept it isn't the end of the world.  We'll be OK.  

 

Never forget....multiply what we already knew about this scheme times 10 plus added sophisticated cheating during Casedemic

Edited January 8, 2021 by Big Blitz

[daz28]

1 minute ago, Big Blitz said:

 

90 million ballots in the mail. 

 

I'm sure they're all legit.

 

Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee.  

 

Your cousin died in September?  But you have their mail in ballot mailed directly from the State! and I'm sure in no way does this even happen no way vote by mail for life...

 

 

Here is the NY Times before Year Zero:

 

 

Error and Fraud at Issue as Absentee Voting Rises

 

By Adam Liptak

Oct. 6, 2012

 

...Yet votes cast by mail are less likely to be counted, more likely to be compromised and more likely to be contested than those cast in a voting booth, statistics show. Election officials reject almost 2 percent of ballots cast by mail, double the rate for in-person voting.

 

“The more people you force to vote by mail,” Mr. Sancho said, “the more invalid ballots you will generate.”

 

The trend will probably result in more uncounted votes, and it increases the potential for fraud. While fraud in voting by mail is far less common than innocent errors, it is vastly more prevalent than the in-person voting fraud that has attracted far more attention, election administrators say.

 

In Florida, absentee-ballot scandals seem to arrive like clockwork around election time. Before this year’s primary, for example, a woman in Hialeah was charged with forging an elderly voter’s signature, a felony, and possessing 31 completed absentee ballots, 29 more than allowed under a local law.

 

In the last presidential election, 35.5 million voters requested absentee ballots, but only 27.9 million absentee votes were counted, according to a study by Charles Stewart III, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He calculated that 3.9 million ballots requested by voters never reached them; that another 2.9 million ballots received by voters did not make it back to election officials; and that election officials rejected 800,000 ballots. That suggests an overall failure rate of as much as 21 percent.

 

Some voters presumably decided not to vote after receiving ballots, but Mr. Stewart said many others most likely tried to vote and were thwarted.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html

 

 

This goes for both parties.  

 

Get an ID.  Show up.  Vote.  

 

If you can't or you over slept it isn't the end of the world.  We'll be OK.  

LOL one guy sir charles the third did one study and said that most likely he could surmise what may have happened.  You're going to have to do batter than that.

 

Riddle me this batman.  Suppose they did try to create fake mail in ballots.  FIRST, they'd have to register that voter(if they weren't), there's a RECORD of who's registered along with a valid ss#.  Second, they'd have to guess 100k people correctly(in all 5 states) that weren't going to vote to use them as dummy ballots, because otherwise they'd receive two ballots OR they'd show up in person and you'd have 2 votes.  Third, you have to successfully forge ALL of their signatures so good the machine wouldn't notice.  Lastly, you have to be able to get all this information w/o anyone knowing.  I don't even think anyone could formulate a legitimate plan to pull off massive voter fraud, much less risk going to prison for 5 years for it.  He lost, the insurgents are idiots, and it's over.  Seriously, if you can even show me a blueprint for how to pull off massive voter fraud in at least 5 states, I'll eat an aardvark.     

[Big Blitz]

10 minutes ago, daz28 said:

LOL one guy sir charles the third did one study and said that most likely he could surmise what may have happened.  You're going to have to do batter than that.

 

 

I'm sorry I cannot do better then a Political Scientist at MIT.  

 

[daz28]

27 minutes ago, Big Blitz said:

 

I'm sorry I cannot do better then a Political Scientist at MIT.  

 

Sure you can, you can find, you know ACTUAL FACTS??