Some here have chided us for being over-focused on #TrumpRussia with the implication that it takes away from other activism.
Speaking for myself, it is true that the current arc of stupidity has made this particular historical watershed seem to overshadow the need to resist racism, sexism, classism/inequality, and the electoral struggles at the state/regional/local level.
However, we can multitask, especially if one is old enough to get bored by so many single-issue liberals or those who are driven by personalities rather than policies.
Trump is symptomatic rather than the epitome of American kleptocracy and crony capitalism.
Calling the normal operations of capitalism a deep state is one of the stupider paranoid fantasies. Building an entire Bannonian media troll empire on such an anti-statist notion (like the Deep State would have regular membership meetings) is one of the bigger grifts that gave us Lord Dampnut. This does not cancel notions of an oppressive maximal/minimal state apparatus, simply that agency and structure are more nuanced as even Trump’s Russian/Israeli faux pas has demonstrated.
Not so much a deep state smearing as WaPo doing normal journalism about a singularly strange event where Agent Orange banned US media from a Lavrov meeting at the WH “suggested” by Putin to Trump that included Lislyak, the prime contact for a number of Trumpists including the princeling.
Some of us appreciate the need to think about an activism that will displace the GOP at all levels in 2018/2020. However, we also need to keep the pressure on the GOP to not defect from Trump as he implodes. Some of us appreciate the possibility that impeachment might not cure anything even if successful, because 2016 had many negatives that were not Trumpist. Others of us just need to hone our writing skills.
In private, three administration officials conceded that they could not publicly articulate their most compelling — and honest — defense of the president: that Mr. Trump, a hasty and indifferent reader of printed briefing materials, simply did not possess the interest or knowledge of the granular details of intelligence gathering to leak specific sources and methods of intelligence gathering that would do harm to United States allies.
www.nytimes.com/...
Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence an ongoing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.
a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy…
Donald Trump supporters have used the term to refer to intelligence officers and executive branch officials guiding policy through leaking or other internal means,[15][11] especially after leaks from government officials to The Washington Post and The New York Times precipitated the resignation of Michael Flynn, then Trump's National Security Advisor.[16]The term's conspiratorial undertone has made it popular on conservative and far-right news outlets sympathetic to the Trump administration, especially Breitbart News,[17] but it has been discussed widely across the media spectrum.[18][19]
Members of the Trump White House reportedly refer to a "deep state" routinely, which they believe is undermining the president's authority.[20] White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon "has spoken with Trump at length about his view that the 'deep state' is a direct threat to his presidency," The Washington Post reported.[21] Some Trump allies and right-wing media outlets have claimed, without evidence, that former president Barack Obama is coordinating a deep state resistance to Trump.[20][22] The growth of this narrative within the White House has been linked to Trump's unproven[23][24] allegation that Obama wiretapped his telephone during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
While popular among Trump allies, critics of use of the term in the U.S. argue that the leaks frustrating the Trump administration lack the organizational depth of deep states in other countries, and that use of the term in the U.S. could be used to justify suppressing dissent.[25][20]