It’s worse than James Woods suggests.
Each echo chamber is a government. Each government boasts its own citizens. We overlap. We intermesh. We share supermarkets and even living rooms. Yes, some of our loved ones manage to inhabit the town of Stepford, even as they sleep beside us. This is a war of cognition where bodies don’t count.
Twitter is the garden wall where the tomatoes get tossed back and forth. The banter is tedious and predictable. Memes are like weeds. But the structural divide is truly daunting, not to mention formally drawn and institutionalized.
Who would have thought that the most ensconced and ‘arrived’ cognoscenti by any conventional measure of social stature (our so-called ‘elite”, but can we please stop calling them that?) would affix their civic orbit to the most sovereignty-deprived of our parallel governments? For the moment, the entitled class (Trumanites; we’ll get to that label presently) are up the creek without a Presidential paddle.
Up is down. Down is up. Delusional celebrities! You have no Constitution! We, the People. You, the Pimple.
For a time, we tolerated their telegenic nonsense. Until a galvanizing antithesis in the figure of President Donald Trump arrived to guide us back to a Constitutional normalcy long-since given up in the post-WW2 era. Now, with pitchforks in-hand, the Madisonian-Deplorables are on a campaign of reclamation.
Trump the giant-killer. That really kills some people. The American Left (such as it is – and it isn’t) would rather ‘protect the reputation’ of the CIA than acknowledge anything remotely positive emanating from Trump. That’s the pathological denialism at the root of derangement.
The real collusion bombshell in Helsinki? That US intelligence agencies assisted in the transfer of $400 million into the Clinton campaign coffers. The diversion? That Trump besmirched the CIA, a theme the mockingbird choir took up unremittingly. The social media muppetry lit up, uncritically as always, as it is conditioned to do.
We all feel the endless and dispiriting tug-of-war Wood’s tweet alludes to. However, we struggle for the most encapsulating terms: Deep State, Shadow Government, Illuminati.
For my money, this ‘dueling dualism’ is best evoked in Michael Glennon’s terms, Trumanite Network and Madisonian Institutions as developed in his 2015 book National Security and Double Government.
Here’s a brief synopsis:
The book details the dramatic shift in power that has occurred from the Madisonian institutions to a concealed “Trumanite network” – the several hundred managers of the military, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement agencies who are responsible for protecting the nation and who have come to operate largely immune from constitutional and electoral restraints. Reform efforts face daunting obstacles. Remedies within this new system of “double government” require the hollowed-out Madisonian institutions to exercise the very power that they lack.
Glennon, an academic, avoids a nefarious conspiracy-tinged depiction of the Trumanite side. Perhaps if they weren’t so hidden and submerged, the conspiracy crowd could lighten up a bit too. Hey, don’t blame our dark imaginings for your endless shadow-play. Step into the light or don’t bitch.
Borrowing much of his conceptual framework from the work of 19th century English writer Walter Bagehot, Glennon foresees a parallel and continued atrophying of our Madisonian institutions into something not unlike the ornamental functions of today’s British monarchy, with a more submerged government increasingly undertaking the complex business of the State. Glennon also calls them our ‘dignified’ versus ‘efficient’ institutions.
Gaining its initial impetus under the National Security Act of 1947, and driven by the overriding security (fear-based) imperatives of the Cold War, the Trumanite network grew aggressively enough that, by 1960, Eisenhower was famously warning us of an eclipsing Military Industrial Complex. This warning is no less potent today.
Sounding a cautionary, if not outright defeatist tone (the book came out in 2015), Glennon was not anticipating a retrograde figure on the scale of Trump.
The Mueller Independent Counsel is like a Trumanite consulate within the resurgent Madisonian government spearheaded by Trump. Without Mueller’s lingering presence, the Democrats (mantle-holders at the moment for the Deep State, along with some furtive Republican establishment support) would have no substantive speaking-role, outside of (are you ready?) Maxine Waters.
The Object of Mueller’s investigation is not to go away. Mueller is the beachhead that invents incoming German artillery fire. The enemy is over the hill only because Mueller says he is. Culled from the same infernal cauldron as the War on Terror, Mueller emanates from nowhere and everywhere and is as durable as the capacity for human terror (i.e. inexhaustible). The perpetual motion machine from Lawfare Hell.
As Adam Hill points out, this in perpetuum feature accomplishes two simultaneous objectives. One, it permanently sub-optimizes Trump’s Presidency and two, it permits Rosenstein to forever dish his favored response to Congressional questions: “I’m sorry I can’t answer that question because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.” Here’s Hill:
…Rosenstein and others embarrassed by DOJ’s actions may derive raison d’être, if not safety, from the never-ending nature of the investigation. And like Leonard Shelby’s investigative file, the Russia investigation has become a puzzle that is designed to never be solved. Because to do so would end the “ongoing investigation” excuse that keeps the cause of DOJ’s embarrassment under wraps.
Trump’s filling the ‘hollowed out’ core of our Madisonian ornamental facade with larger-than-lifeness, guts, bluster and smarts. No one but him could do it! He’s restoring operative value to the Constitution –and just in time too.
They really should think about moving CNN off-air as it affords the opposition unprecedented access into the Trumanite-cheerleader set at the height of their real-time disarray, railing against the treason our POTUS (how many have denied them as their own?) displayed on foreign soil (while remaining oblivious to the treason they spew daily against our government from NYC).
The sheer incredulity of the CNN panel (here) is an odd delight to behold, especially coming from former CIA employee Anderson Cooper. It serves to remind us they’re not in the game of overt duplicity. These people are genuinely gobsmacked. Their government is under attack. And not by the Russians. By us.
Nor will they convert easily. Their identities, their statuses are wed to a superseded vision. Upton Sinclair:
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
The government that feeds them, promotes them, cocktails with them, advances them in their careers is one side of our Double Government. It is that government to which Trump flashed treasonous moments, to which he even implied poses a greater threat to him than does Putin’s Russia. I couldn’t agree more with POTUS.
We are the Forces of Reclamation. They are The Forces of Departure. They dream of vacating the Walmart stench for better things: supranationalism, globalism. We just want our Union back.
It’s as though the nation has double-vision, with the elite gazing through the Trumanite lens and We, The People holding down the Madisonian fort. Yes, Trump is exhibiting treasonous tendencies towards this Trumanite outgrowth. It’s the impertinent nature of cancer to think that it is the rightful body and we are the intruder. Expect a fight for the Body Politic.
Madison’s Constitution is on Trump’s side — as are We the People.