Left Vs. Right Is A Nonsensical Debate As Long As There’s A Deep State In America

Caitlin Johnstone
8 min readApr 20, 2017

--

Bernie Sanders appeared alongside DNC Chairman Tom Perez in a joint interview on MSNBC to promote their doomed-before-it-started “unity tour” Tuesday night, and, as he has been known to do from time to time, began ranting about Wall Street and the “billionaih” class. Chris Hayes decided to make things interesting and press Tom Perez to find out if he agreed with Sanders’ populist message about oligarchs and the ruling class, to which Perez responded, “Well listen, mealy-mouthed vapid nothing political speak Donald Trump, empty-headed bloviating drivel Donald Trump equivocations and avoidance please don’t let David Brock hit me again.”

Or something like that, I can’t be bothered transcribing that snivelling toadie. Here’s the clip:

So while trying to promote “unity”, the official leader of the Democratic party and the unofficial leader of the Democratic party together illustrated perfectly the only real political division existing in rank-and-file America today: those who pretend that America is a democracy wherein people get to use their votes to determine the direction in which their nation will move, and those who recognize that the most powerful nation in the world is in fact controlled by a few ruling elites who are not answerable to elected officials in any meaningful way. Perez avoided the question because his political career depends upon his ability to subvert that question and ultimately strangle it to death in its sleep; the Democratic establishment relies on kowtowing to the donor class and promulgating the narrative that all of America’s problems are caused by Republicans and bigotry. Meanwhile, that donor class occupies a crucial seat within the American deep state.

This division, wherein progressives find themselves squarely in opposition to the deep state lackeys in the Democratic party, is mirrored perfectly on the other side of the political aisle (because in reality it is the same division, and there is no aisle). The Republican party has been locked in a proxy battle between the deep state-serving neocons and the libertarians and nationalists who oppose globalism, i.e. the deep state agenda to subvert the American people to the interests of multinational corporations and banks who are not limited by national borders, and who use America’s military might to bolster their economic might. This proxy fight has reached record intensity as things have heated up in Syria, with the neocons braying for regime change invasion and the libertarians and nationalists pleading for America to focus on helping Americans. But, just as with the Democratic party, there is a split between those who see this situation clearly and those who buy into the story that all of America’s problems are caused by liberals and political correctness.

Before I go on, I should probably preempt a lot of the more asinine comments that this post will inevitably otherwise generate by pointing out that the concept of a deep state in America is not some kind of wacko conspiracy theory. It doesn’t refer to some cloaked cabal of Jewish elites who meet in the forest to sacrifice children and greet each other with esoteric handshakes as in the straw man that so many corporate media outlets are fond of attacking, but refers rather to the self-evident fact that unelected power structures exist in America, and power structures tend to form alliances. The donor class, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, big oil, the military-industrial complex, various aspects of the intelligence community, the corporate media, national security officials; all of these overlapping and interconnected groups undeniably exist, undeniably wield immense power, and are undeniably not elected by the American people. There is no factual basis on which to deny any of these things; the only thing that can rationally be debated is how they behave. The term “deep state” exists for use in that dialogue.

Moving on.

I live in a nation that is politically much further to the left than America is. The dominant right wing party in Australia is called the Liberal Party, and funny enough it happens to be further to the left than the Democratic Party in America is. Sure, they hold themselves with the same haughty “we’re the real grownups in this country” stuffed-shirt attitude that Republicans do, but if for example any of them openly campaigned against universal healthcare in favor of a corporatist clusterfuck like Obamacare as Democratic Senators Claire McCaskill and Dianne Feinstein have done recently, they’d never win another election. The party to the left of the Liberal Party is called the Labor Party which has no real equivalent in America, a powerful socialist worker’s party next to whom Bernie Sanders looks like Ted Cruz.

The Labor Party sits squarely to the right of my political comfort zone.

My point being that I have a very solid and uncompromising position on the overall political spectrum in our world here. I don’t believe the conservatives have any good answers for the environmental, technological, geopolitical and economic hurdles that our species will need to clear in the coming decades, and I think all the least empowered people on earth will suffer the earliest and the worst if the social Darwinists on the political right get their way. I think I’m correct, and I think they’re wrong.

That said, I find myself taking less and less interest in that debate when it comes to America and its politics. I care deeply about America and as the child of a long line of journalists I am acutely aware of the massive role it plays in world affairs, and I also happen to be married to a lovely Californian bloke, but seriously, what’s the point? What’s the point of debating economic justice when there’s an unelected power coalition expressly dedicated to making sure that economic justice never happens? What’s the point of debating the merits of non-interventionism if there’s an unelected power coalition expressly dedicated to making sure that America keeps bullying, invading, attacking and destabilizing? What’s the point in debating left vs. right in a country that does not have a single viable pro-human political party?

I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that there is no point, and there never will be until the American people take their power away from the ruling elites and give it to themselves. Once there is a political system that is not specifically geared toward shoving the people of America into a corporatist ecocidal oppressive dynamic no matter who you vote for, then it will make sense to debate how best to allocate resources and figure out the best way to run a nation together. Once people no longer have to turn to demonized transparency advocates like WikiLeaks in order to catch glimpses of what their government is really up to behind its photogenic exterior, then it will make sense to have a rigorous debate about how that government ought to operate. Until these things change, the only fight worth fighting is against the deep state.

Which brings me back to my original point: the only real political divide in America right now is those who support the deep state and those who oppose it. Those who buy into the corporate media propaganda used to manufacture the consent of the governed for a system that exploits and oppresses them, and those who fight against that propaganda. This division crosses both of America’s phoney political parties and runs straight through all other cultural and ethnic divisions in the nation.

It only makes sense, therefore, for everyone who opposes the deep state to unite together and fight it. Basement dwellers and deplorables fighting side-by-side against a common enemy in the hopes of one day having the luxury of being able to have a meaningful debate with one another.

How to do this? It’s actually easier than it sounds. The entire system is held in place by corporate media propaganda. Without being fed a steady diet of media that normalizes a situation where the American people are crushed to death under the weight of the Walmart economy while hundreds of billions of dollars a year are spent on corporatist wars, the whole illusion of freedom falls apart. The ruling elites figured out long ago that it’s much easier to convince the masses that they are free than to try and force them into cages, but that’s getting harder and harder for them to do as internet access grows and people get better at networking and sharing information. Last year they lost control of the narrative for a brief moment as WikiLeaks, social media and alternative media cost the deep state’s prefered candidate the election; we just have to create more and more of those moments.

In short, this is a media war. Every false flag the deep state creates, every bogus narrative the corporate media promulgates, every leak drop, every scandal, every plot hole, is an opportunity to draw more and more attention to what these people are doing and wake people up to what’s happening. The reason anti-establishment voices on Facebook and Youtube have been experiencing censorship campaigns and demonetizing epidemics is because the new media presents a very real and present threat to the illusion the ruling powers have put so much effort into maintaining.

So speak out. Have conversations, blog, Youtube, tweet, push out into any area where good ideas can find fertile ground. It might sound like a wimpy first-world feel-good solution, but circulating information and breaking the spell of normalcy is probably the single most revolutionary thing that an ordinary American can do right now. You might think your energy is better spent putting on a mask and punching Trump supporters or going to some march or protest, but circulating anti-establishment ideas and information far and wide wherever you can is far, far more destructive to the oppression machine. There is a reason so much frantic effort has gone into making progressives look everywhere except at the smouldering rubble of the DNC scandal, for example; the gaping plot hole that the DNC Leaks exposed in the official narrative threatens the deep state’s one-party scheme to this very day, and if public discourse about it reignites the manipulators will be forced to overextend and expose themselves to try and pull it back into the shadows.

So let’s come together. Unlike the omnicidal sociopaths at America’s steering wheel who only know how to wedge and divide, we truth-tellers are united by the same authentic morality, by something real and tangible. So while they grow ever more fragmented as they wedge themselves into obsolescence, our numbers will keep growing as more and more eyes open to what’s been happening in this world. Let’s help them open.

— -

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this, please consider helping me out by sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following me on Twitter, or even tossing me some money on Patreon so I can keep this gig up.

--

--

Responses (25)