Deep Thwart

For the most part, I think we'd agree that since January of 2017, the average intelligence of the United States as a nation has done a turn for the less-as-good. See, two years ago that would have been a pithy sentence with a literary or philosophical reference, hinging on a turn of phrase (or even a single word!) the bridged the gap between a high-brow political truth dressed in the tarty straw-blond wig of low-brow humor. Accessible pretentiousness, our stock-in-trade here.* But now I can barely manage a sentence much less a point. And a canny jape, well, it's just past the point of hoping, isn't it?

Who can function, let alone think? Look at me: I'm a wreck. There's just too much news. I don't think there's any way that whatever organ exists in my body to process and metabolize news is up to the task in volume. I feel like I'm developing type-2 news diabetes. I'm sleepy, I get unexplained sweats and I just know somehow this is all going to end with me having a foot cut off.

This week has been an emergency-level overload of Shit-That-Happened. I try to be a good citizen, reading just enough from sources guaranteed to confirm opinions I've already arrived at before the information is presented. Thanks for all your work, Raw Story. The comforting white-noise of the echo chamber almost makes the crippling autoplay ad infestation worth the trouble.

The Bob Woodward book and the anonymous op-ed from inside the White House would normally be an entire administration's worth of scandal and humiliation. We got all that before Hump Day this week. And look who's still the fucking president...

Like I said, I tried the informed-voter route, but I've decided my collapsing immune system and the building feedback loop of anxious paranoia aren't worth the effort. I've decided instead to simply hand my wellbeing over to the loving embrace of the Deep State.

Now, I first arrived at awareness of the Deep State through the delusional rantings of multimillionaire populist and noted non-racist Steve Bannon, so naturally I did what I do with all Bannon-issued information: I TOOK IT DEADLY SERIOUSLY. Have you seen Steve Bannon? He looks like the guy who works for Las Vegas casino security who sits next to you at the blackjack table right before a bigger, clearly armed man throws you out for playing with a partner. He's a gross, doughy schlub of nothing, but he's the first word before the physical threat. He's the worst kind of dangerous: a megalomaniac with an actual following, however minuscule. Sounds risible, sure, but remember Scientology used to be one shitty writer with a fetish for navy hats.

The Deep State, they assure me, has been around for years. Right now it's apparently actively swiping stuff off the desk of the goldfish-man we've put in charge of our nuclear arsenal. I laughed when the right wing promised Obama was going to bring us sharia law and communism somehow at the exact same time, but I'm wondering if the only reason both of those things didn't occur, it's because the Deep State saved us then too?

I admit, it's probably still a bullshit fever dream of people a little to accustomed to being thwarted. But at this point, I'm open to any offers to take this burden of governance off me. Hell, I'd take the nine Jewish bankers living in a Swiss vault controlling my every thought if it meant the Huffington Post would go back to headlines about Caitlyn Jenner or whatever the fuck.

I'm starting to believe in the Deep State, though, because I think it's supposed to mean civil servants. I'm not one myself, but I work with civil servants literally every day of my working life. Are they cynical, forgotten, angry, provincial, petty oligarchs of pettier kingdoms insulated from the public good by a squishy, soundproof nest of red tape? Sure. But what we can count on is a cycle of threats to shut down the government, a hiring freeze and the cancellation of pay raises. If there wasn't a ready-made army inside the federal government to resist the Trump agenda at every turn, he's done everything possible to create one. To be fair, I've never seen civil servants rise up and do... well, anything really, but I've decided to invest what hope I have left in them and their brethren across the whole constellation of agencies. Then I can also sleep in a bit because hope is literally the least I can do.

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*I know it's weird to say "our" but sometimes when I get lonely, I ink two dots on each fingernail like little eyes and count my fingers as people.