"as soon as Biden is no longer president, their careers will permanently downshift."
They wouldn't if his presidency had been somewhat successful--or merely respectable.
If the 2016, 2020, and 2024 Dem nomination processes had been above board, we wouldn't have quite so much faith in smoke-filled rooms pulling Biden's strings, but then, Biden likely wouldn't be Prez, either.
"Joe's really in charge guys, because you can't name his handlers who aren't his buddies!"
NSA, CIA, FBI caught spying on Congress and using that to blackmail people. But oh no, Joe's totally independent you guys!
And let's not forget how Dementia Joe has always been in the pocket of Big Corporate in Wilmington.
But yeah, Slow Joe is really making his own moves! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Why Steve is so heck-bent on insisting this foistered-upon-us-by-the-Deep-State dementia-addled, lifetime low-IQ puppet somehow is really the guy making all the decisions is a mystery for the ages.
I'd argue as long as Joe does what credit card issuers want, he can do whatever else he wants. Like run for a second term. As others have said before, there's less a grand conspiracy than interest groups sometimes working together, and sometimes not.
Maybe not ALL the decisions, but he is a coarse, mean mouthed petty tyrant who has a keen sense of the (unearned but real) power in his current situation….
I think the deep state is more interacting magisterium tied together with shared viewpoints. Trump pissed off the intelligence community. He also interrupted the flow of government money into NGOs and similar government supported grifters. This gave both groups a common interest in destroying him.
I imagine the firm differentiation of Deep State vs Peak State is a false dichotomy. The deep state is a context of influence within which the POTUS functions in the same manner that all legislators function within a sea of lobbyists. Go against the systemic incentives and be dropped from ascendancy in the system or otherwise punished. Conversely, play ball is pay ball. Are there leaders at the top who exercise independent leadership against systemic incentives? Sure. Maybe they change the system or maybe they get assassinated. Biden doesn’t feel like a leader with vision or capacity, which suggests his direction and decision making is coming from somewhere else rather than his own independent initiative.
The CIA agents that were on the payroll of Twitter (pre-Musk) and other big tech companies, those weren't put there by order of Donald Trump (the nominal president).
And the man at the visible 'peak' of the state in early 2021 was outright banned from his biggest communication medium. Who did it? It seems that the figure of the figure of Donald Trump, demagogic and narcissistic Trump, doesn't fit well with a strong Peak State is All There Is theory.
Agreed. Perhaps a better conception of the "Deep State" is a bureaucracy that's taken on a life of its own; the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone. It is not a tree (in the graph theory sense), with individuals at "parent nodes" dictating orders down the chain of command, but a mesh in which the more powerful loci of influence do whatever they can to persuade other nodes to cohere with their agendas.
The fact that Biden's inner circle are controlling him doesn't mean they aren't likewise controlled, nor does it mean they're controlled directly. Maybe Baron Rothschild told his driver to talk to Jill Biden's driver to casually mention that the plebs he associates with all agree Joe should drop out. Put a bug in his ear, three degrees removed, etc.
We can now apply a sort of predicate logic to answer the question as to who these Deep State conspirators are: those in the top x% of wealth who are ideologically aligned with, or in charge of, the workers of the Establishment (government, academia, entertainment, journalism, social media).
Through their positions of power and influence they can shape the thinking and behaviors of those under their thumb. Thus they may not *directly* control these people, but control them they do.
The problems: (1) there is no easy mechanism to do this, (2) it looks bad, (3) there is no agreement on who should be the candidate, (4) Sailer's "Coalition of the Fringes" theory comes into play.
If the big donors wants Biden to quit, s, or whichever other power-players want him to quit, but they have no Plan B, they wouldn't be power-players at all, it seems to me. Big-time gamblers don't tend to become behind-the-scenes power-players. So a Biden knock-out by donors would require a coherent Plan B or it wouldn't happen at all. That seems to be the D-team's dilemma.
Reports out today, by CNN and Politico. confirm Sailer's prediction that a main roadblock to Ides of March-ing Joe Biden is that the conspirators would also absolutely NOT want Kamala to be the D-team candidate for president. But they also couldn't dump her because of racial concerns ("the first Black-female vice president" [despite half-Hindu ancestry]), recalling that they have to juggle a wobbly multi-racial coalition of resentment-group interests. That, and a load of other risks, deflate the enthusiasm.
Those who followed Sailer's prognostications on this, will have already known the outlines of today's headlines before they appeared.
My theory is that big donors held back their money and demanded this early test of Biden well before August. Can Zuckbucks actually force him out is the question. It is weird how BO destroyed the Democratic bench. Something like a thousand Dem elected office holders lost their jobs in his 8 years.
What I have observed is that Genocide Joe is enjoying every single little moment of being President. Striding up to Air Force 1, rubbing shoulders with world leaders, all of it. He will not relinquish the glory (undeserved) and thrill of this office. Yes, he will run again.
Biden first ran for President 36 years ago. He's not a humble and modest guy. People assume he is because he has a lot to be humble and modest about, but he isn't.
The very fact that the news-media would come out demanding a presidential candidate be replaced. What does this tell us?
The news-media is, in theory, in the business of reporting news and finding stories. A secondary part of its job, traditionally, was to editorialize on policies. They would endorse candidates for elections, candidates which had been selected by political parties, not candidates which the newspapers themselves had selected. The news-media is NOT a "fourth branch of government" that has some kind of veto power over other branches. And yet -- that does seem to be how it works, in practice.
Personally, I think Obama will be happy to have Biden continue running for president because they are going to use every election fraud tactic they can to “win” again. Then Obama can continue on with his fourth term as president.
Isn’t it possible that Biden is able to occasionally determine and insist upon a given course of action and achieve sufficient compliance that he is actually in charge of?
“Leave Afghanistan damn it…I don’t care what happens!”
“Give me an Exec. Order that forgives a bunch of student debt, god damn it, I don’t care about the f——ing. Supreme Court”
I can see his underlings scurrying out of the office and plunging ahead while muttering and shaking their heads. I can see Joe viewing this as exhibiting character and wisdom. I can see Dr. Jill whispering confirmation of his heroism: “Obama wouldn’t have had the balls to do that, Joey…”
Yeah that's a tough one for sure. To me it'd be more likely to be someone in the intel agencies making some sort of intimidating move against Biden to get him out. They've got countless ways to undermine someone like that. Especially with all of his foreign influence connections. I definitely think more of intel agencies when it comes to deep state; what we saw with the Steele Dossier and Hunter's laptop and how they dealt with those things. I'm sure they could come up with something to push Biden out the door if he refuses to go.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but if Obama and his minions are not really running things, I'd be mighty surprised. Obama has practically told everybody he is doing it. Remember that from late 2016 on, the origin of the subversion of the Trump presidency has been led by Obama and his minions ... beyond Biden suggesting that Michael Flynn might be indicted for alleged Logan violations, I can't see Joe running things at all. In the debate, it was clear he is not woke in any way ... All his personnel appointments are basically Obama people. Why is Obama still living in D.C.? Biden is clearly vindictive (Jan. 6 people in jail, Trump lawfare) and a bastard but he doesn't have the pathological brain like Obama has. That pathology attracts people to Obama who are like him ... Why the Iran deal? Pure Obama. OK, my two cents.
This is an utterly reasonable interpretation of what we're seeing right now.
Still, I can't help wondering if people like Auron MacIntyre are correct that the role of the President itself is considerably less powerful than one would assume. Not just in terms of their agenda being undesirable by foreign entities, but specifically in terms of the power of the bureaucracy itself.
How much power do the heads of the agencies have in setting the agenda? One would assume a considerable amount, but not total. So the will of the guy in charge of all those other guys in charge had better be pretty strong to achieve anything close to his agenda.
My only other problem with peak state theory is that Biden never seemed all that interested in LGTBQ+ before. That he would now support, even with a feeble mind, the very radical positions of the woke left seems unlikely. At least to me.
First, when Biden was running in 2020 the media asked aoc why she was supporting Biden. Her answer…he is “pliable” to their positions. Meaning they looked at him as silly putty they could stretch and mold as they wished. It is visible every time he speaks in public with the scripted cheat sheets and the statements by Biden about being told what to say. It got so bad they have essentially hidden him from the public, but they realized he had to do some debates.
Second, his inner circle (and more) launched the lawfare campaign against Trump precisely because of what we just saw during the debate. They knew he was going to stumble and mumble so they have tried to take out Trump by branding him a “convicted felon” and asking for gag orders.
Third, they timed the first debate for precisely the outcome we just witnessed. If Biden face planted they had enough time to do damage control or replace him.
Don’t be surprised if Trump is sentenced to jail time to keep him out of view. Every time Trump talks it makes Biden look even worse.
I know, I know, it’s all a conspiracy theory. They said that about the Covid origin, masks, vaccines, Russia…
"as soon as Biden is no longer president, their careers will permanently downshift."
They wouldn't if his presidency had been somewhat successful--or merely respectable.
If the 2016, 2020, and 2024 Dem nomination processes had been above board, we wouldn't have quite so much faith in smoke-filled rooms pulling Biden's strings, but then, Biden likely wouldn't be Prez, either.
"Joe's really in charge guys, because you can't name his handlers who aren't his buddies!"
NSA, CIA, FBI caught spying on Congress and using that to blackmail people. But oh no, Joe's totally independent you guys!
And let's not forget how Dementia Joe has always been in the pocket of Big Corporate in Wilmington.
But yeah, Slow Joe is really making his own moves! Yeah, that's the ticket!
Why Steve is so heck-bent on insisting this foistered-upon-us-by-the-Deep-State dementia-addled, lifetime low-IQ puppet somehow is really the guy making all the decisions is a mystery for the ages.
I'd argue as long as Joe does what credit card issuers want, he can do whatever else he wants. Like run for a second term. As others have said before, there's less a grand conspiracy than interest groups sometimes working together, and sometimes not.
Maybe not ALL the decisions, but he is a coarse, mean mouthed petty tyrant who has a keen sense of the (unearned but real) power in his current situation….
I think the deep state is more interacting magisterium tied together with shared viewpoints. Trump pissed off the intelligence community. He also interrupted the flow of government money into NGOs and similar government supported grifters. This gave both groups a common interest in destroying him.
I imagine the firm differentiation of Deep State vs Peak State is a false dichotomy. The deep state is a context of influence within which the POTUS functions in the same manner that all legislators function within a sea of lobbyists. Go against the systemic incentives and be dropped from ascendancy in the system or otherwise punished. Conversely, play ball is pay ball. Are there leaders at the top who exercise independent leadership against systemic incentives? Sure. Maybe they change the system or maybe they get assassinated. Biden doesn’t feel like a leader with vision or capacity, which suggests his direction and decision making is coming from somewhere else rather than his own independent initiative.
The CIA agents that were on the payroll of Twitter (pre-Musk) and other big tech companies, those weren't put there by order of Donald Trump (the nominal president).
And the man at the visible 'peak' of the state in early 2021 was outright banned from his biggest communication medium. Who did it? It seems that the figure of the figure of Donald Trump, demagogic and narcissistic Trump, doesn't fit well with a strong Peak State is All There Is theory.
Agreed. Perhaps a better conception of the "Deep State" is a bureaucracy that's taken on a life of its own; the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone. It is not a tree (in the graph theory sense), with individuals at "parent nodes" dictating orders down the chain of command, but a mesh in which the more powerful loci of influence do whatever they can to persuade other nodes to cohere with their agendas.
The fact that Biden's inner circle are controlling him doesn't mean they aren't likewise controlled, nor does it mean they're controlled directly. Maybe Baron Rothschild told his driver to talk to Jill Biden's driver to casually mention that the plebs he associates with all agree Joe should drop out. Put a bug in his ear, three degrees removed, etc.
We can now apply a sort of predicate logic to answer the question as to who these Deep State conspirators are: those in the top x% of wealth who are ideologically aligned with, or in charge of, the workers of the Establishment (government, academia, entertainment, journalism, social media).
Through their positions of power and influence they can shape the thinking and behaviors of those under their thumb. Thus they may not *directly* control these people, but control them they do.
Who is the next puppet?
Maybe some of his campaign donors will threaten to pull the plug.
Pull the plug (I read this to mean refuse further campaign funding for Biden-2024), to what end?
To find another candidate.
The problems: (1) there is no easy mechanism to do this, (2) it looks bad, (3) there is no agreement on who should be the candidate, (4) Sailer's "Coalition of the Fringes" theory comes into play.
If the big donors wants Biden to quit, s, or whichever other power-players want him to quit, but they have no Plan B, they wouldn't be power-players at all, it seems to me. Big-time gamblers don't tend to become behind-the-scenes power-players. So a Biden knock-out by donors would require a coherent Plan B or it wouldn't happen at all. That seems to be the D-team's dilemma.
Reports out today, by CNN and Politico. confirm Sailer's prediction that a main roadblock to Ides of March-ing Joe Biden is that the conspirators would also absolutely NOT want Kamala to be the D-team candidate for president. But they also couldn't dump her because of racial concerns ("the first Black-female vice president" [despite half-Hindu ancestry]), recalling that they have to juggle a wobbly multi-racial coalition of resentment-group interests. That, and a load of other risks, deflate the enthusiasm.
Those who followed Sailer's prognostications on this, will have already known the outlines of today's headlines before they appeared.
That’s true. I wonder if his handlers figure they can bluff their way through another four years, dementia or not.
Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated towards the end of his term and life went on.
My theory is that big donors held back their money and demanded this early test of Biden well before August. Can Zuckbucks actually force him out is the question. It is weird how BO destroyed the Democratic bench. Something like a thousand Dem elected office holders lost their jobs in his 8 years.
Maybe his nurse will forget to plug him in at night
What I have observed is that Genocide Joe is enjoying every single little moment of being President. Striding up to Air Force 1, rubbing shoulders with world leaders, all of it. He will not relinquish the glory (undeserved) and thrill of this office. Yes, he will run again.
Biden first ran for President 36 years ago. He's not a humble and modest guy. People assume he is because he has a lot to be humble and modest about, but he isn't.
The very fact that the news-media would come out demanding a presidential candidate be replaced. What does this tell us?
The news-media is, in theory, in the business of reporting news and finding stories. A secondary part of its job, traditionally, was to editorialize on policies. They would endorse candidates for elections, candidates which had been selected by political parties, not candidates which the newspapers themselves had selected. The news-media is NOT a "fourth branch of government" that has some kind of veto power over other branches. And yet -- that does seem to be how it works, in practice.
https://rumble.com/v50qohk-victor-davis-hanson-the-obamas-are-running-the-country..html
Personally, I think Obama will be happy to have Biden continue running for president because they are going to use every election fraud tactic they can to “win” again. Then Obama can continue on with his fourth term as president.
Isn’t it possible that Biden is able to occasionally determine and insist upon a given course of action and achieve sufficient compliance that he is actually in charge of?
“Leave Afghanistan damn it…I don’t care what happens!”
“Give me an Exec. Order that forgives a bunch of student debt, god damn it, I don’t care about the f——ing. Supreme Court”
I can see his underlings scurrying out of the office and plunging ahead while muttering and shaking their heads. I can see Joe viewing this as exhibiting character and wisdom. I can see Dr. Jill whispering confirmation of his heroism: “Obama wouldn’t have had the balls to do that, Joey…”
Perfect capture of his petulance, basic vulgarity and childish failure to take the time to actually work policies out.
Yeah that's a tough one for sure. To me it'd be more likely to be someone in the intel agencies making some sort of intimidating move against Biden to get him out. They've got countless ways to undermine someone like that. Especially with all of his foreign influence connections. I definitely think more of intel agencies when it comes to deep state; what we saw with the Steele Dossier and Hunter's laptop and how they dealt with those things. I'm sure they could come up with something to push Biden out the door if he refuses to go.
I think it'd be Obama calling people together for a strategy session on removing Biden.
Sorry to sound like a broken record, but if Obama and his minions are not really running things, I'd be mighty surprised. Obama has practically told everybody he is doing it. Remember that from late 2016 on, the origin of the subversion of the Trump presidency has been led by Obama and his minions ... beyond Biden suggesting that Michael Flynn might be indicted for alleged Logan violations, I can't see Joe running things at all. In the debate, it was clear he is not woke in any way ... All his personnel appointments are basically Obama people. Why is Obama still living in D.C.? Biden is clearly vindictive (Jan. 6 people in jail, Trump lawfare) and a bastard but he doesn't have the pathological brain like Obama has. That pathology attracts people to Obama who are like him ... Why the Iran deal? Pure Obama. OK, my two cents.
This is an utterly reasonable interpretation of what we're seeing right now.
Still, I can't help wondering if people like Auron MacIntyre are correct that the role of the President itself is considerably less powerful than one would assume. Not just in terms of their agenda being undesirable by foreign entities, but specifically in terms of the power of the bureaucracy itself.
How much power do the heads of the agencies have in setting the agenda? One would assume a considerable amount, but not total. So the will of the guy in charge of all those other guys in charge had better be pretty strong to achieve anything close to his agenda.
My only other problem with peak state theory is that Biden never seemed all that interested in LGTBQ+ before. That he would now support, even with a feeble mind, the very radical positions of the woke left seems unlikely. At least to me.
A great read, Steve.
Three personal observations:
First, when Biden was running in 2020 the media asked aoc why she was supporting Biden. Her answer…he is “pliable” to their positions. Meaning they looked at him as silly putty they could stretch and mold as they wished. It is visible every time he speaks in public with the scripted cheat sheets and the statements by Biden about being told what to say. It got so bad they have essentially hidden him from the public, but they realized he had to do some debates.
Second, his inner circle (and more) launched the lawfare campaign against Trump precisely because of what we just saw during the debate. They knew he was going to stumble and mumble so they have tried to take out Trump by branding him a “convicted felon” and asking for gag orders.
Third, they timed the first debate for precisely the outcome we just witnessed. If Biden face planted they had enough time to do damage control or replace him.
Don’t be surprised if Trump is sentenced to jail time to keep him out of view. Every time Trump talks it makes Biden look even worse.
I know, I know, it’s all a conspiracy theory. They said that about the Covid origin, masks, vaccines, Russia…
AOC really used the word "pliable" to describe Biden in 2020? Wow.