Encode - For lack of a better expression, it seems you’re smelling blood, are on a trail - and in order to not block this scent of blood let me just ‘ramble on’ a bit rather than to frame the thing in transparent frameworks.
the question of the deep state to me reflects much of the question of power as that which challenges consciousness - power in a sense being the antithesis of consciousness in that it must be tamed to some degree to enter consciousness - it must be made to serve some known or understood value.
The deep state does not serve such a value, it is in part the ‘blind frenzy of drives’ that some philosophers posit as the state ‘before creation’ ; the splitting headache of god so to speak, from which many possible future’s are trying to be born, but the sheer volume of futures that seek to manifest through the machinations of the deep state prevents any of them from fully taking shape. This goes for wonderful scenarios and nuclear holocausts. Whatever does in the end take shape is a massive balancing act in which many different motives are being included - from the most malicious to the most fertile. The irreducible absurdity of the political reality that is visible to us is a result of the excess of power that we refuse to acknowledge; I said earlier that it is like ‘all great things must first wear monstrous masks’- in the sense that deep state represents a power that human culture is not ready to claim as a consciousness - and that is not ready to be claimed by such a restrictive thing as consciousness.
It is a game, almost like a dream. Intra-deep state communications can often take an opaque form almost like divination. And in turn, to ‘hook’ the deep state to a purpose, it is necessary to ‘romance’ it for a period - because the complexity of that machine of technocratic powers and restraints is so much deeper than the complexity of most known human concerns, it is not possible to directly address it - one almost needs to create (or divine) a proper language to address the deep state in such a way as to get the desired results from it - or rather, to cause it to attach, as a power, to ones plans. Yes, the deep state must always serve job security of its members, but this means that very intricate games must be played, where all kinds of necessities are conjured up out of nothing and real concerns are shrouded and made more complex than they are - real concerns must turn more complex to engage the deep state simply because the deep state is unable to operate straightforwardly - it “doesn’t see straight” in that sense, observers comment earlier was astute - there is no direct link between deep state and the People - in fact there is a deep hatred in the people of that depth of power that technocracy represents and thus a refusal to think about the deep state or acknowledge it - all this goes well with the metaphor of the subconscious.
In any case just like the subconscious is basically the body in as far as the ego isn’t conscious of it, so the deep state is the operational body of the state, the technocracy, in as far as the ‘commander in chief’ and ‘house of representatives’ and ‘governors’ are unaware of its functioning. As mentioned before the clandestine services are there in part to bridge that gap from the bottom up; in this metaphor they would be the dreams that convey messages to the people in power, distorted, fragmented images of the unfathomably complex issues at the depth of the permanent global power struggle of human clans against each other in the rising tide of technocratic advances, which must be turned into assets even rather than be understood -
As straightforward as the concept of deep state as technocratic functionaries is, the mechanisms by which it influences the known world are extremely manifold and bizarre. Precisely because functionaries are anonymous types of humans who, in their lack of ideology other than the love of capacity in its various technical forms, have no criteria by which to measure the worth of what they’re doing in terms of the world it impacts, deep state can only judge itself in terms of its success in being ahead in the game it plays against its counterparts. In a sense, deep state is an advanced application of the scientific method; constantly testing its functions sheerly in terms of consistent functionality.
‘Above ground’ (in nominal consciousness of power, i.e. politics and ideology), we have postmodernism - the world in which words are king and steward and which refuses to be broken down beyond convention - as you astutely observe, humanity is largely a kind of ‘common law’ - a world in which ‘all is text’ - it doesn’t matter what someone does, as long as he says the right things - a conjurer-magicians world really for a very childish audience, for an audience that doesn’t wish to look into the blind fury of drives that refuses to be caught in neat terms and tested social formulae - a world of ‘reason’ based on blunt logical instruments vs a world of madness based on very sharp such instruments.
Indeed the Chinese have long mastered this idea of acting subconsciously under the auspices of consciousness, an acceptance which eliminates a good deal of the madness - it is understood that reality (the body, the functioning) is addressed indirectly through suggestion, rather than directly through terms. The deep state does not work with any known world on terms – it works through provocations, evocation and invocation…
Where it surfaces, it comes from the chasm between human identity and human power. Despair is a large part of its resource - it is an answer to despair and therefore reflects the nature of despair uncannily. The current tapestry of policies it has unrolled, crystallizing part of its power, is like ice flowers on the surface of the abyss… even where it unrolls plans fabricated by wealthy clans, it does so primarily to designate its own power, and bends these plans to this purpose; it will not simply ‘obey’ - it has no conception of the sort of respect that would command obedience to anything but functionality.
And so the deep nerd remains unscrutinized. The abstraction of the nerd is compulsive abstraction, pre-reasonable abstraction, visceral will to power. Schopenhauer’s fever like existentialism rather than the Nietzschean teleology of taste.