I got a newsletter in my inbox this morning from Substack blogger Madhava Setty responding to the announcement that Dick Cheney has endorsed Kamala Harris. Ordinarily, this would (and still might) be the kiss of death, like letting Satan kiss your newborn. What, were you that horny? Forked tongues would wag. But such is the desperation of the two-party system that the devil himself can step forward and choose the lesser of the two evils. Kamala was gracious. Setty included a quote about the nod: "The vice-president is proud to have the support of Vice-President Cheney, and deeply respects his courage to put country over party," said [Harris] campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon.
You could hear the sound of my gob smacking the pavement. Suddenly, without warning, I'm a reactionary. Note first that the quote places the current VP in lower case, while the asshat has-been VP enjoys uppercase. Why's that? What is she Black? The other thing is: courage to put country over party. What are you shivving me? How much longer do we have to put up with this thwump? He gave us Iraq. Before being placed in the VP seat at the White House he was CEO of Halliburton. Country over party? Tell you what, the party's over.
Setty observes with his headline: Dick Cheney endorses Kamala Harris: If there is a "Deep State" we now know who they want in the Oval Office. Oh, there's a Deep State alright. Get that thwap right. It may not be all these woods are lovely, dark and deep as depicted in The Blacklist, starring James Spader, who was so good in Boston Legal, carrying on about how we Americans had failed the responsibilities of our liberty since 9 Eleven opened. Some say, What Deep State? That's a thornscaricy feary. Cancel that!The President Dwight D. Eisenhower referred to it (and tried to warn us about it) in his last televised speech as president in 1960, calling it "the Military-Industrial-Complex." That is, the war machine of the Pentagon, hot since Hiroshima was Oppenheimered, and Halliburton, Silicon Valley, Google and Amazon, Big Bank, Big Pharma, Big Agro, the New York Times and WaPo. All working together in a losey goosey conspiracy of likeminded conservatives, Republican and Democrat. Just like the Framers of the Constitution wanted it before Mason came along and demanded some Amendments we call today the Bill of Rights.
It won't matter who is in the White House. If the Deep State wants to expand the war they will. Which war? Any war. A Democratic president teased Putin into Uktaine; and that same president has given tacit permission for Ukrainians to strike deep into Russian territory and risk a nuclear escalation. Obsolete NATO will continue. Oil and gas lines will be blown up to undermine competition the US can't match. The Deep State will insist on bombing other nations with crippling economc sanctions, even if hundreds of thousands of children die as a result of supply cut-offs. The Deep State will insist that insufficiently trialled and tested vaccines be distributed with impunity, under emergency provisions, for every future Tom Dick and Harry pandemic to come along. It won't matter who is president. After all, it is not really a democracy any more, if it ever was.
On September 9, George Washington University's National Security Agency Archives re-ran Seymour Hersh's NYT piece of 1974 that detailed Secretary of State Henry Kissinger's role in the planning of the coup d'etat in Chile on 9/11 1973. Kissinger famously quipped in a secret White House memo: "I Don't See Why We Have to Sit Around and Let a Country Go Communist Due to the Irresponsibility of its Own People." What's often left out of this allusion is the more important sentence that follows: "The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." So much for America spreading democracy around the world.
This attitude toward Chile and Allende was not a one-off event. It was defended and re-asserted by Duane Clarridge, the CIA's former Latin American division chief and the first director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (later directed by Cofer Black during America's 9/11 lead-up). In an awe-inspiring display of hubris and sheer arrogance, he told the late investigative journalist John Pilger that interventions worldwide would continue to happen whether anyone on the left liked it or nor. "If you don't like it," he said, "lump it." Duane Clarridge was an enforcer for the Deep State.
Dick Cheney was a quintessential Deep Stater. And he, like Clarridge, easily imagined limits on freedom and due process, and was not shy of ordering the gloves to be taken off, although torture definitely wanted to reach out and strangle democracy, including the torturer. Cheney was also punked by Sacha Baron Cohen in an episode of Who Is America? where he plays a scarred IDF officer (had a Palestinian lad thrown a stone at his face? you wonder) looking to have a waterboarding kit autographed by the 'likeminded' Dick Cheney, who gladly obliges. Why not, Dick once almost blew the face off his friend while hunting once. Don't snark, just shoot the geese, seemed to be the riposte there.
Dick Cheney was in charge of the governement's response on 9 Eleven. GW Bush, who was down in Sarasota, Florida reading a story called My Pet Scapegoat to school children, when word came of the explosions and the pancaking. Bush finished his read, then skedaddled onto Air Force One for the remainder of the day, totally out of the loop of the day's events.
For the 20th anniversary of that fateful day, ex adminsitration officials got together with moviemaers and produced the most purely evil piece of propaganda of the 21st century. It was called, 9/11: Inside the President's War Room (2021). On board Air Force One, Bush was incommunicado with responders all day because of technical glitches; the 'inner sanctum' of the administration couldn't follow TV feeds because of unknown interference, the war room at the White House was filled people inexplicably oxygen deprived and falling asleep; and, Aryan Flusher, Bush's spokesperson told tales of how someone on Air Force One might be a terrorist, with the situation requiring that a guard be stationed outside the pilot's cabin.
Unh-huh. Well, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove (who also features in the film) is the Bush administration insider who is credited for having told NYT reporter Ron Susskind that he and other Bushies now control reality (do not attempt to turn your dial) and what the rest of us do is sniff their fumes. In "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," the unknown insider tells us:
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.
The Deep State.
The Deep State likes Kamala. Or we can go with Trump, the worser of two evils. Perhaps, if elected, he'll go for being impeached a third and fourth time. Welcome to the postmodern version of de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.
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