The Republican Deep State: Whites, the Wealthy, the National Security Complex

Joseph O’Neill came from the UK to take up residence in the US in 1998.  Coming from another country at a time when political partisanship was really revving up, he could provide an interesting and valuable perspective on our state of affairs.  He makes that attempt in an article for the New York Review of Books titled Real Americans.  It is a wide-ranging article, but here the focus will be on his initial hypothesis that there might be a “deep state” supporting the Republican Party.  That notion arose from observations about how the two political parties comported themselves during the attempt to resolve the Bush-Gore election battle.

“What struck me, in the chaos that followed, was that the Republican Party enjoyed a mystifying presumption of legitimacy. Bush had prematurely positioned himself as the president-elect, and the media had largely deferred to him in this. It made no sense. Gore had won the popular vote by more than half a million; there were strong reasons to believe that the Democratic tally in Florida had been erroneously reduced by a faulty ballot design; black Floridians had experienced outrageous voting problems; and, astonishingly, the Republicans were actually trying to prevent an accurate count of the vote.”

“Why the curious timidity of Democrats in Florida and the unaccountable self-righteousness of their aggressive Republican counterparts? Were my eyes and ears fooling me, or was everybody somewhat scared of the Republicans? The penny finally dropped when the Republican majority in the Supreme Court incoherently decided, in Bush v. Gore, to halt the vote-counting while their candidate still held a lead. Oh, I thought to myself. It’s a deep-state thing.”

Let’s leave the timidity of the Democrats for another time and pursue this notion of a Republican deep state.  O’Neill does not refer to a deep state as a collection of elites who are in a position to take control should the momentum of the state drift in an unacceptable direction.  Rather, he views our deep state as a concept, or viewpoint that was formed before the United States of America was founded.

“The United States has secretive agencies that do legally dubious things, but it doesn’t have a deep state in the Turkish sense. It may be said to have a deep state in another sense, however: America. America preceded, and brought into being, the republic we now live in—the United States of America. Almost everyone still talks about America, not about the United States; about Americans, not USAers. America, in short, was not extinguished by the United States. It persists as a buried, residual homeland—the patria that would be exposed if the USA were to dissolve. Primordial America (at least in the popular imagination) was where folks prayed hard, worked hard on the land, and had rightful recourse to violence. In this imaginary place, people were white, Christian, English-speaking. They had God-given dominion over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. All of this inevitably informs the way American nationals apprehend one another and their country. They feel in their bones that some people are Americans and other people are merely citizens of the United States.”

We seem to accept this notion that whites are more American than others with the labels we use.  If you are black, you are an African American; if you are Asian, you are an Asian American; if you are of Indian heritage, you are a Native American.  Every time we use these labels, we are implicitly sending the message that only whites are “true” or “pure” Americans.”  This declaration was made explicit when immigration legislation in 1924 was designed to limit immigrants who were not white.

“In 1924 the United States officially preferred immigrants of “Nordic” ethnicity and drastically reduced its intake of Jewish and Southern European immigrants. Asian or African immigration was largely out of the question. This regime more or less persisted until the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act.”

Ronald Reagan and others made a conscious decision to try to capture the white vote by promoting the notion that whites were “more American” than others.  This embrace of whiteness involved welcoming racists, white nationalists, and Ku Klux Klan types into the fold.  This collection of deplorables have been faithful Republican voters ever since.

However insightful O’Neill’s observation might be, there are more participants in the Republican deep state.  The traditional alliance of the wealthy with the Republican Party has been maintained, if not strengthened.  Once the party of fiscal probity, the Republicans have demonstrated there is no length they will not go to in order to lower taxes on the rich.  That service is repaid with generous campaign contributions, and financial support for the myriad think tanks, universities, and advocacy groups that spew out conservative propaganda and promote conservative policies.

There is a third component to this deep state that is so powerful that both political parties have proved unable to counter it: the national security complex.  The long cold war generated a version of a military industrial complex that far exceeded what Eisenhower had warned us about.  We acquired the need and the ability to project military power anywhere in the world, to gather intelligence anywhere in the world, and to provide surveillance of our own population in order to counter any domestic threats to our agenda.  When the cold war ended and our one true enemy dissolved, we could have declared victory and reigned in our resources and used the fiscal savings for domestic needs.  But there was no gain for the national security complex in peace. 

A new mission and new enemies had to be found.  The agenda became the spread of representative democracy throughout the world, the expansion of free-market capitalism, and the enforcement of a rules-based approach to foreign affairs.  To execute this agenda would require that the United States maintain overwhelming military superiority.  With our broad trade interests and network of allies, new enemies would be easy to find.  Any state that became a threat to an ally could be deemed our enemy; any nation that threatened our economic power could become an enemy; any state that insisted on following its own political path could become a target for military or economic harassment; and any nation that refused to be cowed by our military might would be a threat, if not an outright enemy.

It would be the Republican Party that would be the most fervent supporter of this national security agenda.  Those who gained financially or in personal status from its related activities took note that life was better for them when Republicans were in power.  Supportive politicians were repaid for their efforts.

David Hendrickson reports on these issues in his book Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition.

“The dimensions of the national security state, the nerve center of the American Empire, are not easy to describe.  The core of the network is the armed forces of the United States, but it embraces as well its police and regulatory agencies.  Included within it are its impressive array of foreign bases, its panoply of external sanctions, its global military commands, its vast spying and surveillance apparatus…Stretching beyond the military et al. complex are the prison-industrial complex, the homeland security complex, the multifaceted array of U.S. institutions dedicated to the proposition that coercive powers to destroy or incapacitate are indispensable remedies for the maladies of the human condition.  They all reflect a movement in American maxims from liberty to force.”

The military force tasked with carrying out this national agenda has changed over the years, becoming less a nonpartisan agency to one which has acquired its own agenda.  Centers of power have also shifted throughout the body politic.

“The U.S. military that arose after the end of conscription in 1973 is markedly different in outlook and sensibility from the military that arose out of World War II.  The new military is much more conscious of its distinctness from society than the old, while remaining decidedly invested in the liturgy of threat inflation.  Its members are much more theological; once largely Episcopalian, they became increasingly evangelical.  The political loyalties of the officer corps overwhelmingly skew toward the Republican Party, whereas previously they were thoroughly nonpartisan.”

“Civilian elites have also changed.  The general move of political power from North and East to South and West is one indication of that; another is the rise of foreign lobbies.  The Israel, Cuban, Taiwanese, and Eastern European lobbies work together on Capital Hill and in attempts to influence the executive branch.  They have pushed an expansionist agenda and have deployed profound influence over foreign policy, often playing a key role in elections.  These efforts are complimented by the arms lobby and by the thick growth of think tanks that depend on their largess.  Reinforcing all these interests is the profound dependence felt in nearly every state and congressional district on the concrete benefits conferred by military spending.  A politically potent multiplier effect really goes to work there.”

People mistakenly associate conservatism with a resistance to change.  In fact, political conservatives are quite willing to accept change as long as that change increases their power.  For a politically conservative party like the Republicans, possessing power is the first priority; policy can follow later as needed to maintain power.  It is this belief that any practice or policy that helps Republicans get elected is acceptable that defines the party.  Its firm base consisting of whites, the wealthy, and the national security complex, provides it with a good shot at winning elections.  However, its support from those directions creates the divisions that plague our society: anti-minority biases, economic inequality, and lack of funding for social needs.

And there is danger in the direction the Republican Party is moving.  Its base consists of special interests rewarded by Republican loyalty, a profoundly undemocratic tendency.  And the serving of the national security complex is facilitated by a chief executive free to do as he/she wishes.  Consider this statement made by Donald Trump.

“I can tell you I have the support of the police, the support of the military, the support of the Bikers for Trump – I have the tough people, but they don’t play it tough — until they go to a certain point, and then it would be very bad, very bad.”

If that isn’t a threat, I don’t know what is.