Posted on 01/11/2021 11:28:39 PM PST by A Conservative Future
To the QAnon community, and others involved in storming the Capitol:
The Deep State is real, but it’s not what you think. The Deep State you worry about is mostly made up; a fiction, a lie, a product of active imaginations, grifter manipulations, and the internet. I’m telling you this now because storming the Capitol building has drawn the attention of the real Deep State — the national security bureaucracy — and it’s important you understand what that means.
You attacked America. Maybe you think it was justified — as a response to a stolen election, or a cabal of child-trafficking pedophiles, or whatever — but it was still a violent attack on the United States. No matter how you describe it, that’s how the real Deep State is going to treat it.
The impact of that will make everything else feel like a LARP.
The Real Deep State
I’ve been teaching college students about the Deep State for years, and have interacted with it on occasion. By “Deep State,” I’m referring to executive branch agencies populated with unelected officials, especially those involving national security, law enforcement, and intelligence. The non-nefarious name for it is “the federal bureaucracy,” with the subset that includes the military, CIA, and FBI known as “the national security state.”
In 2017, conservative writer David Frum quipped that if you replaced “Deep State” with “rule of law,” you’d have a better understanding of Trumpist complaints.
There’s some truth in that. Federal agencies and their mandates were created by law, their annual budgets are determined by law, and they’re overseen by elected officials. Their main job is executing U.S. law, and one reason they’ve clashed with the White House is being asked to do things outside their legal abilities, or to not do things that are legally required.
So rule of law is part of it, but it’s not that simple. The president appoints and the Senate confirms top officials, from the Secretary of State to the five members of the Arctic Research Commission, over 1,200 in total. Every other executive branch employee — over 4 million if you include the military, over 2.7 million if you don’t — is hired or recruited, not elected or appointed. This means that the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, the intelligence community, and federal law enforcement are staffed with people the agencies hired themselves.
Their mandates are broad. For example, the FBI is supposed to “investigate federal crimes and threats to national security.” While there are laws giving the FBI certain powers (e.g. to arrest people) and limits (needing warrants), a lot is open to interpretation, especially regarding national security threats.
It’s fair to say the FBI, CIA, IRS, CDC, and other federal agencies have, to some extent, taken on lives of their own. So has the military, and the larger defense-industrial complex. They’re under control of elected and appointed leaders, but also not, acting according to established laws, established regulations (many of which they wrote themselves), and individual judgment calls. You could call that “the Deep State.”
National Security
If you want to understand the real Deep State, the biggest thing you need to know is it’s institutional, impersonal, and operates on a national scale.
The law enforcement-intelligence-national security bureaucracy doesn’t really care about a lot of the little things people think it cares about. It’s mostly focused on terrorists, serial killers, narco-traffickers, and foreign governments. Threats to the nation.
Previous QAnon activity wasn’t on that scale, but the Capitol attack is. I don’t think this has sunk in yet. It wasn’t 9/11, but it was bigger than, for example, Benghazi.
Americans storming the Capitol to prevent Congress from carrying out election law hasn’t happened before. When four Puerto Rican nationalists shot at Congressmen from the House balcony in 1954, they were rightly called terrorists, convicted in federal court, and imprisoned. And that was just four attackers, no one died, and it wasn’t encouraged by a losing presidential candidate to disrupt the peaceful transition of power.
The Capitol attack was a unique event in American history, something they’ll teach about in high school. National security analysts are comparing it to last year’s FBI-thwarted plot to kidnap and execute Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, which came a few months after armed demonstrators forcefully stopped business at the Michigan statehouse. There have been armed post-election demonstrations at multiple statehouses, and reports of plots to storm them next week.
It’s a pattern. And after the Capitol attack, the Deep State is going to take it seriously.
U.S. code defines “sedition” as using “force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.” That’s what you did. And the legal process you tried to stop is one of the most important in American democracy.
Five people are dead, and it could’ve easily been more. You beat a police officer to death and injured others. You set up a gallows and chanted “hang Mike Pence.” While some goofy attention-seekers attracted the most focus at first, it’s increasingly clear that some who stormed the Capitol, likely members of far right militias, were searching for Vice President Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and other national leaders, and would’ve killed them if they had the chance. That’s terrorism, fortunately thwarted by Capitol security and luck.
Compare that to, for example, riots this past summer. Looting is bad, but it’s a problem for police and insurance companies. Trying to burn down a police station or courthouse is worse, but that too is a law enforcement problem, perhaps one requiring federal assistance. Storming the Capitol, forcefully hindering the execution of U.S. law, and trying to kill top elected officials is a national security problem.
What you did was on another level, and the reaction will be too.
After the Capitol Attack
By “you,” I don’t mean you personally (unless you were there), but your movement as a whole. QAnon’s fingerprints are all over this.
A 35-year-old woman named Ashli Babbitt, shot by Capitol police as she climbed through an opening near where elected officials were hiding, was a QAnon believer who thought she was taking part in the prophesized “storm.” The guy in the horns who traipsed through the Senate chamber is known as the “Q Shaman.” QAnon slogans and hashtags, such as “where we go one we go all,” can be seen on shirts and signs at the riot, and on tons of related social media posts.
This means that, for the first time, the Deep State cares about you.
No matter what anyone’s told you, Deep State operatives weren’t spending their time messing with your internet discussions. That’s below their radar. It wasn’t until May 2019 that an FBI intelligence bulletin warned of the potential for terrorism from “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” using QAnon and Pizzagate as examples. But it didn’t become a law enforcement or counterterrorism priority.
I should know — I’ve been trying to get them to take QAnon more seriously. This past August, after Trump publicly acknowledged the movement, I warned of the potential for election violence in a national security publication called Defense One:
Win, lose, or too close to call, Trump will be in a position to activate the violent subsets of QAnon, deliberately or inadvertently. The president has been insisting, without evidence, that the election will be rigged, blaming an ambiguous “they” or a rotating cast of villains. The conspiracy-minded QAnon community makes for a receptive audience.
If Trump starts tweeting things like “RIGGED! They’re trying to take your country. Don’t let them! THIS IS IT! Second Amendment!” — let alone if he uses QAnon lingo like “the Storm is upon us” — there’s a risk that some violence-embracing QAnon followers decide to act. And if some do, it could encourage others.
That’s basically what happened. If anything, I think I guessed low.
But now that QAnon was involved in violent sedition, the national security state is paying attention. Arrests of people caught on camera storming the Capitol have already begun. Prosecutions will follow. Big tech companies — who, while powerful, are weaker than, and have a healthy fear of the government — are now treating QAnon almost like how they treat ISIS. A giant federal apparatus built to fight al Qaeda will shift some capacity to fighting you, especially the white nationalist and anti-government militias in your orbit.
You cheered on lawyers who said they’d release the Kraken. But now you’ve poked Leviathan.
This is what you need to absorb: QAnon and “stop the steal” are forever associated with a violent attack against the United States. Maybe that’s not what it’s meant to you, maybe you think that’s a misread of last week’s events, but that’s how the real Deep State, a lot of elected officials, and much of the public sees it. If that isn’t what you signed up for, now would be a good time to get out.
The person who posted this follows the tried and true methods of trolls, post and no reply.
I believe many are heading to their State Capitols. There’s some sort of chatter of protests at all 50 State Capitols before the inauguration.
In fact there’s a thread on FR telling people to STAY AWAY from these events as they are set-ups. Traps.
Go ahead. Keep pissing us off.
Those congress people have declared themselves and our Capitol building sacrosanct, while we the citizens, our buildings, our homes, our businesses, and our lives, and finally our votes, hardly weigh into their balances, if we weigh at all.
They became afraid. They who are always so highly protected, with the use of our tax dollars. This is to them the highest of crimes.
Can you imagine the fear of all the many, many citizens who have been accosted in multitudes of ways, and even killed, by their leftist paid for and organized mobs, for months on end last year, and who they still threaten us with?
Their lives, their doings, their work place are no more sacred than any single American citizen’s are.
No, they aren’t some kind of holy priesthood, more higher and important than all the rest of us. They are not some kind of royalty. They may think they are, but they and their situation is not one tiny drop more important than the lowliest of American citizens, whom they have been utterly derelict in their duty towards.
Arealmen
.....”They are set-ups. Traps”.....
I have no problem believing that’s quite possible. This is not the time to show up in major cities for protests of any kind.
As “Q”, I know that the troops at the inauguration will be armed with rifles but no ammunition. This is the perfect time to have everyone involved with the steal in one place. Trump is not attending, but his forces will surround the inauguration andlock everyone in in one single event. Massive arrests and military tribunals to follow.
Congress spends more than $700 billion annually on national defense, and the U.S. Capitol gets sacked in five minutes by the equivalent of a fraternity prank? LOL.
And so this is how this silly farce of what used to be a great nation ends ... U.S. Navy ships that can't even avoid crashing into other large vessels, a cheating scandal at West Point that goes unpunished, and Viking Horn Guy proudly grinning for photos while standing at the Senate President's throne dressed in his face paint and Chewbacca outfit.
In public these dopes act like the protestors were the D.C. chapter of ISIS.
Then you find out that these depraved insurrectionists are being charged with — get this — “entering or remaining in federal property without authorization.”
Oh, the humanity.
Most definitely authentic Qtards. They were sporting
official Qtard merch, available only to verified Qtards
in good standing with paid-up Q-dues. Yep. It's true.
ButtmunkeyZ sent me a coded secret message about it.
Yep. Future proves past and WIGG1WAGGi.
I think there’s some truth to what you wrote. I don’t completely agree, but I do see your point. I usually like to learn about those that post something that makes me think deeply about an issue. Usually, I read some of their former posts & comments. I looked at yours as well. No offense intended- just a genuine question. Are you honestly a conservative? Looking through everything, nearly everything you write seems adversarial towards conservatives. You explain limited government fairly efficiently when discussed in broad context- but seem to take swings at fellow conservatives quite frequently. You seem to mock social conservatives, Trump voters, voter fraud, conservative protests & seem to feel very little disagreement- let alone contempt- for the one-sidedness of both big tech & the media. I realize there’s a major rift amongst conservatives between the historic mainstream philosophical conservatives & the Trump-loyalist populists, another between the far right & moderate conservative wings, and another still between those that are loyal conservative Republicans & Independent swing voters. Your posts & comments read more like a guy who’s left-of-center- but has decided to join a conservative site, use a conservative name, claim a conservative philosophy, yet somehow manage to spend all of his time knocking conservatives instead of liberals. If I’m wrong- my apologies! If I’m right- why do people do that? I’m sure it happens on both sides to some degree. It seems like the people who do it do so from a place of utter contempt for those with a differing philosophy. Instinctively, i’ve never desired joining a progressive site so I could troll my political adversaries 😉
Frankly it’s become more than a little confusing with so many, and frequent, opinions on pretty much everything in dispute today....and we’re suppose to agree with their supposed qualifications and experience to speak on the matters. The other confusion is determining if companies are just protecting their companies ‘rather than’ the immediate response and label they are either leftists or right-wingers, Democrat or Republican. What I do know is it’s difficult sorting out all the propaganda, and everyone is volling to fill any gaps they see as opportunity to build their brand, businesses or web site etc.etc.
Too much dust in the air!
Interesting questions and post.
This entire screed is a dishonest pile of merde.
This was a psyop DESIGNED to link Q with anarchy.
The FACT is it was Antifa/BLM, and they were ESCORTED in by the DC police.
It’s that simple.
Whoops, I just checked your inception date - your a troll.
My bad. Don’t feed the trolls. July 2020.
I agree. There is a lot of dust in the air.
Now, is not the time for rash choices or decisions. Now, is the time to sit back and observe reactions.
Contrary to the article posted, the Deep State has been worried about the Q movement. How short our memory is when we laughed at the Deep State’s concerns. We didn’t believe it ourselves that they were/are a threat according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Even now many are clinging to the idea that there will be mass arrests on inauguration day. Their bubble is going to be burst. Nothing, nothing has happened to any of these bad government actors in 4 years and nothing will happen on 1/20/2021 either.
I know I’ll get flamed for this post, but I will say we’ll just wait and see. And if nothing happens, but the inauguration of an old man it will be time to put down the Q crackpipe and move forward into our brave new digital world.
It’s a
“Liability Thing”,,,
.
Guess that’s Okay then.
/$
If I read the article correctly, the author seems to suggest that the rigging of the election didn’t happen, and that Pres. Trump didn’t foresee it. That alone makes me suspect the entire article.
How does the author explain the hundreds of thousands (or millions) of votes switching from Trump to BiteOne? How does he explain the mountain of video, documentary, and testimonial evidence of fraud? Pres. Trump said the election was rigged because IT WAS.
Author also seems to disregard that Antifa infiltrated the mass of people at the Capitol. Trump supporters didn’t start jack schitt. Violence came from Antifa. Antifa may not answer to the military-industrial complex, but they sure as hell answer to the Satan and his minions.
And how is it that the author fails to mention the certification of electors itself was an invalid process? The valid concerns of multiple states were not addressed, and certainly not given a fair hearing. Pence could have at least kicked the matter of the electors back to the disputed states, but he did not. Then there’s that elbow-bump with Pelosi and the coin(s) put into his hand at the end. Is that not Deep State-ish?
Whatever Q is or is not, author appears to be trying to paint him / it AND ALL OF US with the same broad brush.
Freely admitting that I could be mistaken. If so, it’s an honest mistake. If I have fears about this situation, it’s that instead of the Kraken, it’s Cthulhu that’s been awakened.
Synopsis of this article: the deep state opposes freedom of conscience.
But we already knew that.
By the way, Grossman. You need to learn how to be more concise in your writing.
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