A guest on the Dave Hodges show illustrated the point the article made about the distinction between political appointees and the bureaucracies they supposedly run.
The guest was a personal friend of Trump's new Secretary of the Interior. That friend was very excited about his new job and even before he started, he made all sorts of notes about the incredible things he thought he could accomplish.
When he got to DC, he called a meeting with about a dozen of the top staffers at Interior. He was telling them about all the great ideas he had, all the projects he wanted to implement, when after about 10 or 15 minutes he noticed that no one had taken a single note. He wound up the meeting shortly thereafter.
That told him all he needed to know about this aspect of the Deep State.
I remember once reading that Dick Cheney, at times, would personally call low to mid level staffers at executive branch agencies to ask why X or Y wasn't done. The media at the time played out up as some sort of malign thing. Shocked the boss's boss's boss would do that. I think it was about oil drilling permits too.
Trying to find an article on it, but so much dreck out there.
I've never heard that but I find it very interesting, because it brings up the texture of understanding events in the real 3D world. The vast majority of people are just at the level of "good guys" and "bad guys" and their analysis reflects that.
You can put that Cheney factoid together with the story we all know of his buddy Rumsfeld being the guy that brought up the missing $2.3 trillion. He looks sincere to me and I don't think that disclosure was part of some grander plan.
People just want to think of those two as a couple of evil Darths (and don't get get me wrong because I think they're very bad people) but these incidents highlight that they had their own problems with the Deep State.
So I conclude that even these high-level players over many decades are just "hired hands", and that no matter how twisted it is, they probably think they're "patriotic" and "doing the right thing". I suspect they even believe a lot of their own lies.
And this would be the way that the more powerful at the next level up manipulate them.
Having worked in the federal government for a time, I would say what you're saying here is fundamentally correct, and only add that there are endless ways to slow-walk any long term project.
A guest on the Dave Hodges show illustrated the point the article made about the distinction between political appointees and the bureaucracies they supposedly run.
The guest was a personal friend of Trump's new Secretary of the Interior. That friend was very excited about his new job and even before he started, he made all sorts of notes about the incredible things he thought he could accomplish.
When he got to DC, he called a meeting with about a dozen of the top staffers at Interior. He was telling them about all the great ideas he had, all the projects he wanted to implement, when after about 10 or 15 minutes he noticed that no one had taken a single note. He wound up the meeting shortly thereafter.
That told him all he needed to know about this aspect of the Deep State.
I remember once reading that Dick Cheney, at times, would personally call low to mid level staffers at executive branch agencies to ask why X or Y wasn't done. The media at the time played out up as some sort of malign thing. Shocked the boss's boss's boss would do that. I think it was about oil drilling permits too.
Trying to find an article on it, but so much dreck out there.
I've never heard that but I find it very interesting, because it brings up the texture of understanding events in the real 3D world. The vast majority of people are just at the level of "good guys" and "bad guys" and their analysis reflects that.
You can put that Cheney factoid together with the story we all know of his buddy Rumsfeld being the guy that brought up the missing $2.3 trillion. He looks sincere to me and I don't think that disclosure was part of some grander plan.
People just want to think of those two as a couple of evil Darths (and don't get get me wrong because I think they're very bad people) but these incidents highlight that they had their own problems with the Deep State.
So I conclude that even these high-level players over many decades are just "hired hands", and that no matter how twisted it is, they probably think they're "patriotic" and "doing the right thing". I suspect they even believe a lot of their own lies.
And this would be the way that the more powerful at the next level up manipulate them.
Having worked in the federal government for a time, I would say what you're saying here is fundamentally correct, and only add that there are endless ways to slow-walk any long term project.