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'DEEP STATE (they/them) vs. the Wonder Boys'
'pirate wires #133 // trump’s first strike on the bureaucracy reveals
the face of real power, and unleashes its defenses; trump sends tech
bros into the arena, and the stakes have never been higher'

<https://www.piratewires.com/p/deep-state-they-them-vs-the-wonder-boys?f=author>

'Panic at the disco. Three weeks into Trump the Sequel’s executive order blitz, with technology industry legends standing at the president’s
side, and figures throughout the government and media likening the
newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency’s staff and budget cuts
to the rise of fascism, there are two things everyone finally seems to
agree on: the Deep State really does exist, and it really does run our
country. Now we’re mostly just divided over the question of whether
that’s a good thing, and a little shocked by what these people actually
look like (yes, I’m about to be petty).

As it turns out, there is no mysterious cabal of chain-smoking men in
the shadows, quietly pulling the strings of our country. Much as we saw
in tech throughout its era of shameful censorship, the Deep State — our actual government — consists of a decentralized network of value-aligned (center left) normie career bureaucrats numbering in the tens of
thousands, with a good sprinkling of sexless, joyless, untethered
they/them radicals (extremely, psychotically far left) who have taken
root in their ranks like parasites feeding off the carcass of FDR’s
legacy (don’t get me started). They have no leader. They absorb their marching orders from the culture, which has until now protected them.
While they’re of considerably lower skill than most of what we saw from
the radicals in tech, they’re more difficult to dislodge, and far more empowered. They were also largely invisible until they were threatened.
But now, with his new general Elon Musk, Trump is over the target, and
our nation has entered a power struggle unlike anything most of us have
ever seen.

In just the last week: One of the highest-ranking members of the
Treasury Department resigned rather than comply with Trump’s directive
to grant the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to the government’s payment system, which it requested for audit; USAID
officials, with a budget of over $40 billion a year, were put on leave
after attempting to thwart an audit; the General Services Admission
(GSA), a kind of bureaucratic layer managing property and procurement
among many other agencies, was seized and exposed for a variety of
racist and sexist hiring practices, directives euphemistically described
as “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and what appears to be an
explicit strategy of bloating the government with like-minded radical
gender goblins dedicated to the Trump Resistance (it seems they’ve
mostly all been fired); thousands of government sites and site pages
were deleted, including pretty much everything related to DEI; over two
million federal employees were offered a buyout, much as Twitter
employees were offered a buyout before the company’s mass firings;
government unions, which for some reason continue to 1) exist, and 2)
bargain with each other on behalf of the US taxpayer (the US taxpayer
always loses) urged employees not to accept the buyout; and the FBI
vowed… I mean it sounds like they are urging agents to fight against the president?

I don’t think it would be hyperbolic to describe this as a kind of war between the president and the unelected bureaucratic class. Certainly,
both sides seem to view the fight as existential. Of course, the problem
for the bureaucrats is even while under tremendous pressure, they don’t
seem to move much. And Elon never stops. “Very few in the bureaucracy actually work the weekend,” he posted on X, “so it’s like the opposing team just leaves the field for 2 days!” Then, a good number of them also aren’t very bright. Amidst the chaos, in a major scoop from Bloomberg,
we learned Pentagon employees connected their work computers to Chinese
servers to take a break and screw around with DeepSeek.

Anyway, guess which side the “democracy defenders” have taken?

“If you don’t realize that Trump is trying to take full control of our government,” said Congressman Daniel Goodman of the
democratically-elected executive’s efforts to run the executive branch
rather than the unelected bureaucrats who share the same politics as Congressman Daniel Goodman, “you aren’t paying attention.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a little more clever. “This is a five alarm fire,” she posted to X. “The people elected Donald Trump to be President — not Elon Musk.” Given she understands the institution of a permanent, unelected
class of power refusing to cede control of the country to its
duly-elected executive is a bad look for a democracy-obsessed (she
says!) “socialist” like herself, Ocasio’s only real move is pretending Trump doesn’t exist. This isn’t about democracy, she argues. This is
about a random billionaire monster who teleported into D.C. and started terrorizing all the queer bisexual librarian women in loving, straight relationships who run our country.

Naturally, the press has echoed the Deep State. “This is a hostile
takeover of the federal government by a private citizen of unlimited
means with no restrictions and no transparency,” said Kara Swisher of a
man presently working for the democratically-elected president of our
country, following his orders directly, and who at any moment can be
(and ultimately almost certainly will be, let’s be honest) fired. “It’s
a coup,” said Lindsay Owens of Groundwork (some kind of tedious, commie,
dark money think tank), which was echoed throughout the press. “…what's going on right now really is a genuine crisis,” said Jesse Singal, “and
it should be recognized as such.”

But a crisis for who? I don’t share politics with the Deep State, and am
not a huge fan of permanent, unelected, unaccountable power in general,
so maybe this is hitting me different. In any case, I’ve been wondering: where is this level of “crisis” reporting on the president’s flurry of trans orders? His dismantling of DEI? The trade war (already mostly
over, by the way) or Panama (also basically handled now, but I digress).
With the exception of Selena Gomez, I haven’t seen many tears for
deported violent criminals, something we heard a lot about back before
the election. No, panic is almost entirely focused on saving federal bureaucrats. Why?

“The deep state,” said Bill Kristol, “is far preferable to the Trump state.”

At this point, I think we have to start believing what these people say.
They don’t conceive of our president as much more than a government figurehead. Real power, they seem to believe, belongs to the unelected
state. There is probably a steelman for this. Or, there probably once
was.

The Deep State has been stable for about eight decades. This stability
was key to surviving the Cold War, and World War II before that, back
when FDR constructed the first semblance of our bureaucratic machine: it
had to be big enough to compete with foreign tyrannical mega states, it
had to be competent, and it had to survive elections. Today, it’s
possible Trump’s critics are right, and dismantling a great deal of our unelected power may be bad for the country in some way they’ve not yet verbalized. But one thing dismantling this power is not — can certainly,
by definition, not be — is anti-democratic.

With FDR long gone, and the Cold War long over, the machinery built to
defend us from foreign power rusted, degraded, and slowly rotted. With
no external threat demanding competence, weak men flourished in the
system. These men hired even weaker men, who in turn hired… whatever it
is we’re looking at today. Much as a beached whale carcass puffs up with
gas, the size of our government bloated as it atrophied. Now, the state
is mostly a jobs program for mediocre people, and at its very worst it’s
a staging ground for radicals hell bent on paralyzing the nation. I do
believe we need a federal government staffed with competent men and
women. I do believe there are competent men and women who still work in Washington. But the federal government is presently too big, and too
full of waste, and that waste looks far too much like fraud. I do not
think (most) critics are fans of the waste and fraud. But, despite their
many flaws, the bureaucrats are still basically center left. And for a
center leftist, I imagine this feels more comfortable than a center
right president elected to power.

The New York Times noted Trump’s approach to reducing the size of the government is a near mirror image of Elon’s strategy at Twitter. This is true, and it’s worth noting panic over DOGE in Washington is also near identical to the panic we saw from the tech press when Elon took Twitter private. Back then, journalists insisted the company would die.
Imminently, they said. This of course never happened, and everyone who
said it would happen of course never believed what they were saying.
Critics at the time weren’t afraid Twitter would shut down, they were
afraid Twitter would survive — but without censorship and propaganda. Likewise, center left DOGE critics aren’t worried the government will
break. They’re worried it won’t, and the center left Deep State will
lose power.

To my eye, concern for the Deep State seems reasonable. Elon is
absolutely wrecking these people. But even still, the tech right should
be more clear-eyed. Similarities between the Twitter Deep State and the
actual real ass American Deep State end at the media freaking out over
their destruction. This is a real war for power, and the stakes are far
higher than a failed company.

Over the weekend, former candidate for Congress and darling left-wing
thinkboi Will Stancil suggested Elon Musk should be executed. The
sentiment is fairly common on Bluesky, where violent implications are
banned but calls for actual violence are generally encouraged, a
philosophy well summarized by professional crazy person Akilah Hughes,
last seen defending the assassin Luigi Mangione. “Can we skip to them
facing the firing squads?” she seemed to ask of DOGE employees.

Concurrently, I’ve seen this dumb Matt Y tweet making the rounds again'

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