The binary of belief/unbelief when it comes to the accounts that the military-industrial complex gives for itself is not between A and B.

Let A be anything said by this complex — the Deep State, the public face of which is the Pentagon — and B any particular theory advanced by skeptics of the Deep State.

I do not believe any particular B. And I certainly do not believe any A, not without evidence, extensive evidence. I hold to my distrust now with more conviction than ever.

When it comes to the Deep State, and what it is up to, I hold to Not-A.

I see no reason to believe what these people are saying.

Indeed, I am willing to contemplate just about any conspiracy theory, now.

The corruption of power centers appears to be almost uniform across all institutions. Recently I have come to be astounded at the readiness with which people accept or reject propositions by reason of social controls rather than by reason of . . . reason. If climate science, history, economics, sociology, astronomy and even diet science can become corrupted by the magic of “consensus,” and the social power inherent in hierarchical memeplex systems, then the American military establishment strikes me as not at all likely to be trustworthy.

Why should it? It lies secure, after all, behind very old walls of secrecy.

But members of the permanent state are not, perhaps, incompetent. Those in the Deepest corridors of the Deep State are unlikely to keep their power by their incompetence.

Though our incompetence sure helps.

Our trust. Our cultisms.

Insiders’ interests are almost certainly at variance with ours, especially to those of us who hold to old-fashioned republicanism or anything like liberty.

But I try not to get too excited by all this, in paranoid fashion; I try to maintain some dispassion. Besides, the subject does not lack for curiosity: intrigue intrigues. The agendas of Deep State actors may be hard to ken, but the duplicity of those agents is fascinating.

twv