How Deep Is the Deep State?

How deep is the deep state?  That’s a question I have thought and written about a lot.  I had something to say about it recently at The Spectator on the occasion of Abigail Spanberger’s recent election as governor of Virginia. It saddens me to report that every time I think I have taken the measure of the Leviathan that is the deep state, new precincts and vistas open up beyond the boundaries I had delineated.

Sometimes I think the deep state is like an onion. Peel back one layer, and another layer presents itself.

Sometimes I think it is like a basement with an endless procession of sub-basements. Excavate one, and you encounter another below it.  It is like that bit of Hindu cosmology that envisions the world resting on the back of a turtle, which rests on the back of a larger turtle, which rests on the back of a still larger turtle.  Asked what that larger turtle stands upon, the answer is that it is “turtles all the way down.”

That said, I suspect that the difficulty in surveying the deep state is not its depth but its extent.  That is, I suspect that its roots are shallow while its area is both indefinitely large and protean.

The deep state also seems to resemble the Lernaean Hydra of Greek mythology.  Hercules was sent to dispatch this multi-headed monster in the second of his twelve labors. Not only did the beast have poisonous breath, but its blood was so toxic that even its scent was fatal. Furthermore, the hydra had this alarming characteristic: if you cut off one of its heads, two grew back in its place. Hercules overcame this problem by having the stump of each head cauterized as soon as he had cut it off.