Deep state

[j e l]

well...i have not started ST yet...we're having a really shitty week and
i'm not in the right frame of mind to start...but my guess is that ST is a
little more nuanced than "the rise of big cheese and anti-semitism in 30s
Wisconsin..."

afterall just about everybody dismissed or dissed VL (Bloom & DFW) when it
came out, yet VL contains (perhaps!) the single most subversive or damning
line in all of premillennial American fiction.

that being said i'm curious about the books and sources you read for the
paper you wrote. if you haven't already done so you might be interested in
the following:

Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility & Desirability of Peace
by Leonard C. Lewin (1967) - this is a work of fiction. Ultimately a
cautionary tale of "beware of what and you satirize." See *Ghosts of Iron
Mountain* below.

Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and
What It Reveals About America Today
by Phil Tinline (2025)

Operation Mindfuck
by Robert Guffey (2022) - highly recommended. Explains in part the
current milieu.
https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/operation-mindfuck/

--jel


On Thu, Oct 9, 2025 at 7:02 AM J Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>
> I definitely have a different take on the origin and meaning of the phrase
> ‘ deep state’.  What you are describing, Mike, is definitely one of the
> ways the term is being used/abused these days.  But the term has much
> greater importance to understanding the 20th  and 21st century than that.
>
> Here is my condensed rant on the deep state:
>
>  I recently read David Talbot’s The Devil’s Chessboard : Allen Dulles, the
> CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government.
> I had read other books on the CIA for a term paper and speech some years
> ago, but Talbot’s deep research into the life , statements, and deeds of
> Allen Dulles and the formation and growth of the CIA was by far the best,
> most coherent body of research I have read,  made accessible as a series of
> topical themes. Talbot talked to everyone who knew Dulles and were willing
> to talk to him, and was himself comfortable in the Ivy league, banking, and
> ultra rich  circles which were essential to understand Dulles and the CIA’s
> appropriation of power.
>  One could look at J Edgar Hoover as another earlier american trailblazer
> of using secret intelligence gathering to build an agency to rival and
> subvert constitutional government, but Dulles was even more ambitious and
> effective.  Dulles defied FDR, lied to European governments in FDR’s name,
> plotted against FDR’s policies in order to recruit Nazis he admired into
> build an american secret police dedicated to serving oligarchs who despised
> popular democracy  and the idea of human rights. With this agency Dulles
> expanded murderous International fascist coups to a kind of art form under
> Eisenhower and with little doubt for Citizens who have studied the facts,
> together with JJ Angleton and the mob spearheaded the assassination of JFK
> and RFK.  There is a they and My God they killed him; and they colluded to
> cover it up. To not recognize this coup is fatal to understanding the
> modern US.
>
> Those are just 2 state actors//agencies with large budgets, but their
> ideas, think tanks and money affect who gets promoted in the state
> department and Military, where the wars will be fought, party politics
> etc.  When a sec of state like Kissinger can conduct a secret bombing in
> Cambodia or sponsor a secretive CIA assisted coup in Chile, when CIA
> infiltrates and controls news sources across the world, when a  massive
> child rape blackmail operation involving presidents and princes  can be
> caught and tried twice and only one person goes to jail you are no longer a
> constitutional republic, but a banana republic with cellular tracking
> devices.
>
> The new thing that begins to be approached in Bleeding Edge but is much
> more developed now is the rise of the surveillance, communication, and
> financial algorithms  together with the rise of banking/ investment
> corporations by some of the wealthiest oligarchs in history. The 9-11 story
> was a heap of shit from a controlled demolition to begin the great
> Patriotic silencing and the centers of control have moved on to genocide..
> But apparently the rise of big cheese and  anti-semitism in 30s Wisconsin
> is more interesting.
>
>  Orpheus let’s go of her hand
> looks back
> watches Euridice sink
>  through the layers
>
> where the oil once  was
>  where the plastic is descending
> dispersing , filling every niche
> like molten lava
> where the digital footage
> of the rapes are kept
> where the planet's clean water is diverted
> to the bright new artificial world
> where the plagues and plague-cures
> are engineered
> where the smoke from burning forests drift
> where the oceans are mined
> where the prisons grow like
> invasive weeds
> where the other pop star sirens
> croon the digital death song
> where the people are entertained
> with imaginary salvation
> Where the fires and floods
> and walls
> terraform away the poor
> Where the billions of acres
> of lifeless soil  blow away
> in tornado winds
> wherever all of those SUV’s
> are actually going
> Where the numbers and living beings
> Are crunched and crunched again.
> Don’t worry he whispers
> Don’t worry, baby, everything is gonna be alright
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Oct 8, 2025, at 3:40 PM, Mike Weaver <mike.weaver at zen.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > While awaiting chapter 2 of Joseph's latest I must ask what is the deep
> state being referred to in the review and by Joseph.
> >
> > I was under the impression the deep state was a red flag waved by
> reactionary leaders to distract the animus from the capitalist structure
> onto a confection of bureaucrats, and  scheming statist decision makers who
> probably doesn't exist in any joined up way which could be described as
> either deep or state actors.
> >
> > Apart from that I do have to say I'm the same as Joseph, still here
> because I like to read comments from so many of the people here, but 50% of
> posts coming from one person just ain't healthy and suggests he's using the
> list as an outlet for something not satisfied elsewhere.
> >
> > Maybe it's time to take a sabbatical Mark. Come back in a year or so and
> see how the list has developed without your compulsive posting.
> >
> >
>
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>