I have the “deep state” blues. Reading the speech President Obama gave in Estonia it’s clear that the neoconservatives, who were such a feature of the the Bush Administration, are still calling the shots. It appears that it doesn’t matter who we elect, Republicans or Democrats, we get the neoconservative “deep state.”

Former congressional staffer Mike Lofgren is the latest insider to alert us to this political reality. Lofgren alleges that a deep state rules no matter the party in power. His essay, taken from his book, The Party is Over, is a powerful indictment on the way our government really operates. Because of the seriousness of Lofgren’s charges, I’m going to include this really long quote.

“Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose.

The Deep State does not consist of the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Justice Department. We also include the Department of the Treasury because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of international sanctions, and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary belong to the Deep State, like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress. Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan, where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.

Washington is the most important node of the Deep State that has taken over America, but it is not the only one. Invisible threads of money and ambition connect the town to other nodes. One is Wall Street, which supplies the cash that keeps the political machine quiescent and operating as a diversionary marionette theater.

It is not too much to say that Wall Street may be the ultimate owner of the Deep State and its strategies, if for no other reason than that it has the money to reward government operatives with a second career that is lucrative beyond the dreams of avarice — certainly beyond the dreams of a government salaryman.

The Deep State is the big story of our time; it is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction.”

This story of our time is not being discussed. If you happen to mention this idea to friends of family prepare to be labeled a conspiracy theorist or worse. Going forward, I won’t be surprised if the US, like the former Soviet Union, starts locking people up in mental wards for discussing these sorts of topics.

I better get myself fitted for my very own custom straight jacket.