I hate the fact that I end up defending an asshole like Donald Trump in my efforts to illuminate the machinations of the deep state, but it’s crucial to understand that the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago is the continuation of Russia-gate.

Indeed, whatever your views on Trump, it is undeniable that the permanent military-intelligence bureaucracy in Washington does not see him as one of their own, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to target him when it sees fit. The FBI investigated Trump as a suspected Russian conspirator and asset, not just once, but twice. First as a presidential candidate, and then months after he took office. To undertake this, they relied on the Hillary Clinton-funded Steele dossier’s conspiracy theories as source material. They repeatedly lied to a FISA court and, despite the full knowledge that they had come up empty, prolonged their investigation with media leaks and court filings that falsely suggested that Trump had initiated a Russian collusion.

The hostility continued throughout Trump’s presidency resulting in two impeachments by the Democrat-controlled House. For the entire four years, there was an atmosphere of crisis surrounding Trump’s presidency, and this has continued with the January 6 Committee hearings. And now the desperate attack on Trump with the Mar-a-Lago raid to make sure he can not run again. Even more suspicious is that all of the actors from the FBI counterintelligence division that carried out Russia-gate were present when agents broke into the estate and ransacked the rooms looking for documents Trump possessed that demonstrated the coup against him.

To recap: The FBI lied on FISA warrants to spy on Donald Trump in 2016, they fabricated the Russia hoax, they worked with Facebook (and probably Twitter) to censor a damaging true story about his opponent in 2020 while they had the laptop the whole time, and they raided his home in 2022.

What drives the deep state and their corporate media lackeys wild is that Trump was somewhat beyond their control. Indeed, Trump owes his success to popular mistrust of the national security state that’s embroiled the country in endless wars and the corporate media that cheers them on. In the past, whenever the media attacked a politician, that politician was never heard from again. But Trump, like a horror movie zombie, just keeps lurching across the political landscape, and even worse, the more the corporate media attacks him the more the MAGA crowd supports him.

Those nostalgists who yearn to reconstitute the good old days when corporate media could dictate reality and force people to believe it are becoming ever more hysterical in their censorship and propaganda campaigns. They are now openly deeming conspiracy theorists “enemies of the state.” Black Americans who oppose the war in Ukraine are getting their doors kicked in by the FBI. CIA whistleblowers who provide proof of Agency crimes to Wikileaks face up to 80 years in prison. Assange awaits death-by-extradition, while Snowden claims asylum in Moscow.

Meanwhile liberals are cheering on the odious Espionage Act because it’s being used against their bête noire–Trump. Ironically, by pursuing him under this provision, the Justice Department just did Trump the mother of all favors, adding his name to a list of some of the most famous political martyrs in our history. “Ellsberg, Hale, Winner, Snowden, Assange, and now Trump. It’s mind-blowing.

With the release of the Trump Mar-a-Lago affidavit pundits are proclaiming the search was validated by the contents of documents found but why would the Justice Department pick an Epstein-complicit Trump-hating judge to sign off on the search warrant? The choice of going to federal magistrate Bruce Reinhart for the Mar-a-Lago warrant sure looks crude and desperate. Only weeks ago, he was presiding over the Trump v Clinton lawsuit. How did that even happen, given Mr. Reinhart’s role defending Jeffrey Epstein’s associates — many of them Clinton-connected — in the 2007 sex-trafficking case? And only after the spectacularly weird act of switching sides from the federal prosecution team to Epstein’s defense team. Not to mention Mr. Reinhart’s record of public statements denouncing Mr. Trump. There are twenty-five other magistrates who rotate their duties in the Southern District of Florida, why pick him?

Inquiring minds want some answers and not the usual handwaving about Trump’s dangerous fascist tendencies.

The raid on Mar-a-Lago should be viewed as part of a larger pattern. Namely the collapse of US hegemony. This is why nearly all foreign policy types in Washington, the heads of international institutions and thinktanks are going apoplectic right now. Their order is collapsing, and their decisions and actions appear to be done in desperation. Unfortunately, there is no sign that these policy makers are willing to change course. They are living examples of Einstein’s definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” 

They seem wholly unable to extricate themselves from a mindset that, in terms of foreign policy, has already run its course. If they don’t change their policies, then the American people will change their politicians.

The charge against Trump is that he represents a crude sort of American fascism but what is the national security state that uses right-wing death squads, al Qaeda terrorists and Neo-Nazi’s as surrogates except fascist? What’s become apparent is that there are two types of fascism in present day America: The right-wing, populist type epitomized by Trump, who has taken full advantage of the 40 odd year decline in living standards for the majority of Americans. And the fascism represented by the national security state–deep state–cheered on by liberals because of its antipathy towards the Donald.

We are caught between the Scylla and Charybdis of all-American fascism. Chose your monster–right-wing populism, Trump style. Or the national security state, cheered on by liberals.

Everyone is a winner.

Meanwhile, the left in America is dead. They didn’t just sabotage and destroy the left, they burnt it to the ground then burnt the blueprints for how to rebuild it. The deep state’s propaganda campaign against the left has been so successful that people don’t even know where “the left” is anymore. Most have it confused with identity politics like having pink hair and saying your pronouns, or outright right-wing like the Democratic Party.

Historically, when the left fails to articulate an answer to working-class suffering, there is a corresponding rise in right-wing populism. To the extent that there is anything left involved with the Democratic Party or the class-blind identitarianism it wholeheartedly embraces, the visible left’s contemporary answer to working class suffering is to say that the white workers just need to “check our privilege” and get on with the belt-tightening.

I’m not sure that’s a winning political issue to run on.

Update: The deep state must not possess incriminating pictures of Trump on Epstein’s pedophile island or else would they go to all the trouble?

Update II: Like minds think alike. Lambert at Naked Capitalism has come to the same conclusions I have. “Speculating freely, let me put an alternative thesis: Trump kept documents — some of them, at least — that implicated the operatives of RussiaGate 1.0. First, it would enable Trump to take revenge on the “Deep State” factions who attempted to destroy his first presidency. Second, it provides a natural issue to campaign on if and when he runs for his second.”