I've seen discussions on here about Biden winning this year because he works in the ruling class's interest.
If the CIA really did just push a button at Langley and decide the next president, why not Hilary?
She's a corporate ghoul like the rest of them, loves war, everyone expected her to win, and the election was close enough to be plausible either way. She would have been a more reliable, or at least knowable, asset to the deep state than Trump.
She would have been the same mid president as Trump, but it would have been more of a banality of evil approach. Everyone's material conditions would have gotten worse in the same way but there wouldn't have been the media circus around everything she did.
So why do you think the 'most qualified' person for the job didn't win last time? And what could that say about this year?
If the CIA really did just push a button at Langley and decide the next president, why not Hilary?
That's not how it works
I know it's not literally the case. Beep Beep Lettuce were talking that way a few years ago when they were more blackpilled and I've seen it spoken about this way on posts here.
I know the CIA don't just pick the winner, but they do want to protect their own interests and they have experience meddling with politics overseas.
Are you familiar with Manufacturing Consent? There's no need to interfere and hand pick candidates when the system self selects for candidates who are already on board with imperialism. Nobody has to give the president orders, they wouldn't be in the oval if they weren't all in.
Plus you can Dealey Plaza anybody who pisses you off.
As @nat_turner_overdrive@hexbear.net said, you don’t need to assassinate or hand pick anyone when literally all viable candidates are ideologically aligned with your interests. Yes, Trump was uncouth and revealed America’s true personality. Yes, Hillary would’ve been a more “boring” candidate. But so what? What is the world gonna do about it? They’re gonna protest? Stop doing business with us? No. They will complain and we get an ugly mark in our history. But the deep state’s interests continue to be served.
Of course, factional disagreements ensue. Some will disdain Trump for various reasons and he threatens their personal interests. I’m sure some ar working hard and hoping for a Trump conviction. But as a class, fundamentally little is changed each time a president changes. Biden said it himself.
Democratic voters are loud when they accuse Trump and the GOP of being Hitleristic taliban traitor terrorists, but why do you think nothing is done to treat them as such politically? It’s because the democratic politicians and the ruling class in general don’t believe in such charges because it was all just a non threatening performance.
Just think of this when you think of American deep politics. The congressional baseball game. The liberal voters consider the GOP terrorist traitors, but the politicians will play a friendly game of baseball each year. They do not see politics as anything more than a friendly rivalry. Yes, things get heated sometimes, that’s natural for any competition. But at the end of the day they shake hands, respect each other privately, and make a ton of money.
The CIA doesn't need a president that they can manipulate.
They aren't elected, don't need a budget (Google Air America and CIA, they sell drugs to find off the book operations), and have killed a president before.
Plus they have Senators willing to look the other way when they break the law, like destroying taped evidence of torture.
Not to mention their links to Epstein and the ability to blackmail powerful people.
Exactly - the exact affiliations/opinions of the President don't matter if you're literally allowed to do anything you want in the interest of "national security".
The CIA is less like a puppet master pulling the strings and more like a fixer behind the scenes that does a bunch of shady things, often incompetently, but has enough resources and tries enough times that it often works in their favor.
They have the most success against opponents with no strategy aor power gainst them. Like poor foreign governments under the misapprehension that the US might be friendly to them. Or spying on US citizens. Or just straight-up running terrorism campaigns like Gladio.
They can't like, make Hillary likeable.
The CIA (and Mossad and other intelligence agencies with a long history of wetwork) are not dangerous because they are puppet-masters secretly controlling everything, but because they are allowed to do whatever they want and with almost an infinite budget. I think in general people on the left tend to overestimate the intelligence community's skillset, which leads to them making the wrong conclusions. Obviously I'm not saying that these freaks aren't extremely dangerous, but they aren't omnipotent.
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Their priority in 2016 was taking down Sanders. Part of the runaway effect of taking down Sanders was Trump got platformed as the alternate "anti-establishment" candidate.
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They underestimated how much of a mess Trump would make. I think they just assumed Trump would just sit on his ass all day browsing Twitter, playing golf like Bush Sr, and taking afternoon naps like Reagan when Trump had the energy of an incompetent micromanaging boss.
If you look at US presidents post-FDR, pretty much all the presidents who toe the national security state line serve two terms while the ones who are outsiders either serve just one term or get ignobly removed from office.
Truman: Company man who did as he was told. More or less let the Dulles bros completely dictate foreign policy and for that, he was rewarded 2 terms. I think there was also some weird political maneuvering where FDR's vice president Wallace got replaced with Truman, further supporting the assessment of him being a company man.
Eisenhower: Cold War warrior who more or less 100% agreed with the Dulles bros on foreign policy. Not a company man on par with Truman, but being a WWII hero and not rocking the boat with the national security states means he also was able to serve 2 terms. I think it would've been a completely different story if he gave that military-industrial complex at the beginning of his first term than at his farewell speech right when's able to leave the White House.
Kennedy: He fired Allen Dulles and we all know what happened next. Didn't even finish his 1 term.
Johnson: Most sources paint him as an incredibly corrupt politician who committed voter fraud at key moments in his political career. And it's incredibly sus how he benefited so much from JFK's head exploding. Almost like he had a hunch feeling JFK's head would do that. LBJ would wind up serving 1.25 terms, and he probably would've served another term if it wasn't for massive demonstrations and the Tet Offensive tanking US's morale in Vietnam.
Nixon: Tricky Dick was an outsider of the political establishment, and so he was treated like an outsider. He served 2 terms, but his second term ended abruptly with Watergate, so he didn't make it halfway through his second term. Some JFK-pilled people say that Watergate was itself a coup fashioned by the national security state to off Nixon because he was too rebellious.
Ford: A lame duck president who served a term without ever being elected, basically a Kamala Harris if Biden dropped dead in 2021. Finished Nixon's second term.
Carter: Another self-styled maverick who came from outside from the political establishment. Served one term.
Reagan: A company man who, after a floundering career as some mediocre actor, began being a shameless sycophantic spokeman for corporate America before moving on to being a shameless sycophantic politician acting on behalf of corporate America. Rewarded with 2 terms.
Bush Sr: The CIA director who doesn't remember where he was when JFK got owned becomes president. Honestly, the fact that he only served 1 term is very surprising, but the 1992 election is pretty weird in general.
Clinton: While he didn't come from a political dynasty, he quickly integrated himself within it and was rewarded with 2 terms. I suppose you could argue that the national security state sees value in an ostentatiously left-leaning president further enacting neoliberal policies. Clintonites have been great damage to American progressivism, to say nothing of socialism in general.
Bush Jr: Poppy's incompetent failson served 2 terms in what would be the more mask-off moments of the national security state picking who they want to be president. The 2000 election was a sham election. Like Dubya's brother Jeb! basically handed the electoral vote and election to his brother and the Supreme Court went, "Stop the count, this country has to move on" right when a bunch of ballots that were like 80% Gore was found. And I know Parenti has eluded to the 2004 election also being subject to voter fraud in Dubya's favor.
Obama: Obama's mom was almost certainly a CIA asset, and his fathers, both his biological and step-, have extremely sus backgrounds as well. He played his part in US domestic COIN extremely well, and we still are living within his COIN shadow. Rewarded with 2 terms.
Trump: A maverick who disagreed with the blob mostly for petty self-aggrandizing reasons. Served 1 term and hit with multiple impeachments.
Biden: He seems to just be another company man who does as he's told. His senility is a liability, but it's not like Trump isn't also a genocidal senile geezer, so it's not as much of a liability as it would be.
The only real counter to my hypothesis is Bush Sr.'s single term presidency. For almost every other presidency, people who toe the national security state line serve 2 full terms while people who don't don't get to serve 2 full terms. LBJ not serving 2 full terms is probably the only real instance when American popular opinion actually forced their hand, and I don't see people rioting in the streets for a Trump presidency. If anything, there will probably be celebrations among certain crowds that Trump ate shit.
Wasn't the source of the leaks the Deputy Director of the FBI or something?
Yes, he was.
You don't have to be JFK-pilled to see Watergate and its consequence as Nixon being an outsider:
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They say Watergate happened because Nixon was paranoid. The question is: who was Nixon paranoid of? On a basic level, I don't think Nixon would be paranoid if he was part of the inner circle of national security ghouls.
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If Nixon was an insider and wanted Watergate to happen anyways for some stupid reason, he would've just gotten the FBI to break in for him instead of getting his personal staff to do so. And if the FBI got caught, all they would have to do is investigate themselves and find themselves of no wrongdoing.
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The media would've been told by various means and through various channels to stfu about the break-in, and it wouldn't have been the media spectacle it was.
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Deepthroat wouldn't have been a thing because like you said, he was deputy director of the FBI. In this alternative timeline, Felt would've probably blamed the break-in on the Soviets or something.
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Bush Sr: The CIA director who doesn't remember where he was when JFK got owned becomes president. Honestly, the fact that he only served 1 term is very surprising, but the 1992 election is pretty weird in general.
I'd say 3rd term as he was dementia
Reagan's VP.
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Because the CIA are incompetent doofus. Look at their history of fuckups, they are not as competent and powerful as popular fiction made it to be. But they were surely trying to tilt the field against Trump with Russiagate and other nonsensical news pieces about how Trump would end Democracy and NATO via their outlet NYT, WaPo and such with attributions like "sources close to intelligence agency says..." It's just all their usual tactics failed because there was legitimate distrust in MSM news, they haven't figured out how to reign in social media yet, and Hillarylol
The "deep state" doesn't literally just decide the next president. I think the point is that there is an entire apparatus of intelligence and media all designed to manufacture consent for bourgeois interests. However this is never as sure fire a thing as the way we talk about it. But it is the most likely outcome.
Another thing you could say is that the deep state did decide the president in 2016, just not in the way they would've liked. The Clinton campaign "pied piper" strategy of elevating Trump.
The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party.
--memo from Clinton campaign to DNC
In fact they wanted Clinton to run against Trump, since they were scared mostly of Jeb Bush and Rubio. They were also more focused on defeating Bernie who also posed a huge threat to the Clinton campaign.
So contrary to the popular narrative of Trump being the unexpected force that just could not be stopped, he was deliberately put in place as Hillary's opponent by elevating him in the media and focusing most of their energy on Bernie and other GOP candidates who they considered bigger threats in a general election with Hillary. Then Trump got the nomination and everything fell apart since they had spent less time on figuring out Hillary's strategy against Trump, they fundamentally did not understand Trump's rise, Trump was also part of the ruling class and not some schmuck outsider, and Trump could rest on a lot of benefits that the Hillary campaign had given him in elevating him as a serious candidate in the media and everything.
Instead of Trump representing an exceptional case, we can see the deep state consent manufacturing apparatus at work in his rise and election also. But these things aren't the sort of well-oiled machines we often speak of them as, and mistakes can be and are made, and ultimately the whole Trump thing very badly backfired on them.
my take, at least
Edit: “tipping the scales” or “putting a thumb on the scales,” as I saw it put in another comment, is a good way to put it. This is the purpose of the consent manufacturing apparatus, but they can’t literally pick the new president.
Trump and any of his supporters weren't seen as being against the interests of the ruling class. You wouldn't see such an intervention unless the opponent was believed to seriously endanger the fabric of class society in the United States, any of its allies or countries with a neutral relationship with the US.
Someone like Corbyn, for example, for supporting a fairly internationalist foreign policy instead of one that would benefit the west's position in politics and business, even though the commitment to socialism is mild at best. Meanwhile Trump was seen as someone willing to use the United States' power to improve its own position at the cost of its allies. It had its opponents, but had the goal to strengthen the status quo in the United States. Biden did the exact same thing, but that was Europe's thing to find out.
However, if countries of Europe were to look toward a different partner in capitalism, or try to become a big imperialist player (too late now, probably) - barring the gates of open trade to US companies, the American Bourgeoise would become openly hostile to Biden or whoever was in power.
After all, the role of the state under capitalism - no matter if authoritarian, no elections, military on the street, etc. or through the ballot box, is to ensure that capital is happy (or be deposed under capital's influence). That is not just one state's objective. It's all's. Be it trying to join forces into something like the EU or do it independently, there is competition and there is conflict over who is the top dog.
She already did. Well at least from a certain briber point of view.
Trump's #1 briber in 2016 was Clinton's #3. Renaissance Technologies, a Aritifical Intelligence trading algorithm company headed by former cold war profiteers connected to Jeffery Epstein, was most certainly involved in the Pied Piper Strategy which was also to purposefully prop up Trump. MSNBC and late night shows can't seem to STFU about Trump. It's called Earned Media, and it's happening again.
They also gave millions to John Bolton
on Super Pac and ordered Trump to hire Bolton.They also seeded the
troll army aka Shareblue / Correct The Record as well as the infamous Cambridge Analytica. 
machine.I wrote a diddy up about it a few years ago on
archive linkTrump ended up knocking down all the barriers and laying out the carpet to what we are all seeing play out in Ukraine and Israel now. The investor class got pissed off becausse he'd go right up to the line, do some assassinations, but wouldn't cross it and fired John Bolton.
Biden on the other hand seems to have no issue with
tripping over the line.Elections in the USA are decentralized and difficult to control but only a few midwestern swing counties really matter anyway so conceivably you would only need to use a relatively small number of agents to tilt the election your way (and you would only need to change a few votes). But I think in this case the CIA was high on its own supply and also did not believe that Trump could win. They already control the corporate media and the federal government, and they can always just have someone assassinate Trump if he becomes an actual problem (which he never did), so I think they chose mostly to just stick to talking to the elderly bourgeoisie via CNN and MSNBC. Trump could have also responded by ordering a MAGA mob to sack Langley, which would have made 1/6 look boring by comparison.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201101090855/https://berniewouldhavelost.com/
insert Destruction of Reason quote about how America doesn't even need Hitler
Since when was either Trump or Hilary any better in government for the ruling class? Lesson 101 on American democracy is that they're both pro-ruling class, so it doesn't really matter. Neither was going to seriously affect the status quo for the bourgeoisie.
Hillary was absolutely better for ruling class interests. Trump eroded us hegemony around the globe
You talk like the ruling class form a complete, intelligent conspiracy to increase American hegemony, rather than a bunch of short term self-obsessed line-go-upists with a shared interest in line-go-up.
Trump made the line go up for lots of the ruling class, and that's all they cared about.
I don't believe you can really say this when there has been a concerted effort on the part of the ruling class to remove Trump from office and ensure he never gets anywhere near the levers of power again literally from day 1 of his administration, and continuing to the present.
Well yeah, sure. Because Trump also made line not go up quite so much for some other parts of the ruling class. I'm not saying they both benefit all of the ruling class equally. But they are both very transparently bolstering the bourgeois class in general.
Because they have to keep the distracting circus and the illusion of democracy alive. Dems had two terms under Obama, they can't win too much, they needed to keep the illusion that there was a democracy going on.
Also, the anti-Trump shit keeps people distracted and gives the Dems an excuse for the shitty things capitalism does under both parties. Just like when Bush was president and everyone hated him, then Obama came along and blamed the bad economy on him while doing all the same bad shit Bush did. Now when leftists complain about shit under Biden people have Trump to point to "Well he fucked the supreme court etc, so it's not dem's fault things suck."
It's good cop, bad cop shit.
Why are we assuming that the CIA was upset that a fascist sympathizer won? I'm sure a lot of them hate Trump's cultural signifies, but on a fundamental level they had nothing to fear with a Trump presidency other than working (indirectly) for an overbearing asshole
