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?

  • rootsbreadandmakka [he/him]
    ·
    5 months ago

    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.