How Deep Is the Deep State? › American Greatness
Roger Kimball
How deep is the deep state? That’s a question I have thought and written about a lot. I had something to say about it recently at The Spectator on the occasion of Abigail Spanberger’s recent election as governor of Virginia. It saddens me to report that every time I think I have taken the measure of the Leviathan that is the deep state, new precincts and vistas open up beyond the boundaries I had delineated.
Sometimes I think the deep state is like an onion. Peel back one layer, and another layer presents itself.
Sometimes I think it is like a basement with an endless procession of sub-basements. Excavate one, and you encounter another below it. It is like that bit of Hindu cosmology that envisions the world resting on the back of a turtle, which rests on the back of a larger turtle, which rests on the back of a still larger turtle. Asked what that larger turtle stands upon, the answer is that it is “turtles all the way down.”
That said, I suspect that the difficulty in surveying the deep state is not its depth but its extent. That is, I suspect that its roots are shallow while its area is both indefinitely large and protean.
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https://amgreatness.com/2026/02/15/how-deep-is-the-deep-state/
