The term "Deep State" unleashes many paranoid fantasies.  Movies and spy stories abound about the existence of dark, nefarious forces from our government aligned against us.  But as Joseph Heller once wrote, "Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't after you."  One of the more disturbing revelations after Trump's win was finding that these dark forces not only exist, but are powerful and seemingly out of control.

"Deep State" is hard to define, because it is composed of overlapping groups and individuals with complex and differing agendas.  It's an amalgam of people, agencies, and bureaucrats that changes.  The current leakers are part of it.  For now, let's say it's a mostly unelected, mostly leftist group within our government that wants to govern us against the will of America's founding principles.  These people want the final say over our Republic.  They want to rule, and they form part of a powerful alliance against the current administration and its voters.  The one thing we can be thankful for is that they are showing themselves to us in a way that should anger Americans of all political persuasions.  In the end, that's what we might hope for.

"Big Brother" was the term Orwell used for the totalitarian presence of 1984.  We are not there.  Maybe not even close.  But the problem of the Deep State is that there seem to be those who want the kind of power Orwell described, the kind of power the Soviets had, or the East Germans.  It's likely that many Deep-Staters don't even realize just how power-mad they have become.

Here is a small list with their fingerprints on it:

- The unmasking and subsequent takedown of General Michael Flynn

- The daily leaks designed to impede or embarrass the Trump administration

- The unmasking of hundreds of private citizens working with the Trump campaign as reported by Circa News

- The bogus "Trump dossier"

- The bogus Trump-Russian collusion narrative.

- The unseemly collusion between Robert Mueller and James Comey

- The seeming insanity of Mueller probing a nonexistent crime

- The exoneration of the Clinton crime family

- The IRS targeting conservative groups

And lots more.

What we are watching is a group using power willfully, wrongfully, and oftentimes illegally to undermine and destroy political opponents.  They are after somebody.  For real.  From this list, we can surmise that their opponents appear to be those of us on the center-right.  And to those of you on the left who don't know: This happened, and it's happening.  You can pretend it's not so, but it is. 

Okay, some of you are tuning out.  This can't happen here, it's tinfoil hat stuff, the left really isn't that bad, you're being overly paranoid, blah, blah, blah.  Sorry, but this is seriously bad stuff.

I recall back when the PATRIOT Act was passed, noting a comment by Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.  He said powers to surveil, and powers that could cross the lines of the bad guys' civil liberties, were well and good, but in the wrong hands, those powers could and would be misused. 

Well, he was right.  At the time, I considered his fears over the top, but I was wrong.  The history of the human race is littered with tyrants who concentrated and misused power.  The genius of the American system adopted by the founding fathers was limiting and decentralizing government in a way to protect our citizenry against this kind of tyranny.  Systems were put in place to check, balance, and limit the things that could be done by the government against its people.  The Bill of Rights is directed at that problem.  These rights were called inalienable, the natural and normal rights given to us by God, not by our government.  These were to be our birthright as a nation.  It's one of the many reasons our country has been great and can be great again.

We have had bad players in our government, we have made lots of mistakes and done wrong things as a nation, but what we are seeing played out now is simply unprecedented.  There is a quote attributed to Valerie Jarrett, Obama adviser-enforcer and all-around bad human, that goes like this:

After we win this election, it's our turn.  Payback time.  Everyone not with us is against us, and they better be ready, because we don't forget.  The ones who helped us will be rewarded; the ones who opposed us will get what they deserve.  There is going to be hell to pay.  Congress won't be a problem for us this time.  No election to worry about after this is over.

Let me say, there is no proof she said this.  But one thing that is real for sure is that much of what they did in that administration, with her help, was to institutionalize those ideas as their operating manual.  The IRS scandal targeting conservative donors and conservative organizations was a perfect example.  Read the horrifying story in Forbes of what happened to Catherine Engelbrecht if you think this didn't happen.  A terrible line had been crossed.  Had she been a liberal, we would hear her name for forty years or more.

This was just the tip of the iceberg.  The left has weaponized the bureaucracies and agencies it inhabits.  Leftists have decided they will become the dominant culture in the CIA, FBI, NSA, IRS, EPA, and the rest of our bureaucracies.  They decided it's okay to be totalitarian, it's okay to break the law, it's okay to go after their political opponents with the force of government, it's okay because they are the ones who deserve to win.  The Deep State running rampant is fine, as long as they run it.  From Valerie Jarrett to Barack Obama to James Clapper and James Comey, they all visibly overstepped their rightful boundaries.  They are proof of the saying that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Make no mistake: the prior administration went rampant.  The Deep State did not originate with them, but they stocked it with their cronies.  They stocked it with people of similar left-leaning ideas, with similar left-leaning willingness to misuse power.  The Deep State became a weapon of intimidation and a deep abuser of power.  Thank God Hillary was not there to take the baton.

So here we are, with the Deep State running amok.  They are aligned with the Obamap-Clinton machine; they are generally in sync with the Obama-Clinton goals.  None of us knows exactly how this works, who sets the agenda, or who has the capacity to give direction, but it is real.  We do know that many of the media are there to help, we do know that most of the Democratic Party apparatus is there to help, and we do know some of the players.  We also know that most of the Democrat base, and many of the party's voters, are naïvely on board, too.  We may not understand the mechanism, but we do know that the Deep State has become the vanguard of the left's civil war, and it is not fictional.

They are self-motivated with a set of goals.  Get rid of Trump if they can.  Get Trump's base to be embarrassed of him or depressed if they can.  Make certain that Trump cannot succeed.  Make certain his hands are tied in ways to make him less effective.  If nothing else, slow his progress to a snail's pace while they marshal better forces.

The stupid party (Republicans), as usual, has no clue.  Too many Republicans just think this is normal or haven't the stomach to fight.  Heck, many of them are traitorously helping to take down what their own voters and standard-bearer want to achieve.  The Democratic Party is fractured and has no idea how wrong this is (yet), and it only helps parrot the talking points of its Deep State allies.  Democrats have no idea of the backlash they are creating toward themselves.

There is no distinct winner at this point.  But the battle is joined.  It is clear that the Deep State intends to continue using all its power to stop Trump, and to prevent a return to checks and balances and limited government.

One important note: they are not winning.  The media may make it appear that they are, but they're not.  Trump, his administration and allies, and his voting base intend on continuing the fight and winning.  This is the major part of "draining the swamp."  The battle is in the balance, will last for years, and there are a lot of reasons to believe that the Deep State will lose.  One of the great unintended consequences of Trump's win:  They have been unmasked.

Push back hard enough, and they will lose. 

They deserve to.