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Yes I know the "deep state" is just a phrase that means different things to different people. But Trump is completely out of control and undermining the very fabric of American society and world politics. Siding with Russia, undermining long time relationships with close allies, threatening invading Canada and other countries, calling himself a King. His next step seems to be dismantling the military industrial complex (drastically cutting military spending, reducing American power worldwide).

Isn't there supposed to be some people who are sort of secretly in charge and prevent a single traitorous idiot from destroying the world order, whatever that is? "The Invisible Government"?. Don't most of us sort of believe that JFK was removed by internal actors for much less?

What is really going on here? Is a large amount of the US government completely captured by Russia? Or is it exactly what it seems to be - nobody expected a handful of rich corrupt idiots to just take over and the handful of people who could stop it are just letting it happen. I mean, I can see how it was a serious of unfortunate events, mostly caused by the corruption in the Republican party which allowed a seditionist to get away with trying to overthrow the government and Biden's DOJ just sleeping for about 3 years. But along the way you'd think there would be better checks against all of this.

This question was inspired by a question from a US immigrant citizen who came from a country that had been under Soviet political hegemony. They said that in their experience authoritarianism and corruption were kept camoflauged for fear of political backlash, but our new US government is shameless.

I'll put my tentative answer in the comments. I'm very interested to hear your thoughts if you care to share.