Let's talk about the "deep state"

It's a phrase I'd never heard before, and now can't escape: the "deep state." Apparently (according to Google) it's been around since the 1990s:

a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy. "the deep state and its policy of allowing extremist ideologies to flourish may be the actual issues of concern" Origin 1990s: probably a translation of Turkish derin devlet (the term was first used with reference to Turkey).

Who knew? It has long been the position of conservatives that an ever-growing bureaucracy is a dangerous thing; this is why. Yes, yes, we are continually told that these are "career civil servants" who faithfully execute their positions come Republicans or high water. But if so, how did this happen:

As our own Michael Ledeen reported here [https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/2014/08/29/latest-big-lie-we-have-no-strategy/] at PJ Media back in 2014:

During his first presidential campaign in 2008, Mr. Obama used a secret back channel to Tehran to assure the mullahs that he was a friend of the Islamic Republic, and that they would be very happy with his policies. The secret channel was Ambassador William G. Miller, who served in Iran during the shah’s rule, as chief of staff for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and as ambassador to Ukraine. Ambassador Miller has confirmed to me his conversations with Iranian leaders during the 2008 campaign.

(I have visibly inserted the relevant link to the 2014 Ledeen article into the quotation from Patrick Poole's article for clarity. Please note that Mr. Poole did the research and I strongly encourage reading the whole thing as he wrote it.) (Seriously, please read Mr. Poole's piece - he lays out the whole mess beautifully.)

If Gen. Flynn's conversation with the Russian ambassador was worthy of prosecution under the venerable but difficult Logan Act, how is former President Obama's agent Miller's not? It's worth noting that Gen. Flynn maintains that his conversation was not about the Obama administration's late-stage sanctions against Iran; it was about the 35 Russian diplomats whom the Obama administration was expelling over Russian interference in the 2016 election. (We must certainly turn our attention to the status of the investigation of that Russian interference very soon.) Discussing the expulsion of diplomats is a far cry from the quid pro quo being implied and sometimes stated outright - generally in the form of a question, which I understand is a tool that's been used to good effect by some trying to skirt accusations of libel - by the press: "You helped Trump get elected; he will raise the sanctions on your country." Scurrilous.

And do we all remember the giant media hoopla that surrounded questions of whether the American intelligence and security community was wiretapping Americans during the W years? That was a mortal sin back in the day; now, like the dissent that was considered borderline treasonous in the Obama years and is once again the "highest form of patriotism" since there's an R behind the President's name, it's hunky-dory.

Remember the Laputians of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels? There was a class of civil servant among them called a "flapper." It was this guy's job to flap the ears of the king whenever the flapper thought the king should pay attention. In other words, the flapper controlled the agenda of the king and therefore of the kingdom. This is where we live now.