best definition of "Deep State" and why it matters

Victor Davis Hanson, intellectual conservative in the tradition of William F. Buckley:

A liberal friend of mine called Hanson a "fucking idiot," which is, to me, a ringing endorsement of the man. If Hanson is causing that reaction among the libs, then he's doing something right. You've heard the saying: if you're catching flak, you're over the target.

A bit of background: there are various definitions of the term "deep state" or "Deep State." The most tinfoil-hatty versions make the Deep State out to be a vast, malicious swamp monster with a very specific will and a very specific agenda that always and inevitably trends leftward. More sane and sober definitions make the Deep State out to be nothing more than the mass of career government bureaucrats who, once installed, stay at their jobs over many presidential terms, thereby creating a kind of bureaucratic inertia, adding to the swampiness of the swamp. Hanson's description of the Deep State strikes me as a bit of a balance between these two visions: the Deep State is to some degree inimical to the right, but it is also the result of a mass of unelected bureaucrats simply doing their bureaucrat thing. 

However you slice it, the Deep State is vast and scary, and we are all complicit in passively letting the behemoth grow to its current size.