from "There is no Deep State" to "The Deep State is awesome!"

There are several definitions of what counts as the "Deep State," ranging from rational to tin-foil-hat lunatic. A tin-foil-hat definition would be that the Deep State is a vast network spanning government bureaucracy, the media, and business, all working in concert to enact a sinister leftist agenda. A more rational definition is that the Deep State refers to career bureaucrats entrenched in government positions—people whose careers span the length of several presidents, and whose agendas are not unified in any definite way, but who, together, represent a kind of ponderous inertia that bogs the country down. I find this second definition much more plausible than the first, but here's Styx, commenting on some recent rhetoric about the Deep State: