Keep this under your (tinfoil) hat…

I sure hope the tinfoil hat crowd is on to something.

My future may well depend on it. Yours too, for that matter.

For some time now the seamier sages of the conspirasphere have been issuing ever more dire warnings concerning a nefarious cabal inextricably entrenched in the murky recesses of an ancien régime. They’re a type well known in modern history. Uncle Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao branded them ‘wreckers’-- social deviants who wouldn’t get with the program, who didn’t display sufficient zeal and loyalty to the leader, who definitely would benefit from a stay in a labor camp or the sudden intercranial insertion of a quarter-ounce of lead.

The contemporary breed has shed the old moniker but retained the old habit. The frustrated paladins of the wannabe king from Queens have dubbed these intransigent officeholders “the deep state” and put a target on their backs.

We’d better hope they miss.

So who are these denizens of Foggy Bottom and the myriad intersecting warrens underlying the civil swamps? Well, truth be told, they’ve been with us for quite a long time. In fact, I first learned of them in some detail more than a half century ago in Mr. Welper’s civics class.

No, that thick, blue covered textbook didn’t call it the “deep state,” but went into what was for a semi-interested 14-year-old excruciating detail on the history, function and structure of the United States Civil Service – the folks who, year after year, president after president, show up every morning to fill out the forms, shuffle the papers, cut the checks, and do what needs to be done to keep the flag flying, the navy afloat and the United States united.

Yeah, that’s what the “deep state” is – people dedicated to doing what the government is tasked to do. Folks who draw a government paycheck and in return do their bit to ensure our ongoing right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And that paycheck – and loyalty --  isn’t dependent on the favor of whatever party or president is temporarily in power.

That, Mr. Welper pointed out all those years ago, is the critical genius of our system – but it took a dead president to make it happen.

Like most things, it wasn’t always thus. A century and a half ago, election of a new president, a new senator, congressman, governor, mayor or alderman put pretty much anyone on the government payroll in danger of sudden, politically motivated unemployment. The power to appoint friends, cronies, supporters, contributors and folks-who –had-the-dirt-on-ya was a prized prerogative of political office. To the victor went the spoils, even though the result often stunk to high heaven. It took Charles Guiteau sending a bullet into James Garfield’s belly after the newly elected president ignored his demand for a federal appointment as just reward for services rendered to the Republican campaign that folks seriously considered the wisdom of separating the day-to-day function of government from the election-to-election lurching of politics.

And so a professional, non-political civil service was initiated, a class of officeholders whose loyalty – at least in the ideal – to their duty to country, “one nation, indivisible,” not to party or person.

And all in all, it’s worked out pretty much as intended – IRS forms and the line at the motor vehicle license bureau notwithstanding. We just assume that the folks hired to do the people’s business show up for work and do what’s to be done with reasonable dedication and efficiency – without helping themselves to the public till or expecting a bit of baksheesh to process a routine document or a much fatter envelope to move along a more significant request.

These are the folks that, day after day, year after year, uphold the rule of law, defend the rights of individuals, and uphold the common good and public welfare; who “support, protect and defend” the Constitution – oft times after having read it closely enough to understand what that means – for them and for all of us.

For nearly a century and a half they’ve served us and our nation well.

So maybe, rather than loud talk of draining a swamp, we should be concerned about preserving our civic wetlands...

Our futures may well depend on them.