In recent months the phrase “conspiracy theory” seems to have taken on a whole new meaning. At one time the phrase was reserved for only the craziest of crazy far-out and unprovable theories. For example, there was Lyndon LaRouche’s theory that Queen Elizabeth was secretly running the international drug trade. Or how about the theory that Freemasons conspired to bring about the sinking of the Titanic? Now those were truly worthy of the label of “conspiracy theories”!

Obviously, those kind of crazy theories could only be promoted by people who were severely mentally deficient. And that implication is likely how we have come to the new usage of the phrase “conspiracy theory.” In the new usage, the phrase is simply a label you apply to the someone’s position when you want to convey that you think that person advocating that position is mentally deficient. The great thing about tossing out the “conspiracy theory” phrase is that it relieves you of having to go to the trouble of refuting the position itself.

And thus we now have voices in the media using the phrase “conspiracy theory” to refer to President Trump’s assertions that people in the permanent bureaucracy are working to undermine his administration and remove him from office. From the Daily Beast, October 8, headline “The Deep State Conspiracy Is About to Go Into Overdrive”:

Trump is now reactivating and trafficking a theory that started after his election, but that was left to fringe elements on the right and largely ignored. This is the belief that Trump’s opponents, most coming from the camp of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters, and their holdovers still sitting in major government positions in various agencies, are using their positions to slowly undertake a coup d’état, meant to remove from power the legally elected president and destroy his administration.

Or consider this piece from the Independent on September 30, with the headline “The Deep State conspiracy theory is making us all play defense”. Excerpt:

The “Deep State" is a supposed cabal of powerful, unelected bureaucrats secretly pursuing their own agenda, as opposed to that of the president and his administration. In the case of Trump, it's a bunch of career operatives in the State Department and the intelligence community, hell-bent on making sure Trump's agenda gets foiled at every turn.

So it’s now a “conspiracy theory” that “career operatives” and “holdovers” in the bureaucracy are trying to “make sure that Trump’s agenda gets foiled at every turn”? Funny, but I could cite dozens of examples of the media and Democrats excitedly cheering on government career operatives and holdovers trying to thwart Trump’s agenda, and doing it completely out in the open and without any kind of attempted secrecy. If you say the obvious that this is occurring, does that make you a “conspiracy theorist”?

Let me give you just a couple of quick examples out of what are undoubtedly thousands. First, right at the start of Trump’s presidency, we had Obama-holdover Acting Attorney General Sally Yates issuing a memo to all Justice Department employees instructing them not to defend in court Trump’s newly-issued “travel ban” executive order. I covered that in this post on February 1, 2017. The DNC promptly sprang to Yates’s defense, calling her a “brave patriot” who “dares to speak truth to power.”

Next, over at the EPA, there is an ongoing guerrilla war between the Trump administration and the permanent bureaucracy over appropriate environmental policies. Here is a piece from Salon from October 2018, titled “As Trump slashes environmental regulations, the EPA union forms the crux of an internal resistance.” The piece contains an interview with the head of the government employee union branch at EPA, in which he openly brags about various efforts of the permanent staff to undermine and hinder the administration’s environmental agenda. Hey, it’s to “save the planet”!

The recent impeachment brouhaha is no less of an open and notorious initiative by elements of the permanent bureaucracy to undermine and remove the President. While some in the Democrat media may call that a “conspiracy theory,” others are openly bragging about it and cheering the conspirators as heroes. In fact, sometimes the same writer does both. Here is Thomas Friedman in his column in the New York Times on October 15, headline “It’s Not Trump vs. the Dems. It’s Trump vs. the Country’s True Defenders.” And who might be those “true defenders”? Yes, they are people in the permanent bureaucracy assiduously working to get rid of the President:

[T]his impeachment process was not set in motion by the Democratic Party. It was set in motion by civil servants — whistle-blowers from the intelligence community, now supported by National Security Council staffers and diplomats. These public servants also took an oath to serve the country and protect the Constitution, and they have shown remarkable courage . . . . [A]t its core, [this is] a fight between these noncorrupt, apolitical civil servants — whose norms and institutions make America’s government so envied and respected around the world — and Giuliani and Trump and their pals, who care only about serving themselves and their conspiracy theories.

So there you have Friedman, within the span of three not-overly-long sentences, both accusing Trump and Giuliani of “only caring about themselves and their conspiracy theories,” and also cheering on the “public servants” have have clearly “set in motion” the impeachment process. But isn’t Trump’s main “conspiracy theory” the whole idea that the permanent bureaucracy is working to undermine and remove the President? Believe me, Friedman doesn’t perceive any irony here. By calling this a “conspiracy theory,” Friedman was not denying the existence of a co-ordinated effort of the bureaucracy to undermine and remove the President. He was only saying that the President is mentally deficient. Conspiracy or not, this permanent bureaucracy consists of “non corrupt, apolitical civil servants.” Obviously, anything they do is morally correct. Sure.

How about respecting the results of duly conducted elections? I’m sorry, but that only applies if the right candidate has won.