Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.
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“The Left-Wing Origins of ‘Deep State’ Theory”
traces the conceptual history of the “deep state” for Compact: “The entire deep-state literature—which included output by academic historians, journalists, documentarians, and political theorists in the United States and abroad—was for most of its existence almost exclusively a province of the radical left. With the political rise of Donald Trump, that began to change. It was only in the election year of 2016 that the conceptual apparatus of deep-state studies started circulating among conservatives. In September 2016, former GOP congressional staffer Mike Lofgren published The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Lofgren, Steve Bannon, and others on the right most likely picked up the deep-state framework from Alex Jones, who—though he is now anathema to the left (and cozy with Donald Trump)—was once a left-adjacent, anti-imperialist, anti-war, populist libertarian back in his days on Austin public-access TV.”Parenti continues: “In light of various efforts to keep Trump out of office and oust him from the White House, MAGA stalwarts found themselves reaching for the idea of the deep state because it offered a way to make sense of the connections between the Clinton campaign, former British spies, the FBI, and the mainstream media. Later, the Covid pandemic reinforced the need to think about loose unofficial networks of power and states of emergency. Across the United States, Covid led to governor-declared ‘states of emergency’ that brought lockdowns, vaccine passports, and mass firings of public workers. Meanwhile federal officials led efforts to stifle discussion of the virus’s origins and censor open debate about links between intelligence agencies, the scientific establishment, NGOs, and the political class. All of this spurred a pandemic-focused subgenre of deep-state theorizing.”
He concludes: “The deep state depends on secrecy, which is why it compulsively promulgates it. A new transparency based on the massive declassification of security state documents is essential to creating a national discussion that can help excise the deep-state cancer. Trump and key agency heads like [Tuli] Gabbard, [Robert] Kennedy, and [Kash] Patel must take the lead in exposing previously hidden history. But it will be incumbent on all who wish to see democracy thrive to pitch in and help make sense of what we learn. A robust national debate is also essential if we are to prevent the deep state’s relaunch from within the ‘reformed’ remnants of old agencies. In short, this surgery cannot be left to the experts: It requires the disinfecting sunlight of declassification and public discussion. If the vaults of files are not disgorged, then it will be clear that Trumpian efforts against the deep state are nothing but limited insider-vs-insider score settling. Popular pressure must be exerted now to help us avoid that fate.”
“The US is Now the Enemy of the West”
This piece is more significant for its title, where it was published, and who wrote it than anything else. It was written in the pages of The Financial Times by senior economic commentator Martin Wolf. The title states not only that the United States is separate from “the West” but is, in fact, the “enemy” of the West. Wolf admits that the liberal global order promised after the fall of the Soviet Union did not materialize and that its adherents have failed to stave off “autocracies,” which are “increasingly confident [and the] US is moving to their side.”
For Wolf, the Trump administration’s position on Ukraine indicates that the West is “dead”: “The negotiations have been conducted between the US and Russia over the heads of the Europeans, even though the latter have been ordered to make any deal secure, and, outrageously, of Ukraine itself, whose people have borne the brunt of Vladimir Putin’s three years of aggression. Yet now, insists the US, Russia was not the aggressor. On the contrary, Ukraine started the war. To underline the split from Europe, the US voted for a resolution in the UN Security Council alongside Russia and China, while France, the UK and other Europeans abstained. The ‘west’ is dead.”
“Columbia University’s Secret Disciplinary Process for Students Critical of Israel”
reports on the chilling attacks on free speech at Columbia University for : “Columbia’s campaign to suppress campus activism uses provisions from the Civil Rights Act—which the school interprets expansively to characterize criticism of Israel as ‘discriminatory harassment.’ The operation is run out of a recently created office of the university called the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE), which the school has created to oversee, ‘the review and arbitration of all reports of discrimination and discriminatory harassment at Columbia.’ That office is empowered to investigate students and faculty using an opaque administrative process that can punish those found guilty of discrimination with disciplinary notifications, suspensions, loss of housing, expulsions, and even the revocation of diplomas for graduates.”One student summoned by the OIE states: “‘The posters said things like “Condemn Israel,” and “Israel is a Terrorist State,” which I am now being told by Columbia constitutes discriminatory harassment under Civil Rights Law. If one of them had said “Kill Zionists” or something like that I would understand, but they were nothing like this,’ said the student who requested anonymity to discuss their case, which is still under investigation. ‘I interpret this as an institutional attempt to silence me with a policy that directly contradicts First Amendment rights, and to instill fear about this subject to make sure people don’t speak about Gaza or Palestine. In my meeting I made the point that it seems that I am free to criticize the U.S. government at Columbia, but not Israel, and they had no answer for this.’”
The report continues: “The use of the OIE comes at a time when the Trump administration is escalating threats against schools where large protests have been led by students since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza. On Tuesday, Trump posted on Truth Social that, ‘All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested’….In recent weeks, Columbia has announced the expulsion of a number of students for participating in protests at the school. The expulsions come amid announcements by the Department of Justice’s new task force on antisemitism that it plans to visit Columbia and several other universities that were sites of anti-Israel protest over the past year. That effort has also been supported by private sector actors that have made surveillance and targeting of students over their speech on the subject a priority.”
“Elon Musk’s Risqué Grok AI Chatbot Offers Challenge to Risk-averse Rivals”
The Financial Times reports that “Elon Musk’s xAI is pushing its artificial intelligence model towards giving users more risqué answers than its risk-averse competitors, in an effort to attract users with adult content…Over the weekend, xAI launched the ability to converse over voice with the chatbot, including preset personalities such as ‘romantic,’ ‘sexy’ and ‘unhinged’—the latter two labelled as ‘18+.’ By contrast, OpenAI’s voice mode, which was released last year, offers a range of different voices and personalities without specific adult-centred experiences.”
The report continues with some startling statistics: “Sexual or romantic encounters are becoming an increasingly common use case for generative AI chatbots, throwing up legal and ethical issues. Research from the University of Sydney business school found that half of respondents used AI for friendship, a third for sex or romance and nearly 20 per cent for counselling. ‘AI companions offer a powerful business advantage by fostering deep emotional connections that drive high user engagement, loyalty and repeat visits,’ said Raffaele Ciriello, a lecturer in business information systems at the University of Sydney. ‘This emotional bond boosts customer retention while enabling companies to collect sensitive personal data on user preferences.’ He added that AI companions could be ‘highly addictive’ and lead to unhealthy dependence, calling for ‘cautious implementation and robust regulation, especially as AI chatbots like Grok 3 increasingly cater to human companionship and intimacy.’”
“Late Stage Communism”
On the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of India (CPI),
offers a fascinating photo essay about the legacy of communist politics and culture in Mumbai and Kerala, India: “Founded in Kanpur on 26 December 1925, the CPI took time to find support across the country, but Mumbai soon became one of its most significant centres, particularly in the fight for labour rights. With its dense network of textile mills and working-class neighbourhoods, Girgaon was at the heart of this movement…Look around, and you’ll see traces of this legacy still embedded in the city’s landscape. Many of Mumbai’s roads, streets, and squares bear the names of communist and labour movement leaders—N.M. Joshi, whose name marks a main road. Urdu poet Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who gave the world the slogan Inquilab Zindabad, co-founded the Communist Party of India. He is commemorated on a street in Nagpada opposite Sarvi Restaurant. The first Communist Party meeting was organised from his home in Kanpur.”
“The Dance of Trust”
explains why he is not a cynic at . He writes that it is “a trust in the body and the general goodness of the world that’s become quite disfavored in capitalism. Capitalism requires us always to feel like we don’t have enough so that we’ll instead work and buy more. Capitalist states require our bodily insecurity and a fear of the other so that we’ll support increases of state power and restrictions on our freedoms. To trust, then, is an act of rebellion against all this. To trust your body and its capacities is to rebel against an entire order of meaning which tells us we’re machines trapped inside unfortunate flesh constantly at risk of disease, injury, and death. To trust in the goodness of the world is to revolt against an entire order of meaning that wants us to fear others so we’ll never collaborate with them against our self-appointed masters.”He continues: “[T]he kind of trust in the body and the goodness of others of which I’m speaking are essentially the same kind of trust. One flows into and out of the other in a relentless dance, just as we flow into and out of each other. Sometimes that dance looks violent, just as intense sexual passion between two people can look like an aggressive battle between naked bodies. Other times that dance looks gentle and slow, just as, again, intense sexual passion can look artful, measured, and full of care. To be caught up in the dance of trust is to know the dance will change, and change, and change again. And it is also to know that only our full engagement with the world allows us to join that dance. To be cynical is to decide to sit life out, to withdraw from its beautiful struggles through our foolish certainty we’ve already learned all there is to know about ourselves and others. To be cynical is to arrive at the place you’d intended to go, but, finding it not as you’d demanded, abandon the journey before it’s even really begun.”
What grounded your thinking this week? Share in the comments.
Thank you for sharing my photo essay! 🙏🏽