DRAINING THE SWAMP: Michael Anton reviews John Marini’s Unmasking The Administrative State. Excerpt:

The bureaucrats who operate the machinery of the administrative state are, for the most part, merely crew. The pilots are those whom some (though not Marini) have taken to calling the “deep state.” But a simpler name for them is Angelo Codevilla’s “ruling class”: the people who revolve in and out of senior government, and lucrative private sector, positions; run the hedge funds, big banks and other corporations; set the tone and agenda for all society; and tell the administrative state what to do, either directly or indirectly. One might say that the deep state and the administrative state are a kind of coalition or partnership, though the former is most definitely the senior partner.

The bureaucrats, their bosses, and their cultural cheerleaders are prone to delusional thinking in order to mask, even to themselves, the essential self-interestedness of their rule.

Yes, that delusional thinking is a key aspect of a lot of our current politics.