“The Deep State Was Always There. You Just Skipped Class.”

From J. Edgar Hoover to Trump’s TikTok Tantrums — A Wake-Up Call for the Conveniently Confused

---

Imagine waking up in your 50s and realizing the world is rigged—only to blame the school system, immigrants, and millennials, while forgetting you were high during civics class.

Welcome to America’s latest self-inflicted identity crisis: where boomers and Gen Xers binge conspiracy podcasts with the same gusto they once saved for Nirvana and Marlboros—now convinced they’ve been lied to all along.

And spoiler? They have.

But not by the people they think.

 The Deep State Isn’t New. You’re Just Late.

The term “deep state” didn’t emerge with Trump.

It wasn’t born on Reddit. And it definitely didn’t originate on Truth Social with someone named “PatriotMama87.”

It started long before MAGA hats and rage influencers.

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, the U.S. government built its shadow infrastructure with pride and purpose.

• J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI spied on civil rights leaders, blackmailed elected officials, and ran COINTELPRO like a Cold War gossip blog.

• The CIA? Overthrew governments, launched psy-ops, and used actual journalists to plant propaganda (Operation Mockingbird, anyone?).

• NSA? It’s been listening since before your cordless phone got a second line.

The intelligence apparatus wasn’t hidden. It was marketed—in Bond films, Cold War media, and military recruitment ads.

*“While you sleep, we save the world,” they whispered. But they never said how.”

What Were You Doing During All This?

Fast-forward to the 1980s and ‘90s.

While the surveillance state expanded under every president—Reagan, Bush, Clinton—you were too busy microwaving Hot Pockets and quoting Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

Civics class?

You didn’t care.

Or you dropped it.

Or you chose the easy credit so you could coast into summer early.

And now? Now you’re mad. Because the jobs were offshored, the rents skyrocketed, the government feels distant, and somehow... you’re just finding out about the rigged system.

It’s not new.

You just finally got bored enough to care.

Then Came Trump — The Reality-TV Deep State Messiah

Trump didn’t invent the deep state. He just gave it an Instagram filter and an enemy list--that conveniently disappeared, or never was.

Instead of informing people how the intelligence community has always operated in the shadows, he weaponized ignorance.

He reframed the deep state as a personal vendetta:

“They’re out to get me.”

He cast himself as the underdog hero, even as he sat in the most powerful chair on Earth. He flipped the spy thriller upside down: no longer “We save the world while you sleep,” but

“They tried to stop me while I saved you.”

And the people—desperate for purpose, power, and simplicity—ate it up.

Welcome to the Age of Headline Literacy

Now we’ve got folks thinking they’re informed because they follow five angry YouTubers and read one X thread that said “WAKE UP” in all caps.

They’re screaming about “indoctrination in schools,

”But they never even paid attention.

They shout,

“Why didn’t anyone teach us this?”

And the answer is: We did.

You just didn’t listen.

This isn’t a thriller where the hero uncovers a dark conspiracy.

It’s a cautionary tale where the audience had the script the whole time—but tossed it for something with more explosions and less nuance.

Trump didn’t expose the deep state.

He gave it a rebrand.

He sold paranoia like perfume: bottled confusion with patriotic packaging.

Meanwhile, the actual deep state?Still here. Still watching. Still functioning exactly as designed—while the people argue over which puppet is pulling the strings.

Time to Wake Up, Gen X

You were supposed to be the generation that questioned everything. But many of you traded rebellion for reruns, critical thinking for confirmation bias.

There’s still time to course-correct.

But only if you realize that learning after 50 doesn’t make you wise unless you admit what you missed along the way.

CTA:

📢 Share this if you know someone stuck in the fake-awakening cycle.

👁️‍🗨️ Bizarro360 is here to decode the narratives they never taught you—because some of us were actually paying attention.