A Signal from the Deep State on 'Real Time with Bill Maher': Would the United States Military Follow Orders From President Donald Trump?

The American Deep State is the "...government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose."

It is not transparent. By design, the Deep State and its actors hide in plain site while simultaneously being opaque and separate from democratic governance. Stated differently, the Deep State is comprised of the shot callers who control presidents and power across the political divide and changing presidential administrations.

These are the people sociologist C. Wright Mills famously described as the "power elite": "They are in command of the major hierarchies and organizations of modern society..They run the machinery of the state and claim its prerogatives.”

The Deep State does not often speak directly to the mass public. However, the Deep State does use other means to send signals about its concerns and intent.

Was last Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher one such moment?

From the Washington Post:

Former CIA director Michael Hayden believes there is a legitimate possibility that the U.S. military would refuse to follow orders given by Donald Trump if the Republican front-runner becomes president and decides to make good on certain campaign pledges.
Hayden, who also headed the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, made the provocative statement on Friday during an appearance on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” 

Trump, fresh off a string of primary victories, has yet to secure his party’s nomination, but Hayden said the candidate’s rhetoric already raises troubling questions.  

“I would be incredibly concerned if a President Trump governed in a way that was consistent with the language that candidate Trump expressed during the campaign,” Hayden said during the interview with Maher.

I am less hopeful than Hayden about the moral leadership provided by the United States military and the Deep State in the Age of Global Terrorism. Many hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world have been brutalized, killed, and their lives ruined by the United States military, the CIA, and the various other elements of the national security state.

Moreover, there are racists, nativists, and militant nationalists in the United States military at both the enlisted and officer ranks who would be/are likely attracted to Donald Trump's strong man proto fascism. Trump could also outsource his barbaric foreign policy to private mercenaries and corporate contractors in order to circumvent the so-called "rules of war".

The United States military is one of the most respected institutions in American society.

[For example--and while not perfect--the United States military has provided important and forward thinking leadership on questions of justice and the color line.]

But I worry, is Trumpmania a reflection of some very serious fissures in American society that could create factions and sow chaos among the country's elites and leading social institutions? Will the Deep State intervene to stop Donald Trump? Or are there elements in the Deep State who support his vision?