This aging super-sleuth of deep state machinations has contributed so much to the project of digging up the criminal activities of our masters in the One Percent during the post WWII period. Immediately after this devastating war, the US nation and its ruling class reigned supreme in the world. Their power was based on an intact industrial structure, vast resources at its command, and many military bases in foreign lands. Scott, with his long years serving both the Canadian government and academia at UC-Berkeley, has been thoroughly immersed in the capitalist liberal indoctrination which portrayed the US as some kind of utopian democracy, land of opportunity, and a refuge for the world's oppressed peoples.
On the other hand while thoroughly indoctrinated, Scott is also a very honest, moral, and intelligent person who has had considerable difficulties in reconciling the tenets of this liberal indoctrination with the actual deeds of the US. Here in this essay we find an attempt to explain this contradiction between capitalist dogma about "democracy" and the dark realities as manifested since 1963. However, he ignores the extensive history of class conflict, the growing power of the ruling capitalist class, and the development of the secret security state prior to this period. Instead he frames this post-1963 period as essentially the good guys of open government versus the bad guys of Empire builders who have used un-American methods of stealth and violence to accomplish their project of building an Empire. In his own words:
I believe that a significant shift in the relationship between public and deep state power occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. In this period five presidents sought to curtail the powers of the deep state. And as we shall see, the political careers of all five—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter—were cut off in ways that were unusual. One president, Kennedy, was assassinated. Another, Nixon, was forced to resign.So, why is this relevant? Why am I even wasting time on this? These questions were going through my head this morning. My answer is that there are so many Americans, who are beginning to become aware that there is something like a "deep state", and are concerned about the never-ending wars, deteriorating quality of life in the US, impending climate destabilization, etc, but remain confused by liberal propaganda which is preventing them from taking effective actions to turn this state of affairs around. Many--not only liberals--wish and think that we can return to this earlier idyllic period.
To some extent the interplay of these two forms of power and political organization is found in all societies. The two were defined by Hannah Arendt in the 1960s as “persuasion through arguments” versus “coercion by force.” .... The two represent not just different techniques of government but different cultures and mindsets, in fundamental tension with each other.
This tension increases, and predictably tips toward violence, if a well-organized open community expands beyond its own borders and is increasingly occupied with the business of supervising an empire. It is repeatedly the case that progressive societies (like America) expand. As their influence expands, their democratic institutions, based at bottom upon persuasive power among equals, are supplemented by new, often secret, institutions of top-down violent power for the control of alien populations abroad, often speaking different and unfamiliar languages. The more the society expands, the more these institutions of violent power encroach upon and supplant the original democracy.
Until people recognize capitalism for what it is, no effective action can be taken. The dynamics of this system is very much like a virulent cancer, which can only grow (metastasize) or die. People must understand how this system has enabled a small class of private "owners" of economies, which are quintessentially social artifacts, to take nearly absolute control of all our lives. We are now only witnessing the end-game of their rule.
The protagonists of the system, the ruling capitalist classes, are on a rampage to accumulate more wealth and power regardless of the effects on the vast majority of humans. They are now threatening the very existence of the human race either through nuclear wars or catastrophic climate destabilization. To idealize some mythical past is to cast a fog over the realities of such a deadly system.
