The American State and Dark Power in the United States

Oligarchs enjoy the benefit of living in a society with a considerable, if declining pretty rapidly, degree of democratic legitimacy while simultaneously retaining unacknowledged authoritarian agency. So by having this deep state system, you know, and having this democratic veneer, they get to have their cake and eat it too. They get to pretend to be a democracy, which has more legitimacy, but it's managed in a very top down way. And there's probably no other way to run an empire than in a top down fashion. The CIA is an example of dark power in terms of running the Empire, but then also they get involved domestically of operation chaos or FBI with COINTELPRO