[flamble]

I find it incredible that anyone could have such a cartoonish view of the world that the completely secretive, unaccountable and independent security apparatus, which has totally liberated itself from democratic control or oversight, is simply "the government" in a way undifferentiated from say, the post office.

What is especially galling about it is that the entire monstrosity was constituted specifically in order to maintain the structures of private power and profit and has never deviated from that goal. The entire murder machine exists to benefit the corporate power that you absurdly imagine as some kind of countervailing force.

How do you account for the fact that military and CIA involvement overseas is systematically in the service of imposing minimal-government orthodoxy, from Chile 1973 to the Contras, Grenada, Iraq, Cuba, etc?