Government is not monolithic in the sense that (at least in the US) its sheer size and complexity prevents all the actors involved from correlating their actions and ideologies into a single conspiratorial entity like swallows in flight. Not even in regards to tyranny and violence.
Large and complex systems can coordinate in a decentralised way to form a monolithic entity. Local interactions can lead to global convergence. Swallows in flight is a good example - each swallow only pays attention to the others nearby, yet the whole flock is coordinated. I'm not saying that is how it is in the US government. However, the closer the agencies work together, the more monolithic the government is likely to be (otherwise they wouldn't be able to cooperate).
It's not so much that I'm popular as that I've had this conversation numerous times before, and I sometimes get lazy about laying out my arguments over again, like now. In brief, I direct you to the second graph at this link as an explanation of why I link Reagan's name with prohibition: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rat...
I didn't mention Nixon because for all his rhetoric his policies were pretty pragmatic, and he considered drug abuse at least partly a public health issue (as evidenced by his decisions). Reagan ran as a straight-up moralist and while I agree he'd probably be appalled at the militarization of police and abuses of power like this 'parallel construction' the DEA has been engaging in, this doesn't seem to have filtered through to his supporters. On the one hand he's portrayed as a selfless individual of almost god-like sagacity (I know this because I have ended up on the mailing lists of various conservative organizations, and this time of year I am the perplexed recipient of various Reagan calendars and suchlike), on the other he's almost invariably invoked in political debates in order to terminate discussion rather than broaden it.