cover image The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy

The American Deep State: Wall Street, Big Oil, and the Attack on U.S. Democracy

Peter Dale Scott. Rowman & Littlefield, $35 (300p) ISBN 978-1-4422-1424-8

"We are living under a government that in certain respects is increasingly lawless and out of control" Scott (American War Machine) writes in his latest examination of the alleged underbelly of the U.S. Government. The milieu he shows is rife with shady business deals with the Mafia, as well as terrorists and the countries that harbor them, while encouraging war and eroding personal liberties, all with the stated goal of protecting the country. Scott argues for the existence of what are essentially two governments%E2%80%93the one we're familiar with and the "deep state," actually running things. In this telling, the latter has been in the works for some time, under the auspices of the need to keep the government running in the event of a major attack or national disaster. Skeptics will be quick to dismiss Scott as a tinfoil-hatted loon looking for conspiracies and collusion under every rock, but the volume of his cited sources begs to differ, suggesting that our current political climate truly is a toxic one in dire need of fixing. He offers a handful of suggestions for doing exactly this in the closing pages of this alarming and thought-provoking work. (Nov.)