I am amazed that this was on the Washington ComPost!
America is an oligarchy, in fact most countries are. Carroll Quigley is a Harvard PhD and Professor at Georgetown University and was Bill Clinton’s mentor.
In 1966 he wrote “Tragedy and Hope.” He was given access to the secret archives in the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR was created in about 1921 but it was an extension of The Inquiry that was created at the same time as the Federal Reserve under Wilson.
In it he said that in 1900 over 50% of America was controlled by 26 families. In 1930 eight families controlled over 75% of Japan.
The Reece Commission on Tax Exempt Foundations in 1953 found that the large foundations (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, Guggenheim, etc) all conspired together to change education, keep the US at war, and control foreign policy by gaining control of the State Department.
This was the beginning of the shadow government we have today.
This is called a “modified limited hangout”. If you read through to the end you can see the pretense that the Deep State is something in the process of forming (a minimizing fiction), not something that has controlled the nation with an all but iron fist for the entire post-WW2 era (the reality).