I don't want to be dismissive but this is a pile of obvious statements made to seem more compelling than they are, weird mixed metaphors, and tenuous conclusion

I don't want to be dismissive but this is a pile of obvious statements made to seem more compelling than they are, weird mixed metaphors, and tenuous conclusions clearly related (more or less) to the author's own particular views of the world. We could clearly provide a similar account of the world from a different perspective. For instance, socialists hold essentially the same view of the way "one" and "two story" (or is that cycle?) governments work as is described here. Its not a totally vacuous insight that much of what goes on in modern democracies is about manufacturing consent via PR, and that the two political ideologies, to a large degree, function as props in that process. But its hardly novel or profound: practically everyone of a philosophical bent, even hard core liberal centrists, understand this idea. On this bedrock of at least somewhat obvious ideas some pretty tenuous ones are constructed. For instance: "DC does not even really need an executive branch. The inner empire (“domestic policy”) would barely notice if the White House disappeared, except that a source of chaos had vanished. The outer empire (“national security”) must respond centrally to unpredictable external actors. It does need an oracle: a source of ultimate decisions. But the NSC could go on Amazon and order a Magic 8-Ball: “YES,” “NO,” “ANSWER UNCLEAR—ASK AGAIN LATER.” This palantír of phronesis bolted to the Resolute desk, the processes of “global leadership” could continue unperturbed." This is asserted as an obvious truth but is it? Is this even remotely grounded in some kind of analysis? Hardly. This apparent assertion of facts is actually a political assertion of what sorts of things matter. What we ought to read here is: "Nothing I CARE ABOUT depends on the executive." This is just one example of how threadbare all this seems on a deep reading.