American Exception: Empire and the Deep State

by Aaron Good

American Exception seeks to explain the breakdown of US democracy, in particular to understand the uncanny continuity of American foreign policy, the breakdown of the rule of law, and the extreme concentration of wealth and power into an overworld of the corporate rich.

To trace the evolution of the American state, Aaron Good takes a deep-politics approach. The term deep state was badly misappropriated during the Trump era. In the simplest sense, it here refers to all those institutions that collectively exercise undemocratic power over state and society. To trace how we arrived at this point, American Exception explores various deep state institutions and history-making interventions.

Key institutions involve the relationships between the overworld of the corporate rich, the underworld of organized crime, and the national security actors that mediate between them. History-making interventions include the toppling of foreign governments, the launching of aggressive wars, and the political assassinations of the 1960s.

In its long history before World War II, the United States had a deep political system, a system of governance in which decision-making and enforcement were carried out within--and outside of--public institutions. It was a system that always included some degree of secretive collusion and law-breaking. After World War II, US elites decided to pursue global dominance over the international capitalist system.

Setting aside the liberal rhetoric, this project was pursued in a manner that was by and large imperialistic rather than progressive. To administer this covert empire, US elites created a massive national security state characterized by unprecedented levels of secrecy and lawlessness. The Global Communist Conspiracy provided a pretext for exceptionism--an endless exception to the rule of law. What gradually emerged after World War II was a tripartite state system of governance. The open democratic state and the authoritarian security state were both increasingly dominated by an American deep state.

Aaron Good concludes by assessing the prospects for a revival of US democracy.

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, The United States Of America, Conspiracy Theories, American, American History

496 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 8, 2022

Reviews

[lindsi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was an absolute paradigm-shifter in the best way. The framework of a tripartite state — public state, security state, and deep state — provided me a much-needed framework to analyze power struggles both within the state (from JFK’s assassination to Watergate to the Trump impeachment) and between state and non-state actors. While the theory is a bit dry at times, I consider this essential information for organizers seeking to identify nodes of power in order to engage in contradiction that actually targets sources of power, instead of shadowboxing with symbolic figures.

[Ruthie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rather a punishing read. What use is writing and publishing a master’s thesis about deep structural power when your published thesis contains THIS MANY typographical errors? Did truly no one care to correct the simple grammatical mistakes, the misspellings, or even the careless usage of the wrong person’s name here and there - not even just once, but over and over again? What good is academic peer review or editorial oversight if a book makes it to print with something like 30 typos as this one has? Very half assed attempt to do something here. Quite disappointed in this effort.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good has produced a masterful dissertation elucidating the inherently anti-democratic forces seeking to maintain US dollar hegemony above all else. Through revelatory political science theory coupled with a narrative survey of the past century’s deep events, he makes a compelling case for the otherwise inexplicable continuity of American foreign policy. I’ll be thinking about this for a while…

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but I simply can’t. I listened to Aaron’s podcast somewhat frequently in the last two years and found the content fascinating but I can’t do it anymore. Good is not really interesting in synthesizing everyone else’s ideas. Just read PDS or anyone else mentioned in this book. I couldn’t stop thinking about Good and his awful twitter account while I was listening to this book. How do you form an opinion this critical of US policy and then back RFK JR. Embarrassing.

[Nathan Shuherk · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first 5 chapters are so complex that the flow of the book is almost completely inconsistent. It’s great to set up the fast paced hits in the second half of the book, but a little less theory or slowed down to the sake of an audience not in “the know” could’ve made this book much more capable of a wide readership. The concluding chapter is fascinating and really leaves so much to be desired.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Massively paradigm-reinforcing history of the wealthy few using the cloak of the exceptional, good-guy-hegemon saviour state persona to colonise the world.

I wish it were better-written, but Good’s hypothesis explains better than anything yet why State and the CIA have been so fond of massacre as a policy towards Socialists from the very beginning. Thought was, and indeed remains, the greatest threat to the American oligarchs.

[InspireSeattle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Throughout Aaron Good’s book American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, Good argues that America is a very undemocratic place, run by power-hungry unelected leaders. In doing so, Good uses expressions likely new to the reader, such as “exceptionist deep state,” the “overworld,” the “tripartite state,” and more. Trying to understand Good’s argument takes defining a few of these terms.

In the book, Good provides multiple definitions of “deep state.” The deep state derives its power outside of the Constitution. The deep state is “an obscured, dominant, supranational source of antidemocratic power.” It includes parts of government, as well as top-level finance and industry, and is more powerful than the elected, recognized public state. Good claims that deep state leaders are the true governors of America.

Good goes further, writing that America is actually an “exceptionist deep state.” Exceptionism, as used in the book, is defined as “the institutionalized suspension of legal restraints” and “abrogation of the rule of law.” Good writes that America exists in a “permanent state of exception,” where our “national security state” works outside the law towards subverting “US democracy and reproducing US predominance and imperial hegemony over the global capitalist system.”

Good explains that the most powerful members of the deep state make up the “overworld” of corporate wealth. The “overworld of corporate wealth has created and altered institutions to most effectively manage international and domestic politics to the effect that empire and hegemony – and thus exceptionism – are sacrosanct imperatives.” So, what has the overworld done? Per Good, they created the CIA, forced the US into World War II so that they could make money on weaponry, and were behind America’s use of atomic weapons on Japan. The overworld invented the Soviet Union as America’s enemy. They pushed America into war in Korea. They structured the Watergate break-in to purposely fail, to bring President Nixon down. They regularly deal in illegal drugs to raise funds for operations, work with the underworld, and use sexual blackmail for political purposes. And, of course, they are behind multiple murders and assassinations.

Good asserts that since the 1940s, deep state members included presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. The only exception was John Kennedy, who, per Good, was killed by the deep state operatives for trying to limit the deep state and get the US out of Vietnam. Good dedicates many pages to JFK’s assassination, which is likely why movie Director Oliver Stone, who directed the 1991 movie about JFK’s assassination, gives Good a glowing front cover review. The deep state pushed Jimmy Carter to presidential victory in 1976, “only to destroy his administration” in favor of Reagan in 1980. Good writes that with Reagan’s election, the “public state” was completely vanquished, and has not returned. Good lists many other members of the deep state, some of which were a bit surprising, such as the liberal Ford Foundation and the Washington Post.

Good further defines America as an “exceptionist tripartite state” comprised of three elements – the public (democratic) state, the security state and the deep state. Good writes extensively about our “authoritarian security state.” Good explains that our security state was “created by elites with deep connections to the overworld of private wealth,” and includes the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI, all of which conduct illegal activities “several hundred times every day.” That’s where Good gets the title of his book, American Exception. It’s that our ruler state is exempted from the rule of law. Per Good, illegal actions of our security state include not only the assassination of JFK, but also of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. They faked the Gulf of Tonkin incident that formally launched the Vietnam war. They regularly interfere in political campaigns. They were behind the September 11th attacks, as well as the stolen presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. Per Good, it goes on. And on…

Good writes that this illegal governing structure’s main goal is American pursuit of hegemony/dominance over the world, and to achieve this, we must constantly break the rule of law, both domestic and international. As a result, we have seen “democratic decay,” including a rise in inequality, and the decline of American nationalism, which Good defines as “the pursuit of policies which strengthen and enrich the country’s collective economy and population.”

So, what advice does Good provide to fix this mess? Honestly, not much. He closes with some obvious stuff, such as invest in education! Pursue cleaner energy! Stop nuclear proliferation! Address income inequality! Reform the US electoral process! Reform drug laws! Reform state secrecy! And even, wait for it, follow China’s lead on economics! Hmmm… How does that work?

Good has a PhD in Political Science, and writes that his book “is an attempt to distill what my dissertation sought to address.” That’s what America Exception reads like: a way-too-long school report written by a student trying to impress his professors with seemingly endless, hard-to-read details. Simply put, American Exception is poorly written and edited.

I can sum up Good’s book in my own words as basically stating “America is run by a bunch of rich selfish dudes seeking even greater wealth and power, and they’re willing to trample on the rest of us to get it.” Well, duh. One could more effectively make this argument by avoiding harping on dozens of poorly explained conspiracy theories. I see American Exception actually as a dangerous book, in that it’s so hard to read, that it’s likely to turn readers against the basic reasonable argument Good is trying to make, that American democracy is decaying. Finally, making the argument that Democrats are every bit as bad as Republicans got us George W Bush (and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars) and Donald Trump. Claiming our system, and pretty much every one of our leaders, are corrupt, and raging against them, without providing a workable alternative plan, just works to kill citizens’ willingness to fight for a better world. I suggest you skip this book in favor of other works exploring the decline of American democracy.

[Jacques · Rating 5 out of 5]

the first 100 pages or so was full of heady political theory, but this made sense as it was adapted from a dissertation. but I'm glad I had that foundation to give me a lens to view Good's history through. his thorough and well-researched tripartite theory of american political life was very compelling. i did more than once raise an eyebrow at things i had previously thought of as "conspiracy theories," but Good makes a great case for the role of the deep state in state crimes.

[Dan McCarthy · Rating 2 out of 5]

An expansion of Good's dissertation, and it reads like an academic dissertation. Even as a reader experienced in academia it was a slog. Full of interesting information, but it could have used an edit to streamline it for a wider audience.

[Braden Domier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important reading for understanding American history

[Ceciliana Chispa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eye opening! This is a must read/listen to. Audio book does a fantastic job.

[Maddan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this book a lot more than I did. The art rules and the subject matter is incredibly interesting and worthy of studying, but the book felt so deeply rooted in what it was criticizing that I found myself slightly annoyed. That paired with strange spelling and grammar mistakes that should’ve been caught in editing made for a difficult read for the wrong reasons, one that felt like it was holding my hand while trying to explain subjects that were nowhere near as radical as the book made seem. This book felt extremely targeted at the social democrat type, outlining genuine horrors with the depictions they required, but falling flat in general meaning, applying very little time to describing the necessary upheaval of the state in response to its violence in proportion to the amount of time it explains its violence. It is absolutely wonderful for its collection of sources on specific events, and I’ve checked the glossary for significantly more time than I spent reading the book as a result.

I could see this being very helpful to people interested in leftist policy who find themselves thoroughly stuck in the capitalist system and way of thought as a sort of guide out of that mindset, and for that this book gets a pass on a lot of its issues, but not enough for me to warrant anything higher than a 3/5.

[Daniel Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Needs to be required reading to wake up the masses. Everything they label “conspiracy theory” is 9 times out a 10 probably true. This book teaches you more than anything that knowledge is power

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected this to be a five-star book and thought I would learn a great deal from it. Instead, I was unpleasantly surprised.

I became interested in American Exception: Empire and the Deep State after seeing Aaron Good interviewed. In conversation, he presented difficult subjects in a relatively simple and coherent way. He discussed the American deep state, organized crime, the Kennedy assassination, intelligence agencies, elite criminality, and the networks of power operating beyond ordinary democratic accountability. He discussed Kennedy’s conflict with the Mafia, including Jewish organized-crime figures, his opposition to Israel’s nuclear ambitions, the development of the Zionist lobby that became AIPAC, and the possible convergence of these interests with the CIA and other forces surrounding his assassination. He also made the book seem relevant to the present moment: to Jeffrey Epstein, the relationship between organized crime and intelligence operations, Epstein’s connections to powerful Israeli political and security figures, and the influence of the state of Israel in the United States while Israel is carrying out genocide in Gaza. Recent document releases and congressional inquiries have only made Epstein’s relationships with Israeli officials and other foreign political networks more significant subjects of investigation.

I had already read Whitney Webb’s two-volume One Nation Under Blackmail: The Sordid Union Between Intelligence and Organized Crime That Gave Rise to Jeffrey Epstein, which traces precisely this intersection of organized crime, intelligence agencies, sexual blackmail, political influence, and Epstein’s rise. These subjects have also been discussed in other books and by former intelligence officers such as John Kiriakou. Because Good seemed able to explain the relationships clearly in interviews, I expected that the book would contain much more evidence, more stories, and more extensive documentation elucidating what he was saying.

I thought the interviews were a summary of a much larger body of evidence that I would find in the book.

What I found was that Good did not have a great deal more to say about many of these matters. He mentions them, and sometimes mentions them repeatedly, but he rarely develops them into the extensive evidentiary account I expected. The book promises to examine the concentration of power among the corporate rich, organized crime, intelligence agencies, the national-security establishment, and the political assassinations of the 1960s. Those were precisely the subjects that interested me. Yet Good spends far more time explaining academic theories of the state than closely documenting the personalities, transactions, criminal relationships, operations, and institutions that constitute the deep state in practice.

There is some gold dust in the stream, but the stream is polluted, and the amount of sifting required is not justified by what one finally recovers.

Good makes clear that the book developed from his doctoral dissertation, American Exception: Hegemony and the Tripartite State. His dissertation examined “the state, elite criminality, and US hegemony,” and the published book retains the structure and priorities of that academic project. That explains much of what is in the book, but it does not make the reading experience more worthwhile.

The problem is not that the book is too intellectually difficult. I have two master’s degrees and have spent decades reading academic scholarship. I studied linguistics when that meant working through Government and Binding Theory iteration of Chomsky’s generative grammar--six-hundred-page books filled with highly technical syntactic arguments that really aren't even used anywhere, in retrospect. But, I can read specialized academic language.

The problem is that most of the academic material in this book was not worth the time required to read it.

Large portions are devoted to tracing theories about what the state really is, comparing competing academic models, reviewing the intellectual genealogy of deep-state analysis, and defending Good’s own tripartite model. He contrasts theories of a two-part or dual state with his division among the public state, the national-security state, and the deep state. That distinction may matter to political scientists writing dissertations or journal articles. I understood it. I simply found it largely meaningless for what I wanted to learn.

I did not read this book because I wanted an extended survey of what Charles Beard or various nineteenth- and twentieth-century theorists thought about the state. Some historical background would have been useful. But that background becomes a dominant part of the book rather than a foundation for the investigation I expected.
Academic scholarship is not inherently valuable merely because it is academic. It is valuable when its theoretical apparatus clarifies evidence, exposes relationships, or allows the reader to understand events that would otherwise remain obscure. Here, the apparatus too often becomes the subject. The theory displaces the evidence.
Good has some useful formulations. He argues that the United States cannot be understood only through its visible constitutional institutions and that covert lawlessness became integral to the maintenance of American power. Academic reviewers have summarized his argument as an effort to explain both the continuity of American policy across administrations and the deterioration of democracy and the rule of law at home. That is a legitimate and important argument.

But naming a structure is not the same as documenting it.

I wanted Good to follow the money, trace personal and institutional relationships, reconstruct operations, and demonstrate how intelligence agencies, organized crime, corporate wealth, Zionist political organizations, and national-security institutions interacted. I wanted more detailed evidence concerning the Kennedy assassination, Kennedy’s confrontation with the CIA and organized crime, his opposition to Israel’s nuclear program, and the forces that benefited from his death. I wanted him to connect that history to later networks of sexual blackmail, political control, intelligence activity, and Jeffrey Epstein.

Instead, Good repeatedly states or returns to broad interpretations without developing many of them through the extensive narrative evidence I expected. He discussed these subjects clearly in interviews. The book should have supplied the documentation underneath them. Too often, it does not.
I would estimate that perhaps ten percent of the book gave me genuinely useful facts, connections, or insights about organized crime, covert power, political assassination, elite criminality, and the deep state. A much larger portion was devoted to the history of academic theories about the state. I could understand those discussions, but I did not care about most of them, and they did not substantially improve my understanding of how deep power actually functions.
The remaining problem is more serious because it is not merely a question of academic priorities. It is a moral and political failure.

Good appears to worship at the false shrine of Michael Parenti, reproducing many of the same lies and distortions repeated by Parenti, Noam Chomsky, and a substantial portion of the American anti-imperialist left. Within this ideological framework, the United States is treated as the decisive cause of almost every international conflict, while governments opposed by Washington are presented as socialist, anti-imperialist, legitimate, or at least deserving of endless qualification and excuse.

This framework collapses completely when applied to Bosnia.

Parenti did not merely oppose NATO intervention. He became a defender of Slobodan Milošević and participated in efforts to rehabilitate him. Milošević was not simply the leader of a socialist country targeted by the United States. He was the political head of a Serbian nationalist project that produced genocide, ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, mass displacement, and systematic sexual violence against Bosnian Sunni Muslims.


When writers reduce the destruction of Yugoslavia to another story about American imperialism, they erase the genocide against Bosniaks. They erase the tens of thousands of Bosniak women subjected to organized rape and sexual terror. They erase Srebrenica. They erase the mass graves that are still being excavated and the human remains that families continue to rebury decades later.
The murderous corpse of Serbian nationalism is also being revived now. It is being supported by right-wing politicians, genocide deniers, and international political forces, including alliances involving Israel. Bosnian journalists such as Harun Mahmutović continue reporting on genocide denial, the identification and reburial of victims, and the political movements attempting to rehabilitate the ideology responsible for the genocide.
These are not marginal facts that can be set aside while American academics debate NATO.

They are the central moral facts.

A writer cannot claim to oppose empire and political violence while treating the victims of Serbian nationalism as inconvenient complications in a geopolitical argument. Parenti’s defense of Milošević was not an unfortunate analytical mistake. It reflected a worldview in which opposition to the United States mattered more than the lives of Bosnian Sunni Muslims.

The same ideological corruption appears in discussions of Bashar al-Assad and Syria.
Good relies on or approvingly cites writers associated with the later work of Max Blumenthal and the so-called Axis of Resistance media ecosystem. Blumenthal’s Goliath was serious and valuable journalism about Israel. His later work on Syria was not. It became part of an ideological project that minimized Assad’s crimes, discredited victims and witnesses, and interpreted the Syrian catastrophe primarily through the actions of the United States and its allies.
Bashar al-Assad’s government tortured prisoners on an industrial scale, bombed civilian communities, destroyed cities, besieged populations, and killed or contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Assad invited Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah to help crush Syria’s overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim population. The destructive role of the United States in the region does not turn Assad into a heroic defender of sovereignty. It does not transform Iran or Hezbollah into liberators. It does not absolve any of them of mass murder.
This is not abstract political theory for me.
I have known Syrians for more than thirty years. I have known people whose relatives were imprisoned, tortured, or murdered by Bashar al-Assad’s regime or by his father’s regime before him. One of my teachers saw an entire section of Hama shortly after Hafez al-Assad’s forces destroyed it and killed tens of thousands of people.

These are our people.

That is why I find this doctrinal form of American anti-imperialism morally bankrupt. It begins with justified criticism of American crimes and then degenerates into the belief that virtually anyone opposed by the United States must represent resistance. Dictators, torturers, and sectarian murderers become figures to be contextualized, defended, or quietly passed over because their crimes disrupt a simple ideological narrative.
The United States can be imperialist, criminal, and dishonest while its opponents are also imperialists, dictators, war criminals, and murderers.

Both things can be true.

Many of the same writers invoke Palestine as evidence of their commitment to Muslim lives and human rights. Yet they minimize or excuse the mass killing of Sunni Muslims by Milošević, Bashar al-Assad, Iran, Russia, or Hezbollah. They want to use Palestine and the suffering of our communities when it supports their political position, but they abandon those same moral principles when the perpetrators belong to a geopolitical camp they favor.

That is not solidarity.

You cannot claim moral authority from Palestine while erasing Bosnia and Syria. You cannot condemn genocide when it is committed by Israel and rationalize mass murder when it is committed by Assad or Serbian nationalists. You cannot claim to defend our communities while celebrating or excusing the people who kill our people.
That is not anti-imperialism. It is selective dehumanization.

There are some valuable ideas and facts in American Exception. Good is right that American democracy cannot be understood only through elections, Congress, presidents, and the visible institutions of government. He is right to investigate the convergence of corporate wealth, organized crime, intelligence agencies, covert operations, political assassination, and elite impunity. He is right that the breakdown of the rule of law is not merely an accidental corruption of the system but can become a structural feature of imperial power.

But those insights form too little of the book, and they are not developed with the depth of evidence I expected.

I expected a book filled with documented histories of organized crime, intelligence operations, political blackmail, Zionist influence, the Kennedy assassination, and the hidden structures of American power. I expected Good to expand substantially upon the claims he made in interviews and to connect them to the political realities that have become even more visible through Jeffrey Epstein, his elite networks, his relationships with powerful Israeli figures, and the continuing influence of Israel within the American political system.

Instead, I found a doctoral dissertation turned into a book: a long academic history of theories about the state, interrupted by occasional material about the very subjects that led me to read it.

The few interesting facts and insights were not worth the time I spent on the book. Worse, its reliance on the morally compromised politics of Parenti, Assad apologism, and the Axis of Resistance worldview makes parts of it not merely misguided but insulting to the people whose suffering those ideologies erase.

I would not recommend it.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute must read for anyone who hasn't already gone full nihilism with respect to US government and democracy. Aaron Good provides a fabulous high level look at the actual forces at play in how the United States is ruled, how they operate, where they come from, and the possibilities for the future. This is not a happy read, but is essential for all Americans. As Good quotes from the Zhuangzi, "The sage is the sharpest tool of empire; he is not a means of bringing light to the empire."

I will note, I wish the book had gone through another round of proofreading. There are a number of simple typographic/grammatical errors, but this should not detract in anyway from the invaluable content of this book.

[Rj · Rating 4 out of 5]

While Aaron Good is one of my favorite guests on TrueAnon and his ideas are truly persuasive, this book is clearly his academic dissertation.
(Along side some typos, like "Price" instead of "Prince" and phrase reduplications) the first third of the book is extremely dense and lacks an accessible flow. Again, his theory is persuasive but even the more intriguing chapters are presented in a manner that induces whiplash-- paragraphs ebb between BCCI to the Yakuza, from an aside about Iran-Contra to the P2 masonic lodge. I do not think Good intends to tailor his book to the lay-audience but chapters require the reader to have a depth of knowledge and be able to track, effectively, multiple American presidential administrations and characters within, back and forth, chapter-to-chapter.

[Gage Hoefer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good! I thought Good made a good choice (pardon the phrase) by expanding his Ph.D. thesis into a fully fledged book. That said, he needs to get a different publisher/editor because the typesetting mistakes were incredibly frustrating and entirely avoidable. Outside of the first 3 chapters, which provided a very useful introduction/overview to modern academic theories of the state in political science and international relations, there was not much presented here that was new to me. That's not something to really criticize though, because it was still an entertaining presentation. Not paradigm changing, but not horrible either- about as enjoyable a read as can be, when the topic of discussion is state crimes against humanity.

I <3 the CIA!!! I <3 the deep state!!!!

[Alec · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding read. A comprehensive look at American politics through the parapolitical lens that takes on questions of conspiracy, legitimacy and integrity.

[Mandalay · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first few chapters were dry and scholarly, but the rest of it was full of juicy tidbits.

[John Conlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read. I recommend Goods podcast appearances on Trueanon

[chey · Rating 5 out of 5]

i love it but im angry

[Paul Spence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Political scientists, scholars of modern American and international history, and more broadly U.S. citizens ought to read American Exception. For the political scientist, "American Exception" proposes a strong and original framework for explaining the dissonance and incongruities in recent historical and contemporary American politics. For the Americanists and international historians, "American Exception" challenges the boundaries of “acceptable” inquiry and discourse with often willfully ignored evidence, offering an invaluable and original reinterpretation of the United States’ centrality in world politics and its own domestic discord.

For the U.S. citizen, "American Exception" offers a theoretical and historical explanation for the existential three crises faced by every American excluded from the tripartite state: the crisis of nuclear omnicide, the crisis of global climate change, and the crisis of inequality. Aaron Good’s "American Exception: Empire and the Deep State" must be read, studied, and read again when the reader finds themselves slipping out of Wonderland and back into the wilderness of mirrors artfully, intentionally, and deceptively crafted by the deep, exceptionalist, tripartite state.

Good’s sound historical analysis accompanies his readers, much like the White Rabbit does for Alice, through a chronology of 20th and 21st century state crimes against democracy and deep structural events as Good makes his case for the informed citizen to lay blame at the feet of the exceptionalist tripartite state for the damaging hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy and the negligence with which the
U.S. government administers the country domestically. With Good as our guide and on the face of evidence typically omitted from canonical discussions of these events, the reader confronts and is asked to reconsider the assassination of President Kennedy, the FBI’s domestic COINTEL programs, the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the assassination of Robert Kennedy, Nixon’s 1968 “October Surprise,” the Iran-Contra affair, Operation Gladio, the “stolen” presidential election of 2000, 9/11, the often forgotten 9/11-related anthrax attacks which were actually traced to U.S. bioweapons labs managed by the U.S. military, and Operation Timber Sycamore.

[Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

Content of the book is superb, but lacks sufficient analysis of certain events (JFK, Watergate, etc), preferring instead to cursorily outline SCADs. Prose is nice but repetitive (I have never read an author who loves the phrase "to wit" more than Mr. Good). I get this is an amended dissertation, hence the academic prologue, but it reads as loquacious and overly academic. This is necessary in a PhD paper when researching parapolitics as means of buttressing ones own credibility, but in book format does not translate. Deriding aside, Good relays PDS's fundamental arguments in a manner much more pithy and perspicuous than Scott ever did.

[Dave Seibert · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a must read for anyone interested in what has happened and what is happening to America. Historical facts combined with PhD level theories combined to allow the reader a full understanding of what the "DEEP STATE" actually is, and how it impacts not only our government but out lives. I was 6 when JFK was killed and remember the funeral march with Little John saluting, little did I know how deep the deceptions would go. Through MLK, RFK, and Watergate I became more into understanding the news, but my naiveté would not be fully satisfied until I read American Exception. I will return often to this book for facts to help educated friends and family.

READ IT
NOW!

[Wesley Toland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains a succinct summary of the entire study of the unmetered power and anti-democratic crimes of the opaque elite institutions of the United States. While I was writing my thesis on U.S. foreign policy, I struggled to identify and articulate who was operating it, how, and why. Aaron Good has managed to distill exactly that. I'm very grateful for Aaron Good's descriptive analysis of the subject, and I will be quoting him frequently moving forward.

[Anthony Angotti · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first 30% of this book I would give 0 stars. Poorly edited, incredibly wordy, and unnecessarily condescending.

After that though it became much more entertaining and enlightening.

Honestly, you won’t miss much skipping the first 50-100 pages and if you aren’t familiar with the background you need you’d be better served reading a Wikipedia article or two and then diving in. They’d at least be better written and edited.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thought-provoking read, and deeply timely… I struggled with the academic writing/social science theory at times and wish that the book had a little bit more “how do we move forward” than 2 pages at the end. Overall I don’t take everything at face value, but the literal whole point is we shouldn’t take everything at face value. And I agree with the overarching message about who is actually running this country (spoiler alert, it’s not the people).

[Damien]

Really great ledger of how and why American foreign policy doesn't change from administration to administration. Aaron Good joins the small contingent of scholars who are brave enough to admit that LHO was clearly a patsy.

[Chris Cote · Rating 5 out of 5]

shockingly good summary of some of my favorite things to read about, a little redundant at times and certainly a shocking amount of typos, but the fundamental analysis is strong and the information is too good to pass up <3

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels like it has trouble not going off the rails even if it doesn’t want to