By the start of World War II, America had already established a government run mostly by managers outside the political process. This had been the great revolution of the early 20th century. By the end of the war, a group of people within the managerial class would take the lead in developing a secret managerial component of American government.
They knew it was important to convince open-government-loving Americans of the necessity for secret managerial government on some level, This was not so difficult, as even civilians were schooled in keeping secrets from the enemy.
Part of the effort and convincing Americans involved showing them the consequences of not embracing this change. To the American secret managerial class, the best way to do this convincing was to show Americans the horrible consequences of a confrontation between itself and the Soviet Union. This might come about by the same forces of chaos between nations that had produced two world wars. It had to be stopped.
If these people did their jobs right, then America and the world would survive. The state of "pseudo-war"----an extended contained conflict that never escalated past a danger threshold---might be extended, perhaps decades and generations, creating a new era of stability in a dangerous world.
Simply put, unless secret perpetual wartime power is maintained in their hands, they asserted, and moreover that they have some form of veto power over the workings of the open part of government that Americans cherish, then the world might easily spiral into annihilation from populist passions and whims of the public. It was quite a threat they confronted, perhaps the biggest one in history.
This viewpoint was famously lampooned in Orwell, who ridiculed the concept that "War is Peace" by his depiction of the mentality of the post-war western alliance. But this is precisely what intelligent people knew was necessary.
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