There's misunderstanding around here. When people talk about places being "police states" they aren't saying the police are in charge. They are saying that the people in power use the police to hold on to power. That is a significantly different thing. And when you do have a police state, the police are its victims as well.

But Lonesome, I got lost in that last paragraph of yours. I never saw the film concerened - but you seemed to be saying that even if it is true that the CIA and so forth supplied the drugs and the guns, it wouldn't be right to say that they are to blame, because other people were to blame in a more hands-on way, using the guns and selling the drugs. I think I probably misunderstood what you were saying.

I think there's a fallacy in using terms like "police state" and "democracy" as if they were all-or-nothing terms - and also as if they were mutually exclusive. You get places where there is no democracy at all, and places where there is a little, and places where there is a lot; again you can have places which have some of the qualities of a police state (some of the time and towards some people), and places which are more that way, and places which are out-and-out police states.

But as I pointed out, the regime which was probably the most evil in the history of the human race was in some ways democratic, came to power through an electoral process, and was extremely popular.