About once a week the military and their alarmist lapdogs in mainstream media report that somebody got their killing machine too close to somebody else’s killing machine and so THE END IS NIGH MOTHERFUCKERS!

The news terrifies me. Not necessarily just because it is full of fear-mongering posturing and Chicken Littlism, but because these things get so constantly reprinted they must be successful in some way. I understand that journalism in general is naught but a game of catering to populist outrage and apocalyptic proclamations, for how else would you sell anything? You can’t. I have played that game and cool rationality works about as well as trying to fart out of your elbow. So I guess, you know, they are just doing their jobs, or whatever.

Yet that the public still plays into their dramas instead of sending the media and military spokespeople to their room without dinner blows my mind. I guess I am just too stupid to wrap my head around the obvious.

One of the most heavily recycled propaganda gambits (propagambits?) is the claim by one nation that some act of proximity was meant as a provocation, suggesting the beginning of WWIII because THEY STARTED IT!

Example: Pentagon reports Russian jet flew within five feet of Navy plane.

Unless you spent your childhood in a coma and live on an adults-only island somewhere, you will recognize this behavior for exactly what it is, childish drama that is half tattletale, and half for the sake of justifying future actions. “I told you he was doing it, but you wouldn’t make him stop, so I HAD to.”

Not that I necessarily believe these juvenile claims are actually leading up to a war in most cases, but they suggest it. They make people feel that way. You know the pattern, you have seen this type of escalation before and you know that eventually someone is gonna break and throw a fist or a knee or a nuke. And this is what both the military and media are counting on you feeling. The former because it justifies their presence and endless growth, and the latter because it sells copies. Both of them profit from keeping the public constantly on the edge of their seat, just waiting for the conflict to come that finally ends human civilization.

Cynicism is the cheap seats, but they sell out all day long.

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the whole thing is a show. There are no nation states fighting for their way of life. There are multinational corporations and the one percent of people who control eighty percent of humanities wealth, and they march out puppets and make them pretend fight to distract us while we are being robbed. To get caught up in the USA vs. Russia drama, or any other nationalist conflict, is approximately equal to believing that wrestling is real and the good guys and bad guys are not just personas created to sell their show to you, but actual good guys and bad guys whose stage act indicates the truth of their existence.

That is what scares me. Naive realism. It keeps me up at night and makes me a little sad and ashamed to be a human being. When the general intellect of a population is so contrived that even sensationalist reruns are effective cognitive modifiers, then there is no telling what people will fall for. Mind you, I am not saying people are stupid. Perfectly intelligent people get caught up in this game. Individuals who are otherwise not prone to manipulation by boogeymen tales are just as likely to get caught up in nationalist fear-mongering propaganda as some jackass in a MAGA hat who collects NFL-themed fishing lures.

There is only one thing to be done with intellectual trash like this. Media items, and their creators, who publish this absurd, hyperbolic jingoism need to be mocked mercilessly. None of us will be safe until everyone who writes for the public is too afraid to print this bullshit, lest their intellect and intentions are thrashed for it. Make witch hunts fun again, and aim them at the unscrupulous manipulators who aid the ultra rich in their dominance of life on planet Earth. And if you don’t want to join, stand aside, or be caught in the crossfire.

Mainstream media flew their bullshit just a little too close this time, folks, and this means war!

Right? RIGHT! Who is with me? Hey, where are you going? Come back…I was just going to…HEY!