It's not you, it's the MIC talking

Why do people repeat talking points they've heard or read on the news and in op-ed pieces, even when they can't back them up with anything except more rhetoric and talking points? To state the bleedin' obvious: the talking points they've heard come from sources that carry authority. But what gives these sources their perceived authority?

One argument would be that their authority derives from the continued existence of the source (be it a traditional newspaper or a newer website), which is proof in itself that their content has proved popular enough to remain economically viable, which presumably means that it has proved to be true. Equating popularity with truthfulness is an obviously shaky assumption, but in the case of 'serious' journalism (as opposed to, say, The National Inquirer in the US or The Daily Sport in the UK) they certainly purport to be offering the truth.

Another possible reason why they have retained their positions of authority is the continuation of the hegemony for which they speak. This hegemony (in the case of mainstream news media, western Liberal capitalism) speaks the language of democracy, but we all know it is backed by the threat of force. People outside of the Golden Billion do not work for a dollar a day by choice. They're not smiling to themselves while they perform back breaking labour in cobalt mines, thinking of us in our cossetted western existence that we 'earned'. No. They would very much like to have that existence for themselves and their loved ones, enough to risk their lives getting in dinghies to cross oceans, even knowing that they may be abused and demonised when they get there. Their life is as bad as it is, because we need it to be so, for us to be able to exploit it.

Our life of affordable luxuries is built on the suffering of those far out of sight and out of mind. One of the luxuries that this pampered life affords us, is the luxury to believe we are on the side of Good. We believe that we live in a society ruled by laws - internationally it is now the 'rules-based order' - therefore those who have succeeded, deserved to do so. We profess to believe that we spread this rules-based order all over the world, so it follows that our countries must have deserved to be in the position we are, relative to the third world. So it is, that people can repeat what they hear on the news, even when it stands up to no objective standards of reason, truthfulness or consistency.

It also follows, that the anger and fear that you see in the eyes of people from whom you demand answers to questions like: WHY can we implicitly trust the Ukrainian authorities but never the Russians, or WHY does it not matter that there are groups that even our own media was calling neo nazis until 2021 fighting for Ukraine and killing their own people (including members of the army), or WHY is it OK that Ukraine has been shelling the Donbass since 2014, including using weapons it has agreed not to, like petal mines, that pose an especially high risk to children and the elderly? - is the anger and fear of people who know that the answer to all these questions is: because the Military Industrial Complex (or MIC) needs this to happen, in order for us to maintain our position. And without them we are nothing, with no authority, the Emperor shown to have no clothes.

The corrupt West is overstretching now out of desperation. It knows that Russia is going to sweep through Ukraine, cataloguing every Ukrainian that we force them to kill, to put off the final reckoning that we know is inevitable. The only possible path for leaders whose careers is built on lying and making hollow promises that they have no intention of fulfilling, is to destroy it all rather than give up their position. Talk of nuclear war has seemed like dystopian fantasy for my entire life, but now that we see the elites getting more and more desperate, it becomes more and more of a real possibility. And we would not 'win' it, inasmuch as there could be any winners. We might succeed in doing some damage, but Russia can shoot down our missiles, and has its own missiles that we cannot shoot down. As for China, perhaps they do too.

This is the fear that I see in the eyes of people with whom I try to talk about Ukraine. Surely they must know, on some level, that my conclusions are reasonable, but to admit that is to admit that our lives have been based on a lie. More comforting to continue living in that consumption-fed lie, right up until the moment when it becomes untenable. The moment will be the same for me, after all. I have no solutions, only anxieties about the ugly truth.