The Alaskan Spy Pipeline
The US attacked Russian pipelines // Baked Alaska goes to Prison // Balloon Derailment
The US attacked Russian pipelines
Veteran journalist, Seymore Hersh, has lent credit to conspiracy theorists who have long asserted that the US (specifically the CIA) were responsible for bombing Russia's Nordstream 2 pipeline. Hersh's professional profile includes reporting on the abuses of US military personnel within theatres or war such as Vietnam and Iraq, which positions him as an authentic source of information.
By the time this story is being reported on by streamers, podcasters, and a slew of other influencers, the specifics of Hersh's claims become largely irrelevant. All that is necessary for interpretive speculation is the central thesis and a mechanism to reinforce trust in the information source. The content which has been produced so far has presented a narrative framing device to amplify a single discourse - only the US is capable of conducting a successful false flag attack to justify war.
This is, perhaps, the strangest iteration of American Exceptionalism I have encountered. It appears thst some content creators believe the US is the only nation-state capable of attacking its own infrastructure as a means to coerce the public into supporting war. The logic appears to follow that: "if our government did 9/11, then our government is the singular power that does everything".
Some contend that Russia *might* have attacked its own pipeline, but the CIA makes a far more justifiable boogyman. Discourse on the CIA (and other three letter security agencies) over the past three years has specifically amplified the idea that "everything glows" - that all events that transpire are manipulated by a government agency in some way. By government agency, I mean US government agency.
It appears that without an external enemy over the past few years, there is popular knowledge of "the enemy within" - by Trump's assertion of "the deep state". Even in popular culture, there has been a notable shift towards framing the US intelligence services as a near omnipotent force if corruption and manipulation. The Jack Reacher novel series, for example, is machismo-pulp (which I love), released on a nearly yearly basis since the late 90s. I binged the entire audiobook series one after the other, and the shift in tone was palpable. In the early books, three letter agencies were exemplary moral paragons. The good guys. By 2020, almost any character tied to a three-letter agency was corrupt, duplicitous, and capable of extreme violence—the bad guys.
In the end, such deeply embedded framing almost makes it absurd to suggest that Russia was behind the attack. Despite the belief that nation-states do commit false flag attacks for political purposes. Russia attacking its own pipeline becomes more laughable, in fact, than the assertion that Pearl Harbour was an inside job (not an uncommon claim). Indeed, when weighing the options of "who" attacked Nordstream 2, it is less salient to visualise what Russia would have to gain compared to the US.
This is one of those situations without an ideal solution. There is a hungry market for pop culture military fiction (film, TV, novels and video games). Those stories help frame the collective understanding of geopolitics. Simply put, is it better for US cultural output to focus on constructing external enemies or focus on the enemy within?
Baked Alaska goes to Prison
Alt-right agitator and recent America First orbiter Baked Alaska has appeared at Federal Prison to begin a sentence for breaking into Nancy Pelosi's office during the January 6th riots. Baked's sentence spans the entirety of 60 days, leading many to contend that he is a federal informant.