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Because of course they do

Published by marco on

I’m not even going to do more than cite the article US Intelligence thinks Russia may have microwaved US embassies in Cuba, China by Sean Gallagher (Ars Technica).

I’m honestly not sure how anyone with an ounce of journalistic self-respect can write an article like this non-ironically.

I wrote in the title, “because of course they do”. I’m referring to the “analysts” who—after nearly a year—have decided that the Russians are to blame.

It is here that we should all become more adept at both thought experiments and analogies.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of the analysts, after one year of investigation.

The clock is ticking.

Shit is starting to roll downhill.

Your boss, at first sympathetic to the difficulty of the chore, can no longer run interference for you and your team.

He needs an answer.

Historically, just “an answer” was sufficient for everyone to keep their jobs, the pressure to go way down, and for perhaps promotions to be handed out.

You see, once there’s an answer that everyone can get behind, it becomes the truth. It doesn’t matter whether it’s easily deniable. The important thing is that the entire circle manages to avoid taking the blame for it and can smoothly promote themselves upwards in whatever hierarchies they’re interested in scaling.

All they need is a scapegoat.

And there’s Russia, in the corner.

In its Adidas shoes and jogging pants, smoking in a cupped palm, squatting and mumbling something incomprehensible into a knock-off Chinese iPhone.

He smells a bit of cologne and cabbage and no-one in the office likes him.

He’s taken the fall for so many other things.

You’d think people would no longer believe the lies we tell about him, but it’s just the opposite. The more we blame on him, the more we can blame on him. He’s like a breeder reactor for taking blame. It’s a chain reaction of sorts.

At the very end of the article is the expected “Update” that basically reverses everything else said in the article,

“The Washington Post reports skepticism about microwaves being the source of the symptoms among doctors and scientists, including some doctors who were critical of the initial JAMA report. University of Cincinnati neurologist Alberto J. Espay told the Post, “Microwave weapons is the closest equivalent in science to fake news.””