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Something has quietly shifted in how authority is granted.

Not so long ago, leaders were judged on what they could build. Better services, steadier institutions, a sense that someone was carrying the weight of complexity on our behalf. Even when they failed, the expectation was effort. Responsibility still mattered.

Today, power is increasingly given to whoever promises to make things stop.

Stop the politicians.
Stop the bureaucracy.
Stop the system.
Stop the noise.

This is not a collapse of reason. It is a response to exhaustion.

When systems feel responsive, people argue about outcomes. When systems feel distant and immovable, people argue about exits. Improvement starts to feel abstract and unreachable. Removal feels immediate, visible, real.

That is why disruption now outperforms competence. Why negation travels faster than plans. Why “anti” messages beat detailed proposals. It is not that people no longer care about results. It is that they no longer believe results can be achieved through patience or participation.

Exhaustion rewires consent.

In low-trust environments, refusal reads as strength. Distance reads as honesty. The leader who promises to tear something down sounds more credible than the one who promises to stay and repair it. Staying feels like complicity. Leaving feels like integrity.

Think about the last time a leader resigned, a platform collapsed, or an institution was publicly humiliated. Before you wondered what would replace it, notice what you felt first.

For many, the first emotion was not fear. It was relief.

This logic no longer belongs to politics alone. Companies are praised more for decisive cuts than for long, uncertain repair. Platforms reward outrage and exits over stewardship. Institutions designed for continuity now perform disruption simply to prove they are alive.

Authority no longer has to prove it can carry complexity. It only has to prove it can drop it.

That is the dangerous inversion. When removal becomes the primary proof of power, destruction no longer needs a replacement plan. It only needs applause. At that point, consent and surrender begin to blur.

People are not asking for chaos. They are asking for relief. But relief is not progress, and silence is not resolution. A system that rewards those who make things disappear will eventually elevate people whose only skill is making things disappear.

Not because they are villains, but because the system taught them that this is what winning looks like.

Power does not always arrive by force. Sometimes it is lifted into place because it promises to carry nothing forward.

That is why this moment feels volatile and strangely celebratory at the same time. We are not being conquered. We are cheering because something heavy has been put down.

Comic

“If war were truly human nature, it wouldn’t need to be sold to us.”

For centuries, war has been framed as an unavoidable part of human existence—an instinct as natural as hunger or love. We’re told that conflict is in our DNA, that violence is simply what humans do when resources are scarce or when ideologies clash. But what if that’s not true?

What if war isn’t a reflection of human nature but a product of carefully engineered incentives—a system designed and maintained by those who benefit from it?

Look past the patriotic slogans, the historical narratives, the Hollywood heroics, and you’ll see that war is not an accident, nor an inevitability. It is a business, a strategy, and a tool—one that rewards a select few while costing millions of lives.

Who Profits from Perpetual War?

War is often justified with grand ideals—freedom, security, justice. But follow the money, and you’ll find a far less noble reality.

1. The Economic Engine of War

Wars do not just happen—they are fueled by an entire ecosystem of corporations, lobbyists, and financial interests that thrive on global instability.

  • The Arms Industry: The global arms trade is a trillion-dollar business, with defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and BAE Systems profiting immensely from every escalation of conflict. These companies don’t just sell weapons—they lobby governments, fund think tanks, and influence foreign policy to ensure that war remains a constant.
  • Resource Exploitation: Wars are often fought not for ideology, but for oil, minerals, and strategic territory. The Iraq War, for example, saw multinational corporations swoop in to control lucrative oil fields under the guise of democracy-building.
  • Reconstruction Profits: Destruction creates markets. The same corporations that profit from bombing a country often profit from rebuilding it. In Afghanistan and Iraq, defense contractors made billions on government contracts to “reconstruct” infrastructure their weapons helped destroy.

War is not random chaos. It is a business model—one where violence creates demand, and instability ensures continued supply.

2. Power and Political Control

Beyond financial incentives, war serves as a powerful tool for political elites to maintain and expand control.

  • Distracting the Public: When governments face internal crises—economic downturns, scandals, civil unrest—nothing redirects public attention like a well-timed “external enemy.” History is full of examples where leaders leveraged war to unite fractured populations or deflect criticism.
  • Expanding Authoritarianism: Fear justifies repression. Wars—both foreign and domestic—are often used as excuses to erode civil liberties, expand surveillance, and militarize police forces. Governments that claim to fight for democracy abroad often use the same wars to restrict democracy at home.
  • Maintaining Global Hierarchies: War isn’t just about nations fighting each other—it’s about maintaining the power structures that benefit the ruling elite. Superpowers wage proxy wars to control strategic regions, install favorable regimes, and prevent economic independence in weaker nations.

War keeps the powerful in power. Peace, on the other hand, threatens hierarchies—because peace often means redistributing power and resources more fairly.

The Myth of War as “Human Nature”

If war were truly inevitable—if it were simply a product of our genetic programming—then why have so many societies thrived in peaceful cooperation?

  • Post-WWII Europe: After centuries of war, European nations chose economic integration over armed conflict—resulting in unprecedented peace between former rivals.
  • The Peace Process in Northern Ireland: After decades of violence, incentives shifted from fighting to economic and political cooperation, leading to stability.
  • Hunter-Gatherer Societies: Anthropological studies reveal that many pre-agricultural human societies avoided war altogether, prioritizing cooperation and negotiation instead.

War is not hardwired into our species. It is imposed. It is incentivized. It is sold.

The Role of Mythmaking: How We’re Conditioned to Accept War

Most people don’t want war. So how do governments convince populations to accept it? Through storytelling.

  • The Hero Narrative: Films, TV, and video games glorify war as a noble struggle of good vs. evil—conditioning generations to see violence as honorable.
  • The Fear Narrative: News outlets flood the public with stories of imminent threats—keeping populations in a state of anxiety where militarization seems like the only option.
  • The Destiny Narrative: History books often portray war as inevitable—as if societies were destined to clash rather than manipulated into conflict.

Every war needs public buy-in. And that buy-in is carefully manufactured.

War Isn’t Inevitable—It’s a Choice

The most dangerous myth about war is that it is unavoidable.

But war is not a law of nature. It is a system, carefully built and maintained. And what is built can be dismantled.

The question is: Who benefits from you believing otherwise?

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