We act like the missiles decide their targets. As if the Hellfire drone strike has free will. But in modern warfare—and in modern narrative warfare—the target isn’t a target until someone paints it.Laser-guided munitions don’t wake up one day and say, “That guy.” They wait. For a signal. A beam. A blinking beacon hidden under the floorboards. The ordnance doesn’t think. It follows.And in our endless info-war of vibes and virality, it’s the same. Redditors, TikTok rage reels, MeidasTouch-style echo chambers—those are just the munitions. They’re not autonomous. They’re reactive. What matters is: Who painted the target?Was it a whisper campaign? A blue-checked influencer who switched lanes? Was it a newsletter, a leak, a leak about a newsletter? Who snuck past the perimeter and aimed the dot?This is the essay.We don’t talk enough about the targeting package. The long-range recon patrol who slips behind lines to mark something—someone—as worthy of outrage. Maybe they parachuted in. Maybe they’re already embedded. Either way, their job is to illuminate.Then comes the kill chain:Think tank report (intel)Atlantic op-ed (authorization)Twitter thread (delivery)TikTok (warhead)You never even saw the spotter.One day, Trump is the darling of Manhattan media, a beloved caricature. The next, he’s worse than Hitler. Bin Laden? Our Cold War asset. Saddam? Our oil-stabilizing friend. Gaddafi? Photographed with Condi Rice’s mixtape on his nightstand. Then: all painted. All vaporized.Even Putin was “New Russia” once—mining nickel, flirting with NATO. Now he’s an eternal villain, an ex-KGB fascist oligarch. We changed the noun from industrialist to oligarch and thought we’d done analysis.Narrative paints. Facts arrive later.Ask yourself: Why wasn’t Obama painted? Or Biden? Or even Bush, in his second term? Naomi Wolf tried in 2007—she practically screamed “authoritarian creep!”—but her dot never caught the beam.Because the paint has to stick. The actor must be ready. The story must allow it.Trump? He welcomed the role. Signed the casting contract. Took the heel heat and ran with it like it was WrestleMania. “Make America Great Again” was a catchphrase, not a policy. It was kayfabe all the way down. He turned politics into wrestling. But who booked the match?It’s tempting to believe these men write their own roles. But come on. This is Stanford/Oxbridge season 6: Global Civics. These leaders come out of the same boarding schools, the same land-grant universities, the same think tanks and G20 mixers.Bad actors are cast. Sometimes they audition. Sometimes they’re just… available.And when their arc is up? Witness protection, or a tombstone with a question mark. Epstein. Elvis. Tupac. “Is he dead, or just reassigned?”The script demands turnover.You’re not going to understand power through a fascism bingo card. Power doesn’t yell its name. It whispers. It points. It paints.So stop obsessing over the missiles. The real question is: Who’s behind the brush?The Kill Chain of Public NarrativeThe Fickleness of TargetsTarget Painting Is The Real PowerThe Actor Doesn’t Write the ScriptRetire the Checklist, Follow the Laser

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