Extract from ABC News
Analysis
Fighting has raged in the Middle East for more than two weeks, and it can be hard to keep up. (Reuters: Orhan Qereman)
You're probably feeling exhausted.
I'm not talking about the daily grind, whatever yours looks like. I mean the other stuff that's been going on.
How scrolling on social media, even for just a few minutes, can leave you completely overwhelmed, or looking at the latest headlines makes you think everything is moving too fast. Lately it's been the Middle East war. Not so long ago, it was Greenland.
If this type of fatigue sounds like your new normal, some experts argue it is not your fault.
They say while the relentless pace of geopolitics might make our world seem disorganised and chaotic, it is actually a powerful political tool being deployed by the White House.
Donald Trump's former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is often credited as this strategy's mastermind. He even had a phrase for it: "Flooding the zone."
So to understand why you might feel swamped right now, let's reflect on the past few months.
US President Donald Trump and his team often set the geopolitical agenda. (Pool: Laurent Gillieron via Reuters)
Around the globe, many things are moving at a dizzying speed and the pace is being set from Washington. A lot of it has involved lethal military force.
Trump ordered the president of Venezuela to be snatched and extradited. Iran's supreme leader was killed two weeks ago. The US military also bombed Islamic State targets in Nigeria (on Christmas Day, did you miss that one?) and drug traffickers in Ecuador (last week).
It looks like Cuba could be next. No-one is talking about Greenland anymore, but they certainly were in January. The list goes on.
When viewed in isolation, these decisions appear erratic. When they're considered together, analysts argue a methodical strategy emerges: flooding the zone.
"This flood is biblical, pretty much literally," says Mark Shanahan, an associate professor of political engagement at the University of Surrey, adding Trump was "now using America's armed forces as his own personal box of toy soldiers".
Aussies are often able to observe all this play out from afar, even if the US is still routinely described as our greatest ally. But this week, the war in the Middle East provided a reminder we are not immune.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Tuesday announced the government had agreed to send missiles and a surveillance plane (plus the dozens of military personnel required to operate it) to the region. Technically, lawyers have argued, we are now at war.
While this request for help came from Gulf nations, not the US, the series of events that led to it being made are at least in part a consequence of Trump's decision to back Israel, bomb Iran and kill Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the previous weekend.
The president has offered multiple justifications for the initial attacks, all of which the Islamic Republic disputes. Still, not every White House edict can be written off as flooding the zone.
Even if the extent to which this conflict forms part of the strategy is up for debate, our reaction to it has been much less equivocal.
Geopolitical crises that used to command our attention for prolonged periods — for example, one nation killing the leader of another — are now quickly superseded by whatever the next thing, or threat, is.
The level of fatigue among Australians was clear after Albanese's announcement. While there were some isolated protests, overwhelmingly, the public response (both for and against) was muted.
With everything else that's been going on, perhaps many of us were too exhausted to react.
Relentless decisions come with consequences
Tama Leaver, a professor of internet studies at Perth's Curtin University, says it's no surprise our "radars are broken" amid this information overload.
"It's very difficult for the average person to calibrate how big another new global event like the Iran war is, when Ukraine is still ongoing, Gaza is still ongoing, Venezuela too.
"This just feels like one more thing to deal with when there was no resolution to the previous things."
For Trump, critics argue, this creates an environment where he can avoid scrutiny. The deluge of announcements and scandal will disorientate many of us, including journalists, who are often at the coalface of transferring information between Trump and everyone else.
Bannon explained how he saw this equation during the president's first term, when he described the media as "dumb", "lazy" and incapable of having multiple focuses.
"All we have to do is flood the zone," he told PBS in 2019. "Every day we hit them with three things. They'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang."
This already challenging environment is compounded, Professor Leaver says, by other factors.
Perspectives have become more polarised. Facts people disagree with are dismissed as fake. Social media platforms — already concentrated in the hands of a few billionaires — have increasingly become a hub of falsehoods and AI slop, served up by poorly understood algorithms.
"Our information ecosystem is actually quite unhealthy right now," Professor Leaver says. "All of these things are intersecting, and it means people's ability to analyse and navigate the landscape that they're part of is quite low."
Although it may sometimes appear the US president and his team are stumbling from one decision to the next or making things up as they go along, there is evidence that's not the case.
For example, a CNN investigation last year found more than two-thirds of the executive orders Trump signed in his first week in office were "closely aligned" with a conservative blueprint designed to reshape the US government, dubbed Project 2025.
Critics claim this 900-page manifesto — produced by a right-wing think tank called the Heritage Foundation — would erode the country's democracy. Trump says he has never read it.
"It's too early to do anything more than speculate, but starting a war without clear reasoning, aims or an exit strategy doesn't bode well," Dr Shanahan says.
Whatever the motivations behind it, the US president's decision has continued a months-long geopolitical blitzkrieg for which there is apparently no end in sight.
Given all this, it's probably not surprising many Australians choose to tune out. Research released last year by the University of Canberra found 69 per cent of people "often, sometimes or occasionally" avoid consuming news.
Switching off from the latest headlines or social media updates might seem like a straightforward way to steer clear of getting overwhelmed or outraged.
But ignoring this non-stop nature of White House decisions does not change the reality: these actions come with consequences for us all. The Middle East war is no different. We're already seeing some.
So far, more than 1,000 people have been killed. For Australians, many of whom will feel geographically separated from the fighting, food and fuel bills are soon expected to increase as a direct result of supply-chain disruptions.
What the longer-term impacts of a new generation of Iranians radicalised against the US and its allies means we will have to wait and find out.
And, on top of all that, there's the fact that you're probably feeling exhausted.
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