The FSB grabs the Investigative Committee by the throat, and then the FSB tears into customs. The Prosecutor General's Office sinks its teeth into the Investigative Committee, wrenching a Moscow airport from its weakening jaws, recalling past humiliations linked to the closure of illegal casinos. From under the carpet, the bodies of distinguished bulldogs are swept away.

The viewer watches the power struggle of the siloviki with a beer in hand. Even the enlightened citizen, trained by the liberal press to seek hidden meanings in everything, watches the reports from the battlefields of the secret services with detachment, as if it were a 3D reconstruction of a prehistoric lizard duel, drawn for him by the educational British channel BBC. As if all of this has nothing to do with him — with us.

But it does.

The current flourishing of the special services — the Federal Security Service spreading its crumpled wings, the National Guard swearing allegiance directly and without intermediaries to the President, and the Investigative Committee and the Prosecutor General's Office in their perpetual invigorating sparring — happens solely thanks to us, the multinational people of the Russian Federation.

The only significant skill that Russian special services possess, the only commodity they trade in, is their ability to preempt and suppress popular uprisings and elite dissent. Their skills in preserving the current ecosystem. And the only buyer for this commodity is the current President of Russia.

It is precisely in their promises to most effectively track, monitor, predict, calculate, inform, catch, eavesdrop, spy, provoke, entrap, prevent, thwart, expose, uncover traitors and moles, extract confessions, discredit, neutralize, intimidate, disperse, fragment, recruit, demobilize, paralyze, isolate, imprison, and in extreme cases eliminate, that the power agencies compete among themselves. And all these skills are intended to be applied to us.

It seems that the multinational people of the Russian Federation are not very trusted. They do not trust expert ratings, they do not trust the splendor of VTsIOM, they do not believe in television magic. They doubt the sincerity of the people, they doubt! And so, in any unclear situation, they replace the people with a paid crowd. And so, they allow the police, the National Guard, and the FSB to storm residential buildings, shoot into crowds, and use service weapons on women and children.

The people do not seem to argue with the authorities, they seem satisfied and in agreement with everything, they seem to have really liked Crimea, they seem to have believed in Donbass, they seem to have learned to love and hate Turks by the flag, they do not seem disturbed by the billions with cellists, nor by the palaces of childhood friends, nor by the connections between the siloviki and the Kushchyovka bandits, nor between the siloviki and the criminal kings, and in general, nothing seems to disturb them anymore, no matter how much the authorities try to provoke them.

A golden people! What could such a people possibly be suspected of? How shameful to expect a trick from such a people?

Yet — they wait and suspect.

Because they have been trained to suspect from the first year of their academies and higher schools, and now they cannot do otherwise. Or because, apart from fear and suspicion, they cannot produce anything else that they could sell to their only buyer.

But the buyer does not want to pay in cash: there is a shortage of cash in the country. The buyer suggests that the producers of fear feed themselves, off the land; and so the sheepdogs, obliged to protect the flocks, slaughter the sheep under the pretext that a wolf is hiding in one of their skins, grow wild, and start to devour each other.

In a healthy society, these bodies are called law enforcement; they uphold the rules of the game established by law, allowing the citizens of the country to peacefully produce the gross national product. In the "smoker's society," this definition describes and explains nothing, and instead, the term "power agencies" is used, as they have privatized the state monopoly on violence and wield it based on their own benefit, having forgotten about the benefit of the state.

The siloviki in Russia are the last true businessmen and the last true politicians, which is why it is so interesting for us, the lowest link in the food chain, to observe the battles of the generals happening somewhere far above. And then, the cannibalization of the siloviki temporarily distracts them, which is already a blessing for the rest of the people. But it must be remembered that predators, despite their hypertrophied chewing muscles and threatening fangs, are very vulnerable. They do not produce organic matter from solar energy, they do not process fiber into animal proteins, they produce nothing at all except fear, and despite their disdain for plankton and herbivores, when they have devoured everything they can reach, their days will be numbered.

The battle of the lizards in Russia unfolds not for the right to guard the flocks, but for the right to exterminate them. The ecosystem is bursting at the seams, but it is foolish to think that the fate of the herbivores should concern anyone other than the herbivores. Herbivores are always to blame — and always for the predators' hunger.

Selling the fear of a Russian revolt, ruining the economy, feasting one last time, and thereby bringing the revolt closer. Why? It is known: predators have a keen sense of smell, but often have poor eyesight. So, is it due to shortsightedness? Or to sell the Russian revolt more profitably to the Russian tsar? Interesting!

Don't switch off. Especially since you have nowhere else to switch to.