Within the storytelling of western politics and punditry there exists a fictional type of mental illness which only affects people the US empire doesn't like.

If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, its crazy lunatic government will flip out and nuke us all.

Watch out for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, those guys are a bunch of maniacal antisemites who want to attack Israelis just because they're Jewish.

Oh no, Putin is invading Ukraine completely unprovoked because he's a madman who hates freedom and won't stop until he's conquered all of Europe.

China is building up its military because the megalomaniacal Xi Jinping wants to take over the world; all those US military bases surrounding China are just a defensive measure to contain Beijing's insanity.

Assad just went nuts one day and started slaughtering his own people out of nowhere.

Gaddafi is a sexual sadist who's giving Viagra to his troops to help them commit mass rapes in Libya.

Saddam Hussein is so crazy and evil he's trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction to give Americans another 9/11.

The North Koreans used to be far too insane to be allowed to have nuclear weapons because they'd nuke San Francisco immediately, but after they obtained nuclear weapons they were miraculously cured of this rare psychological disorder.

The stories of the western empire ask us to believe that everyone who finds themselves in the imperial crosshairs is an irrational actor whose loony behavior can only be attributed to some uncontrollable defect within their own minds, or who will soon snap and do something nutty if they are not contained by force.

One antagonist who never appears in these fairy tales of the western empire is the western empire itself. In the storytelling of the empire, there is no globe-spanning power structure which is constantly inflicting violence and destruction upon populations around the world while seeking to crush any nation who disobeys its dictates. It's just a bunch of irrational psychos, seeking nuclear weapons and becoming aggressively militaristic for no other reason than because they are crazy, while the totally normal alliance led by a totally normal country in North America innocently responds to their crazy behavior.