Those premises are that a talking head or oped told them it was the responsible if unpleasant thing to do.

Yes the way we form our beliefs and vocabularies is largely contingent on our experiences and sources, be they Thomas Kuhn, Michael Parenti, or Tucker Carlson.

You're just describing layers of propaganda and contradiction-deflecting defense mechanisms:

That's what these look like from the outside, but from the inside they look like, and for all intents and purposes, are, eminently reasonable and defensible justifications for thinking the things they think. In certain meaningful ways, we don't even live on the same planet as them.

they know the costs of austerity and hegemony are wrong so they recoil from learning about the details

How do they know this? We know this, but I don't think we can assign this knowledge to them. If we ask them this, their just as likely to say it's regrettable, but on consideration, morally preferable to the alternatives.