January 6 and the Triumph of the Justification Machine Highlight

The early hours of a catastrophic news event were once for sense-making: What happened, exactly? Who was behind it? What was the scale? Now every event is immediately grist for the machine. After a mass shooting, partisans scramble for evidence to suggest that the killer is MAGA, or a radical leftist, or a disaffected trans youth. Last week, in the hours after a mass murderer ran a car into civilians on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Trump began tossing out lies and speculation about the suspect, suggesting that he was a migrant (information later arrived indicating that the driver was a U.S. citizen and Army veteran). The tragedy and the chaos of its immediate aftermath became an opportunity to attack Democrats about the border.