Thread by @whstancil

The absolute disinterest of the pundit class in whether "rioting" is actually occurring, as opposed to "rioting" as a campaign issue, is deeply telling.

You'd think that every city in America is under siege but what actually happened is a cop shot a man seven times in the back and there were a couple days of unrest in the nationally unknown city where it happened.

Of course, Trump and the far right conflates protests of any kind with "rioting," and the political media seems delighted to help him with this project by skimming past whether or not it's accurate to address much-more-interesting-to-them question of "Will it save his campaign??"

Yep. US political journalists have developed a plug-and-publish model of election coverage. There are two sides. Both sides need an "argument." The arguments are reported as a choice, but not challenged. They've decided "disorder" is Trump's argument.

Now, for months, pundits are going to refer to "the riots" and "rioting" as if it's immediately obvious what they mean, though no riots are actually occurring.

It's shorthand for "something bad Biden yadda yadda," the same way "emails" meant "something bad Clinton yadda yadda."

Of course, say what you will about "emails" not making any sense or referring to anything real, but at least it wasn't racist fearmongering built around whipping up fear of out-of-control black people. You'd think pundits would be a little more cautious about the latter.. but no.