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The news cycle is the most powerful force in the Universe. Remember the El Paso shooting? Remember the camps at the border? Remember Epstein?
In two weeks I'll tweet "Remember Greta Thunberg? Remember the Climate Strike?"
The News Cycle is that little device from Men in Black that flashes a light and makes everyone forget what they just saw.
In fact, Billy Joel once wrote a song about it. But now you could fill up a "We Didn't Start the Fire" sequel with a few months of Big Events.
I think the news cycle washes away stuff that institutions can't immediately do anything about (e.g. the latest Trump outrage), while at least sometimes sparking a slow but persistent process of offline institutional change in other cases.
The news cycle helps Trump because no one can really do anything about Trump, so he just weathers each storm and people forget and his poll numbers bounce back. But corporations, universities, etc. often respond to one news cycle with durable changes.
If you want to use the awesome memory-erasing power of the news cycle to your advantage, the way to do it is just to stand Pat and keep it all online until the storm passes and the cycle turns...it's clear Trump is good at this, but can he keep it up forever? We'll see.
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