The degree to which Charlottesville, and now the Capitol assault, has launched a thousand think pieces is breathtaking. That's not necessarily a bad thing. The effort to find meaning in these events is part of our important national, and local, soul searching. What gets lost, however, is a focus on the mechanics of these events and what they have to teach us. In a Washington Post interview with Elle Reeve, whose excellent reporting on A12 launched her career, there is so much to learn.
"....the mechanism that brought them here [to DC] is similar [to Charlottesville] and I think really important. Which is that social media works as a brainwashing machine. You start off joking about something and then, over time, that just gets repeated so much it becomes a sincerely held belief.
“…There’s also this element of, all of these people who’ve met online and maybe the people in their real-life social circles don’t believe in what they believe in. And that’s frustrating to them. So the energy …
