UCLA

 Josh Marshall has been tracking the story - or non-story - about the people who attacked the protest encampment at UCLA. Let me start by clarifying my position, since I think I've written a fair amount about the protests, but it's an on-going story with myriad facets.

- Encampments should be allowed as much as possible, as long as they do not interfere with instruction or other important campus functions.
- Breaking and entering buildings or threatening people is not protest.
- What constitutes a threat can be very tricky in the context of these protests.
- Instruction and dialogue should precede police action.
- There are a host of conditions (both unique to these protests and emblematic of our society right now) that can easily empower those looking to escalate things.

At UCLA, a group of people attacked the encampment. It appears deliberate and premeditated. It's an actual example, apparently, of "outside agitators". 

Marshall notes that there have been no arrests, despite the mobilization of both journalistic and police investigative resources. This isn't surprising when unraveling what appears to be a conspiracy. They are still arresting January Sixers. 

Here's the thing. Let's assume that these are, in fact, right wing militia types - Proud Boys and the like - whose Islamophobia is stronger than their anti-Semitism. Let's also assume that they get arrested.

A story like this tends to disappear, because it doesn't fit an existing narrative in people's minds. Biden has quite rightly called for an end to violent and threatening protests on campus, but that won't really matter, because Biden is "pro-college students" in general. People rely on these frames at the exclusion of actual evidence. The most perverse of these frames is the idea that Republican administrations are better for the economy (and thus Trump's economy was better than Biden's). The GOP is "pro-business" but that often results in poor outcomes for most people. However, that frame insulates them from answering for bad policy.

There are a lot of ways that our media is unequal to this moment, but we have to acknowledge that some of that inadequacy is because their audience simply can't grok the truth.