What the Meltdown over Hegseth’s All-Hands Military Speech Tells Us About Modern Media

Social media is a strange place, and not only because of the recent influx of sombrero-themed political memes. (If you understand what this means, and you don’t do punditry or reporting for a living, then I’d advise taking a break from the internet to hug your kids or walk the dog; they probably miss you.)

It’s a place where relatively noteworthy or even humdrum news events are repackaged by chronically histrionic users as five-alarm fires — shocking, terrible, unprecedented affairs that prove that the fate of the republic, nay, our core democracy, now hangs in the balance.