From driftglass:
As of this writing, “thots-n-prayers” is the undisputed king of hollow virtue-signaling about the predictable atrocities that mass-murder their way into the headlines every week. But coming in a strong second in the media’s lexicon of platitudinous synonyms for “We need to feign concern for [insert tragedy here] even though were damn sure never going to do a damn thing about it” are the inevitable calls for various “National Conversations” (from the NYT in 2016):
The term has become the sad equivalent of the jolly drinking axiom: It’s always national-conversation time somewhere. Whenever the mood around an issue ought to change — guns, policing, marriage, the Oscars — somebody will say we need to talk about it. We should be sitting around and figuring this thing out. We need to have “real,” “substantive,” “difficult” exchanges — about our personal biases, about our bad policies — that reach far and go deep. “It’s time for a national conversation” about mental health, retirement savings, drones.
Well thanks to Donald Trump and Republican Party, we are now having … something. It’s not a national conversation exactly, but you and I have been given front row seats to the collapse of the Republican Party. And in the wild fratricidal light of the death throes of the Party of Trump, if you look carefully, you will find the keys to understanding the media’s radical avoidance of any national conversation about anything of substance.