The noise is the point

Plus: Who is the source behind Elon Musk's Twitter Files? (You'll never guess.)

This week, I gave a talk at James Madison University in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It was hard to miss the irony: I was going to give a lecture about my latest book, which explores historical memory, at a public school in a state whose conservative governor is trying to silence the past.

So I made that tension the focus of my speech: how Republicans …