Much of the mainstream media covered this week’s “unified reich” posting as if this were just part of a typical campaign. “Trump’s latest flirtation with Nazi symbolism draws criticism,” one headline in the Hill put it.

Yep, this phenomenon was examined recently by The Intercept, who note that the need to sell news means that media organizations are unable to sustain the level of heightened alarm that Trump and the GOP’s actions merit, because very quickly people burn out (analogous to what in security is called “alert fatigue”) trying to constantly keep up with the unending stream of dangerous rhetoric he spews. So instead it gets treated as old-hat, and normalized, or falls through the cracks.