The acceleration of political news has moved from measured, dichotomous rhetoric in campaign cycles, where spikes and troughs of public opinion polls crest and dip on a wide scale, to highly intense and narrowed needle swings of frequency fueled by ravenous and ambiguous media. Within the tightening stream of one permanent campaign nowadays, the right vs left slugfest more closely resembles a sustained collision of trembling laser beams that befit an arm wrestling contest.
 
  Moreover, media reports have had an atomizing effect in that each turn in developing events re-assembles particles into potential ideological narratives ripe for packaging into the fray that strengthen the tension in partisan conflicts.