Shooting In Dallas: Stop Selling the Story Before You Know It

Why calling Dallas an “Anti-ICE” attack...while detained immigrants died...pours gasoline on a country already on fire

Shooting In Dallas: Stop Selling the Story Before You Know It

Why calling Dallas an “Anti-ICE” attack…while detained immigrants died…pours gasoline on a country already on fire

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #569: Wednesday, September 24th, 2025.

Let’s start with the part the headlines skipped.

Within hours of the Dallas shooting, the country was told it was an “Anti-ICE” attack. Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

What we do know:

The people who died were detained immigrants…human beings with no control over where they stood when the rounds came in.

That mismatch matters. Because when you christen an event with a motive before you’ve done the work, you’re not clarifying the public square—you’re pressurizing it. You’re adding oxygen to a room that’s already full of fumes.

I’m not going to use the comfortable metaphors you hear from my lane. Forget “messaging” talk.

Think like a fire marshal and a factory foreman.

• The fire marshal asks: What are the conditions that make this burn hotter…faster… wider?

• The factory foreman asks: What assembly line is stamping out these quick…clean labels at scale…and why?

Answer those two…and you’ll see why the habit of declaring motive hours after a shot is fired doesn’t just mislead. It accelerates the worst people in the audience.

The Fire Triangle of Political Violence

Every firefighter learns day one: a blaze needs three things…fuel…oxygen…and heat.

Remove any leg of that triangle and the fire drops. Add to any leg and the fire grows.

America’s public square is running the same physics.

• Fuel = grievance (real or imagined), hardened into identity.

• Oxygen = attention (from media…officials…platforms…and all of us).

• Heat = speed and certainty (the adrenaline rush of instant motive).

Dallas showed all three.

We had flash-point grievance around immigration. We had national oxygen…wall-to-wall coverage within minutes.

And we had heat: “Anti-ICE” stamped on a still-smoldering scene while the investigation hadn’t even found its seat.

If you want less fire…you don’t sermonize the flames. You remove an input. Right now…,we keep adding.

The Assembly Line That Stamps the First Story

Picture a plant floor with a conveyor belt.

Raw incident comes in. Ten machines slam down in sequence: headline, motive, quotes, clips…reactions…fundraising…algorithms…op-eds…counter-reactions…memes. Finished product out the door in under an hour.

Why the speed?

Because in this factory…speed is the bonus structure. The first to frame the thing gets the most throughput…traffic…airtime…influence. The correction machine in the back?

It’s underfunded…understaffed…and turns on only after the shipment has already hit every shelf in America.

That’s not conspiracy. It’s workflow.

It’s how modern institutions pay themselves…immediately and per unit…for stamping a frame on top of chaos.

And the easiest stamp…the one that fits every jig…is the motive label. Two words. High voltage. Plugs right into every tribe’s wall socket.

“Anti-ICE.” “Pro-X.” “Domestic Terror.” “Extremist.” Choose your stamp. The belt doesn’t care. It just pays for volume.

Why “Anti-ICE” Lands So Hard…and Why It Backfires

Motive labels do three things instantly:

They centralize a villain.

The story becomes about the agency or ideology named…not about the people harmed.

In Dallas, the first bodies were detainees…yet the title role went to an agency many Americans have feelings about. Your attention is steered away from victims and toward arguments.

They monopoly-lock the frame.

Once the banner says “Anti-ICE,” every later fact is judged against that pronouncement.

If it fits…it’s blasted as corroboration. If it conflicts…it’s buried…labeled “unclear,” or presented as an aside. The first stamp shapes all the downstream parts.

They recruit the next arsonist.

The most brittle mind in the audience is always taking notes: So if I want the nation to chant my grievance…I put the stamp on it fast.

You didn’t just narrate; you published instructions on how to hijack a day’s worth of oxygen.

That’s how you turn an already flammable culture into a flashover.

Identity Is the Fuel Piled in the Corner

There used to be daylight between policy and personhood. Not anymore.

Immigration…elections…policing…touch them…and you’re told you’re touching who you are. That’s gasoline stacked waist-high.

When identity becomes the fuel…the smallest spark is plenty. A rumor becomes a proof. A clue becomes a verdict. A two-word stamp becomes a summons.

So when we brand Dallas “Anti-ICE” while immigrants die on the pavement…what we teach each tribe is simple and poisonous:

• One side hears: Any horror will be spun to protect the state.

• The other hears: Any horror will be spun to attack the state.

Both harden. Nobody cools. And the worst actors…the ones looking for a reason to “do something”….feel their duty muscles flex.

The Moral Injury We Don’t Count

There’s a wound we never tally.

Call it narrative injury. It happens when the people actually harmed get shoved out of the spotlight by a stamp that flatters everyone else’s storyline.

Imagine being the family member of a detained immigrant killed in that attack. You wake up to see the country talk about a fight over the agency…the politics…the spin…while your person becomes a background figure in somebody else’s chess match.

That erasure breeds bitterness.

Bitterness breeds counter-stories. Counter-stories breed mobilization. And the cycle feeds itself. We’re not just bad at truth; we’re bad at mercy. And a culture that can’t extend mercy in the moment will default to anger every time.

“But We Had Clues…”

Maybe you did. Investigators often find slogans…markings…posts. That’s the start of a process…not the finish.

A single clue is a match. It isn’t the cause of a fire…and it isn’t the report you write before the smoke clears.

Real investigators know the sequence: preserve…document…test…corroborate…brief.

Real leaders know the discipline: Here’s what we know; here’s what we don’t; we’ll update you at X time.

We’ve replaced that sequence with a vending machine: insert one clue…receive a motive stamp.

The result is not “informed citizens.”

It’s inflamed factions. And inflamed factions buy more of the thing that made them feel…which means the assembly line reorders the same parts tomorrow…but faster.

The Heat: Speed and Certainty

If grievance is fuel and attention is oxygen, speed + certainty are your heat sources. The hotter you run them…the more your fire spreads.

• Speed compresses judgment. We don’t just “want it now”; we want it before it exists.

• Certainty flatters pride. It tells us we were right before the facts arrived.

Together…they create a world where saying “We don’t know yet” is treated like weakness. In reality…it’s the most adult sentence you can put in a microphone.

Hopkins Rule: If You Want Different Outcomes… Change the Inputs

You can preach all day. You can scold your enemies. You can tweet your virtue.

Outcomes won’t change until inputs change.

Here’s the concrete…operational fix…no theory…just steps that cool the room and jam the assembly line that keeps shoving motive stamps into fresh wounds.

1) First 24–48 hours: Timeline…not motive

• Lead with what happened and what we don’t know.

• Put victims at the center of the first tellings.

• Motive lives below the fold as a question…not a banner.

Bad: “Anti-ICE gunman murders X.”
Better: “Shots fired at ICE facility; detainees killed; investigators examining possible ideological clues; motive undetermined.”

You didn’t hide. You sequenced.

2) Set a motive threshold and enforce it

No headline motive until both of these are satisfied:

• A verifiable perpetrator declaration…and

• Corroboration from actions and evidence presented by investigators.

Even then…you attribute: “Police say the shooter claimed…” You don’t carry the claim as gospel until the case file closes.

3) Ban method glamor in the hot window

No rooftop B-roll from the shooter’s vantage. No gear porn. No looping the perpetrator’s slogans…logos…or ammo graffiti. You can inform without teaching. You can report without advertising.

4) Discipline for officials: 72-hour restraint

No motive speeches…no policy victory laps…no “what this really means” until investigators brief. Officials who follow that rule get praise. Those who break it get one question: “What verified fact justified your certainty so fast?”

5) Platform tuning: rank credibility over virality for 48 hours

Downrank motive-certainty in the hot window; up-rank posts that plainly label uncertainty (“investigation ongoing,” “awaiting verification”). You’re not censoring; you’re prioritizing stability in the only window when emotion always outruns thought.

6) Citizens: adopt a 24-hour rule

You owe nobody a take. Share the human stories. Say you’re waiting on briefings. Don’t share motive memes. You’ll cut your own anxiety and your circle’s temperature in half.

“We’ll Lose the Audience!”

No. You’ll gain trust. A Walter Cronkite kind of trust. And trust is the only currency that spends during a crisis.

Short-term clicks are a cheap high with a savage hangover. Every time you stamp a premature motive and walk it back three days later…you carve another notch in public cynicism.

Cynical people don’t deliberate. They retaliate.

The adult play is credibility. It makes the next 10 crises easier instead of harder. There’s real money in that…and more importantly…there’s less blood.

What Happens if We Don’t Change the Inputs

If we stay on this track…motive stamps by lunchtime…corrections by never…you’ll see:

More prototypes:

people testing standoff positions…rooftops…transport lanes...the weak seams they just saw televised.

More pre-branding:

The next unstable actor will paint his grievance on his gear to guarantee the stamp.

More narrative whiplash:

Each tribe will hoard the initial label and call every later fact “cover-up.”

Less brake pressure:

The brittle minds you never see moving through comment sections will read your certainty as permission.

This isn’t prophecy. It’s physics. Add fuel…oxygen…and heat…and you don’t get a debate. You get a burn.

The Most Radical Sentence in American Public Life

Here it is again: “We don’t know yet.”

Make it your headline. Make it your talking point. Make it your pledge for the first day of any major event. That one sentence does more to cool a room than a thousand lectures about unity.

It tells the decent majority: We’re adults here.
It tells the worst minority: You won’t program us with your timing.

That’s how you reduce oxygen. That’s how you lower heat. That’s how you keep fuel from flashing.

What You Can Do From Your Chair

You don’t need a badge or a broadcast tower. You need a standard. Here’s a simple one:

• If I don’t know, I say I don’t know.

• If they’re hurt, I put them first.

• If there’s a clue, I call it a clue.

• If a leader rushes motive, I ask for the fact that justified it.

• If the room feels hot, I slow my own breath and my own posts.

That’s not naïveté. That’s courage. Because the courage our country lacks is not the courage to condemn violence. Everyone can do that on autopilot.

The courage we lack is the courage to withhold certainty when certainty is the most valuable drug in town.

Perhaps you’ve noticed in some past issues of JHN, that when I write about something that I don’t yet have supporting facts for, I’ll frame it as a hypothetical.

That signals to everyone, “Hey…let’s think about this. Just discuss what it could mean for the world/us/them…but understand we are speculating at this point…for the sake of discussion.”

“Hypothetical,” I feel, is an important word to use…when discussing something without supporting evidence/facts. Have I failed to use that standard at times? Oh, I’m sure of it. I’m constantly working to improve.

Final Word: Stop Naming the Fire Before You Check the Room

Dallas is a tragedy.

It’s also a case study in our worst reflex: brand the motive first… interview the facts later…and then act shocked when the temperature keeps rising.

It’s not complicated.

We keep building fires because we run a factory that rewards the stamp and a triangle that feeds the flames.

If you want fewer fires…starve the triangle and jam the factory:

Less heat (speed/certainty)…less oxygen (attention to premature labels and method glamor)…less fuel (identity talk that dehumanizes neighbors and erases victims).

We owe the dead…and the next living family who doesn’t know they’re about to be made into someone’s talking point…more than tidy headlines.

We owe them a sequence that honors truth:

What happened. Who’s hurt. What we don’t know. When we’ll know more.

Say it. Stick to it. And watch how quickly a country that’s been panting for oxygen finally catches its breath.

Here’s the bottom line:

If we want less blood and more truth…we stop baptizing chaos with instant motives and start enforcing adult discipline…what happened…who’s hurt…what we don’t know…when we’ll know more. That’s it. No heroics. No performative certainty.

Editors, set the 48-hour no-motive rule.

Officials, hold the podium until you have facts.

Platforms, rank credibility over virality in the hot zone.

Citizens, make “We don’t know yet” your first sentence…not your last.

Do this and the temperature drops. Don’t…and you’ll keep paying compound interest on outrage…until the next unstable man learns…again…that all he needs to control the country’s conversation is a gun…a rooftop…and two words you hand him for free.

I’ll be back soon. We have a lot to talk about!

Walking with you…forward,

-Jack