In the hours immediately after the conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed in front of a large crowd of students at a Utah university on Wednesday, there was no word on who had actually done it and no explanation for why it had happened. But, in Washington, those who profess certainty no longer need much in the way of facts: partisans come equipped with preëxisting truths, and events are slotted into narratives that existed long before the events occurred. Even before Kirk’s death had been confirmed, Nancy Mace, a Republican congresswoman from South Carolina, spoke to reporters outside the Capitol. “Democrats own what happened today,” she told them. When Ryan Nobles, the chief Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, asked her if, by that logic, Republicans would own the s

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