For those of us who believe Twitter became a hellscape after Elon Musk walked in the door with a kitchen sink, the last few days have been a reminder of why the platform was already kind of a hellscape before that awful day. Specifically, what’s left of Vermont Twitter, which ain’t much, went absolutely to town with bad takes on the shooting of three Palestinian students Saturday night in Burlington.

The common theme: Commenters of all persuasions blew right past the human tragedy in their rush to hammer home their political talking points.

It began, predictably, with the chaos crowd, who seem to take great pleasure in promoting the idea that Burlington has become a cesspit of crime. Wow, three people shot near the UVM campus? Among the tall trees and stately mansions? Time to roll back criminal justice reform and give the BPD whatever it wants!

That sentiment expired as soon as the nationality of the victims became public knowledge. Palestinian collegians wearing keffiyehs? Hardly seemed like a random act.

And then came the cries of “hate crime.” That’s what it turned out to be (pending further revelations about the shooter), but at the time there was no concrete evidence to support the notion. It was all circumstantial. Powerful, but not definitive.

There were accusations of official inattention, even of a cover-up. Police Chief Jon Murad was excoriated for not branding the incident as a hate crime.

Here’s the problem. Activists, friends, relatives, and interest groups can make the obvious inference and call for appropriate investigation and prosecution. That’s their role. But Murad can’t do that. He can’t outrun the evidence. It would have been irresponsible.

Instead, he made it clear that authorities were open to the idea. “No one can look at this incident and not suspect that it may have been a hate-motivated crime,” he said.

There were quite a few sweeping accusations of complicity aimed at leaders (especially Democrats) who had either supported Israel in its war with Hamas or failed to adequately condemn its tactics. I read one tweet that blamed the shooting on Bernie Sanders — Bernie Sanders — because he hadn’t called for an immediate cease fire.

I’ll just note here that Sanders’ father’s family was virtually wiped out in the Holocaust, which must have a strong impact on how Sanders feels about the Jewish homeland. Gentile commenters should maybe allow him some space there.

We also had the inevitable calls for the police to get moving already and find the killer. Which is exactly what they did; the alleged shooter, Jason Eaton, was in custody within 24 hours of the incident and was charged less than a day later.

Eaton’s motive remains unclear. He’s spent much of his life as something of a latter-day hippie, although recent social media activity seems to point to a darker turn of late; his mother has spoken of struggles with mental illness. This transient ambiguity has opened space for some late-stage straw-man punching. Some in the Burlington Chaos crowd are casting doubt on the idea that Eaton was motivated by anti-Palestinian feeling; one proclaimed it was “doubtful” that Eaton realized his victims were Palestinian. Submitted for your consideration: He has no idea what he’s talking about.

All in all, it’s been a frenetic 48 hours. From crime to investigation to arrest to arraignment, it’s a blink of an eye. But plenty of time for people to fire off 280-character bursts of instant analysis and duck back behind a parapet when the facts overtake their speculations.