A more generous interpretation, that does not require buying into the generic, unactionable cynicism that everyone is corrupt, is simply that new laws require n

A more generous interpretation, that does not require buying into the generic, unactionable cynicism that everyone is corrupt, is simply that new laws require neat, easily comprehensible and emotional stories to be enacted. As examples I would cite federal hate crime legislation, enacted after a particularly abhorrent lynching of a gay teenager IIRC. Or the current change of approach to Saudi Arabia’s ruling sadists: of course their industrial slaughter and engineered starvation of children in Yemen is the far larger crime, but the smoking bone saw of Istanbul just grips us far more viscerally.