The destructiveness of media and government is a function of their laziness. Over time it is revealed that a cursory examination of the distance between a phone booth and the bombing would have shown that it was physically impossible for Richard Jewell to have committed the crime by himself. And if he didn’t commit it by himself, then the criminological “profile” of a lone wolf and wannabe-hero that was used to make him a suspect no longer applied to him. But for the FBI, one bad theory is just the entry point for embracing another.

And that is more than true on Netflix, which bought the little-noticed Paramount miniseries Waco. This series portrays the horrible standoff between the Branch Davidian cult and the federal government, which ended with the Davidian “Mount Carmel” compound undergoing a gas assault led by tanks. It culminated in a fire that killed the 75 remaining inhabitants, 25 of them children.

While the series does show some skepticism of David Koresh, particularly concerning his practice of assuming the marital rights to the women from all the married men in the compound, overall it takes a maximally anti-government side in all the disputes about what happened in 1993 (spoilers to follow).