How to gently follow a U-turn (You can't)

The more sudden a U-turn, the louder the screech, and the tougher it is for the trail of cans tied behind the vehicle doing a 180° to remain intact. Blind loyalty poses this dilemma - how does one avoid appearing monumentally silly if one has all the while championed the action of an entity only to find one fine morning that the entity has disowned that very action? Answer: one doesn't. Consider Emperor Ashoka's 'more loyal than the king' chroniclers rah-rahing on about the Mauryan's military exploits, only to suddenly find themselves left high and dry in circa 261 BC when, at the end of the Kalinga War, the samrat declares he'll be dedicating the rest of his life to ahimsa. When you hitch your wagon to a double-backing horse, it's not the horse that risks injury, but the wagon that risks being turned to matchwood.

In the US, the right-wing media that treated the continuation of Donald Trump's presidency as dogma, found itself with its zipper down when the top dog was beaten at the races. But it still managed to reposition itself as the 'oppositional' voice in the Joe Biden era. Things are far trickier for sections of fawning media when an action or law consecrated by their lord and master is publicly dumped by the same lord and master. Ballerinas can pirouette. For the rest, the scrunch you hear is the sound of sycophantic sinews cracking.