The victims of school shootings are, like the civilians killed by bombs in Iraq and the people lynched in the U.S., collateral damage–incidental to the main purpose. The object of mass extermination is to intimidate the witnesses and the survivors and make them easier to manage. Focusing on the dead victims distracts us from what the agents are about.
“False attribution of agency” isn’t just a namby pamby mistake in logic; it keeps us from seeing what is going on. GWB, who was also able to speak truth because he could count on not being believed, explained it when he said “we fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.” Nobody asked him who “them” was. The gullible American public assumed he meant “terrorists” without realizing that the source of the authoritarians’ terror are the people, the public, who would challege their claim to authority and expose their incompetence.
Yes, the Dude is worse than GWB. That is probably not an opinion shared by the people of Iraq whose country was bombed to smithereens by the invaders. Remember the schools and hospitals and mosques that got bombed in Iraq? No, of course not. Because the images of dead children and swollen corpses floating in the rivers were embargoed. In exchange for a front row seat, the American press submitted to censorship.