Saturday, December 15, 2012

Franchise competition

There are many possible points of discussion of the Newtown, Conn. massacre. One is the possibility that the sequence of spree killers are competing with each other: the bar for outrage is being raised with each attack. A high school. A mosque. A temple. A congresswoman. A shopping mall. A cinema. And now an elementary school. And each one with a supportive infrastructure of information, money, and access to guns and tactical equipment to support the raising of the bar next time.

Didn't we just have a big debate about whether and how long it took to refer to the Benghazi consulate attack as terrorism? Yet the word "tragedy" is preferred for what is clearly a decentralized and competitive terror network operating within the country.