Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
We need to see this trend of these tragic attacks as a powerful metric that the health of our society is trending in the wrong direction. We overly focus on the individuals who act out. We can't prevent individuals from acting out, but we can look to ways to address the trends in society as a whole. This very thread is named in the context of the individual, the "lone wolf." That is tactical thinking: How do I stop the lone wolf. I think strategic thinking would be: how do I change this trend in the society as a whole.
I don't see the murderous actions of mostly deranged young men as a metric of anything other than a trend among deranged young men. As frightening and disturbing as these things are, they are still the actions of very isolated individuals. There is nothing society wide about it. Something like murder rates as a whole going up and down says something about society. These don't because they are individuals taking advantage of some fairly obvious vulnerabilities.

Individuals can be prevented from acting out. That is done every day in prisons and families and everywhere. Individual humans aren't a like cells in a Portuguese man 'o war, each an animal in its own right but acting as a whole. Individuals humans aren't Borg parts. They are individuals and make individual decisions. If they are likely to get frustrated or thumped, they probably won't act in a way that will get them frustrated or thumped. Getting thumped hurts.

It is nice to think about the big picture but what is the object of the big picture thinking? It is to stop those little picture things that hurt. If short sighted superficial tactical things reduce greatly mass shootings, then the object is accomplished.

Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
The approach to the attacks of 9/11 share this same flaw. We focus overly on how do we "defeat, disrupt, deny" organizations such as AQ, rather than on how do we better understand and address the trends in society that are fueling the rise of such organizations.
An object of things done after 9-11 was to prevent attacks of a similar magnitude from happening in the US again. That has been (knock on wood that it continues) accomplished. That isn't a flawed approach. It has worked.