[jim-jim-jim]

The classic ideal of terrorism—an underground cell engaged in asymmetric warfare for concrete political gains—hasn't existed since what, the IRA?

All "terrorism" in the US occurs with varying degrees of foreknowledge and encouragement from its own intelligence community. That's not to say that everything is an "inside job" as much as a strange fungal ecosystem with overlapping responsibilities and incentives has bloomed that no one actor can possibly hope to contain. OKC was probably the system at its most chaotic, while post-9/11 they've seemed to stabilize things into a "groom a loner, catch, repeat" cycle with a few oopsie shooties here and there.

While it doesn't have the best track record preventing civilian deaths, this approach has arguably been very successful at redirecting all the energy that could go into coherent resistance towards nihilistic slaughter. As I alluded to in a recent post, there's no way that a platform like Discord isn't riddled with feds egging some of this shit on.