The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy our capacity to form any.

– Hannah Arendt

Were you truly surprised by the shooting of Republican congressmen as they practiced for a baseball game? Why? Was it that members of the ruling Establishment – rather than persons attending a rock concert – were targeted? Or, like so many of your neighbors, did you not see the connections that underlie processes of causation?  The Establishment's mainstream media bullhorns were quick to explain the cause of the attacks as the availability of guns. You know, just like suicide-bomber attacks can be traced to the ownership of trucks, while cars cause hit-and-run-accidents! The shooting stopped only when someone with a gun – a D.C. cop in attendance to protect one of the congressman – shot the assailant. A number of the congressmen – all of whom were unarmed – remarked that, in the absence of the cop with a gun, they could all have been murdered. What if one or two of these men had been armed: would they all have been cowering in the dugouts awaiting a fate over which they had no control?

Intelligent minds must look beyond Wolf's "Situation Room" or the New York Times editorial pages for understanding the world in which you live. "Guns" were no more the cause of this one-man attempted massacre, than were "witches" the explanation for the social changes arising at Salem.

Do you seek causal explanations for this irrational, destructive behavior? If so, you must be a white-racist-peddler-of-hate! To suggest that looking to the content of thinking is to confirm an attachment to such bigoted premises of the Age of Reason as clear thinking, rational/fact-based analysis, and philosophic principles that can be clearly articulated. If this is where you're coming from, keep your hate-filled opinions to yourself, and don't go onto college campuses to speak to students. Most of these terrified youngsters will be found in safe rooms, in the protective arms of caring counselors, drinking hot chocolate; those who prefer more direct ways of dealing with your uncomfortable ideas will be out in the parking lot, setting fire to your car!  

You will find it less troubling to accept the consensus-based conclusory thinking that explains Mr. Hodgkinson's behavior as [1] the acts of a crazed, monstrous madman, and [2] having been caused by gun ownership. The "madman" explanation isolates him from the rest of humanity, and saves you the discomfort of having to consider that he might be the product of the same institutionalized thinking that you believe in. The "gun" argument will make you acceptable to the people who count; you might even get interviewed on CNN!  Furthermore, it helps to fix the blame for your misfortunes not on yourself, but on inanimate objects. It is more comforting to find alcohol as the cause of alcoholism, and to see guns and other violent weapons as the explanation for wars, murders, and the genocides that might otherwise compel you to examine the assumptions upon which our world is organized!