Our narrative on mass shooters seems a bit flawed, due to general lack of empathy

We have another one of these horrific things now, with the common slip-slide downward discourse taking place: now everyone is arguing over whether white offenders get taken into custody too peacefully, and whether we should use the word “terrorist” to describe them. We’ve been having these semantic arguments since 2015, if not since 1999, and if not since Kent State in ’68 or whenever that was. The semantic arguments make people feel good because they can argue with strangers on the Internet, which I think has gradually replaced intimacy for a good chunk of people, but they often don’t accomplish much and in reality, these horrible things keep happening, seemingly on the semi-regular, and we’re not much closer to stopping them from happening.

It’s a complicated problem with a lot of varied inputs, from Tucker Carlson to crappy parenting to a task-focused society where everyone is worried about their to-do list more than other human beings near them, and it’s that last part I want to spend 2–3 minutes on right now. Look at this pull quote situation from one of the Buffalo shooter’s classmates: