At least 27 die in school shooting in Connecticut | 1

[Simple Minded]

My concern is that what we used to call mourning, is becoming for some people a way to get high on other people's suffering... We need to "feel" and anything which gives us that sort of emotional kick is welcome. Mind you, there is nothing wrong about feeling sorrow at the killing of twenty children, it's the way that sorrow is expressed which leaves me some doubts as to its adequacy.

Change adequacy to authenticity, and I am with you Endo. I think a lot of it may be the desire to fill otherwise empty lives or reduce a sense of boredom, or to be seen publicly as "someone who cares." So many desire to live in their front windows...

I agree. There was a science fiction story I read years ago. I don't remember the name or even how it ended. Maybe something by ray Bradbury. It was about a crowd that appeared every time someone died in an accident. The same people always showed up.


“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.” -- Brave New World

In these cases it seems to be the MSM and those watching that are always showing up.

Good points Doc. Sometimes it does seem to be the same people showing up at mulitple events to prove the world is unfair, unjust, mean, or "just not up to my superior standards..."

Or maybe it is just as simple as "if it bleeds, it leads." and the ubiquitousness of media...

Two thing that really strikes me as bizarre, the need to construct memorials to tragedy, and the need for anniversary remembrances. Often strikes me as strange that so many choose to dwell on only the tragedies of the past.

[Simple Minded]

Of course one's precious little snowflakes cannot be held responsible to look both way before crossing a railway track at a less expensive railway crossing with barriers, bright red flashing lights, and warning sounds.

Thanks for pointing out the hassles involved in waiting at a railroad crossing. I think you just made an excellent case for building a $500K tunnel. This tunnel is alleged to exist underneath not only a railroad crossing but a hill and a shopping center. All of a sudden, this tunnel doesn't sound like too stupid of an idea.

Are you also opposed to pedestrian bridges?

Indeed. More local uglification in the name of perceived security driven by the fear of ligitation by the surviving family of the [literally] terminally stupid.

People who get hit by cars are stupid? That's unreasonably harsh. What if it was your child? Would you shrug it off? There is nothing wrong with pedestrian safety measures. At my undergraduate university, there were a series of accidents involving speeding motorists and pedestrians, prompting the installation of automatic lights embedded in the pavement at crosswalks to notify drivers that a pedestrian is crossing.

Looking both ways before crossing is good advice but insufficient in some traffic situations. I think we've all been surprised at one point or another in our lives at a car popping up out of nowhere or being obscured by a stopped vehicle.

Anyway, none of us knows the logic behind the infamous pedestrian tunnel. I have a feeling the story has been oversimplified.

The tunnel is a pedestrian only tunnel. The length of the tunnel is about 60 feet, the hill is the 30 foot elevation from the tunnel floor to the tracks. The road from the campus that crosses the railroad tracks is about 200 yards north of the tunnel. On the road there are no lights or movable barriers. I assume that they expect people who drive to be smart enough to not pull out in front of a train. And without sidewalks, walking down the road (15 mph speed limit) would be certain suicide.

Of course $500K on a tunnel is reasonable, if that is your (society's) highest priority, or unless you are one of those selfish bastards who wants food, medicine, housing, an education, levees, sewers, running water....

The road which the pedestrian bridge crosses is flat as a pool table, at least a half mile visibility in each direction. In the 24 years I have lived here, I don't recall a single person getting hit by a train or any cars at this location. My guess is some of the motivation for the tunnel and bridge was hopes of increased sales by merchants, and tax revenue for the city.

but hey, I understand that everyone has different priorities for other people's money. Competition for resouces baby.

Couple years back, three or four college kids were hurt/killed crossing a train tressle that is abut 600 yards long over a nearby river when a train came. COLLEGE KIDS?!?! four to six year olds getting hurt/killed in the same situation would be understandable, but college kids?

Of course that prompted the discussion of would it be possible to build a fence that would make it impossible for a human to access the train tressle. Evidently, the NO TRESSPASSING, DANGER signs and existing fence didn't work.

People getting college degrees that are not smart enough cross a train tressle or walk across the street......Microcosm for the West?

Man Made Global Warming or the Fiscal Cliff may be the least of our problems...... Fascinates the hell out of me!

[Simple Minded]

Now that I give it more thought, next time I am down there, I'll check to see if the gate comes down to within an inch of the ground to keep out the turtles.

Cause if a train was coming...... and spooked (not a racist term Ibrahim..) a herd of turtles..... while kids were in the tunnel with no place to run.... could get bloody ugly....

Seems to me the bottom of the gate was about 6 or 8 inches off the ground. Probably would keep out spooked cattle, but not turtles.... or mice..... snakes..... woodchucks.....

[Demon of Undoing]

Ok, for the whiny goldfish that are afraid someone is going to take their guns before the bodies quit leaking, let me remind you of the school shooting in Stockton CA many years ago. And that you can still get AKs to this very day, in spite of it.

Nervous Nancy. What turned you into such a whiner? Dear God, man, grow a pair. You're embarrassing. So much for the rugged individualist. If I didn't know better, I'd swear you were fixated on guns because they do something for your self image instead of considering them as tools.

[Dioscuri]

My dear children,

Ask yourselves: who are the little ones here?

I bet some of you actually sit there and yearn along when a "thought leader" opines to you, "If only there was a way to detect mentally unstable people and prevent them from getting guns. Just the sick ones."

And some of you will think "If the press had the decency not to make them famous, well then there'd be no glory in it..."

And some of you will Tsk Tsk the Parents.

And some of you will think, "Arm the teachers and train them to etc."

We'll give you a break and not think you actually think anything about "prayer in school," but still we smile upon your innocence as you think these things, and then we become rather sad because of how long it appears it shall still take to disabuse you of your immensely self-pleasurable little nostrums.

Not that interest in the parents is unwarranted, but you won't think things through. In this case the particular audience for the ritual crossing would appear to be the recently divorced papa. We do urgently await news of how it might have been when your brave young priest delivered mother. You must be so proud, and fresh from this to go on to make #2 on the chart! People do watch these things, it is true.

But if we're not mistaken, it seems like there's another message in there. Seems pretty in-your-face to us, so gotta admit it's a little puzzling why no one ever seems to talk about it. Give it a think, won't you?

If one stands back from the world and looks upon it and finds that it is hateful, and if this hatefulness leaves such a lack in you -or, hell, lt's say it- if this hatefulness fires such a love in you, that you just have to hurt it the way it makes you hurt, then there will, mark my words, there will be a logic to how these rituals are going to proceed.

First you aim for the perpetrators of the wrong done to you. Then you aim for the pride of your enemy, and you attack that which holds up his pride. After you've made those examples, you start to aim at his casualness, at the places where he lets things slide, where things operate by an honor system, and you violate the honor. And then you aim at his pleasure, you hit him where he goes to escape and enjoy his "self". And when that's been done too, then, quite naturally, you learn to strike not at him directly, but at what he loves and treasures. By logical development you seek out what is irreplaceable and you replace it with nothing.

Strategy is become a most intimate science, my dears, it is a game for lovers and intuitive souls. I'm not sure your hamshitters on the generals staff nor nerdcorps NSA data miners nor even all the magic-underpanted college graduates at CIA really recognize the nature of Adam's love letter. Men who have taught themselves that life is about keeping on your smile whilst you work the knife, well, it turns out they're going to exert themselves to protect the things that smile-knifers expect to need protected. These, alas, are not priestly men, they are secular powers. (and the more fervent is their churchientation, the more secular they are as powers, let us assure you). And with no connection, or only a phony one, to what it is that truly determines, secular authorities are just not going to understand what the priestly caste understands.

Who are the little ones here? The children being taken to God, or the self-sufficient realists who take care of busyness?

[Maverick]

Surprisingly, I didn't see any thread on Connecticut shooting on Spengler forum. May conservatives don't like these topics. Maybe they are waiting for imprimatur from Spengler to start topic

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

Someone is certainly engaging in some self pleasure, Dio...

[Juggernaut Nihilism]

All violence is a quest for identity.

When a two year throws explosive tantrums, it is because his ambivalent feelings about being re-engulfed by the mother lead to panic. He feels his new and precarious sense of self dissolving and, lacking the behavioral vocabulary to fight back and ground himself he explodes into a violent tantrum, which immediately re-establishes him as a cause, a center, with observable effects on the world around. The panic of annihilation subsides, and it only remains to clean up the mess. The behavioral vocabulary of many adults is also quite limited, and the semiotic vacancy of a vapid suburban world is leaving more and more people with a desperate hole where a rooted identity used to be. When grown ups have tantrums, their boundary acts can be considerably more devastating than a two-year-old's.

[Mr. Perfect]

You earn your true John Moses Browning underpants when you worry about the rights of others before your own rights. You worry about the ability of other people to defend themselves before your own. You fight for the freedom of others before your own.

Some fight for no one's freedom.

http://americainchains2009.wordpress.co ... n-control/

[Dioscuri]

Don't worry about me Mr. P, it's not your guns that need "control," I'm sure not going to say that.

I guess what amuses and depresses me the most is the idea that the Blamerican peeples are going to be able to get the right experts together and figure out how to identify the "potentially mentally unstable." If I don't miss my guess, this is going to involve questionnaires, scantron technology, and NIH guidelines.

Because it's sickness! It's evil! It's sickness and evil! And you have every reason to believe that there are clinically identifiable precursors to sickness and evil, and that guidance counsellors will be able to spot them.

What is still of interest is whether or not Adam, whose crossing has so far been characterized by minimalism, left any kind of a testament, or whether it was seen that this, too is an adornment more properly excluded for the sake of purity. If there's nothing, we'd have to say a perfect form has been achieved here. A black box both hollow and unopenable.

Maybe then you will be taught that what is happening to you is not about a "need for attention" on the killer's part. The practitioners of this form have already had their fill of your attention. It seems pretty clear to me what they're telling you your attention is worth.

[Mr. Perfect]

Big D, my comments were "aimed" at someone else.

My opinion of this is kafka folly. In 2012 the chattering class believe themselves to be exempt from the human impulses behind the Crusades and Rwanda, because they have gay friends. Somewhere. Or something.

The largest spree killing I can find was in 1927, where 38 kids were killed by a bomb. It's actually refreshing that after all that time the record stands. The rest is advertising dollars and political profits.

[noddy]

the chattering class push their primal impulses into hiring security guards or calling the police, then they can also tut tut if those hired thugs go overboard and shoot/maim the source of fear that triggered it.

tis genius, they can maintain their own illusion of peaceful angelic perfection and then go the extra mile gushing vanity over the bad outcome.

and dioscuri you are dead right, they will demand some detectable something that can seperate them from the evil... we are perhaps beyond the crudest of symbols like clothes but a lifestyle symbol or better yet a gene symbol or brainscan symbol would be the perfect thing to reassure oneself with.

[Taboo]

Principal: "Sorry Minnie, but we had to let Ms. Edgeworth go."
Minnie: <Sniffle> "But Ms. Edgeworth was such a good teacher..."
"There's no denying that. But she weighed only 120 lbs, so she could not carry the heavy machinegun and ammo for short school trips. Our repeated warnings to go to the gym and bulk up were met with the lame excuse that she had to prepare for classes..."
"I know, I'm just sad."
"And she was getting short-sighted, which meant her target-range scores have been plummeting lately."
"Well, Johnnie had offered to shoot the Glock for her whenever ASEs* would come by."
"I don't have anything against arming 10-years olds, Minnie, it's just that 10-years olds can't shoot well, at least not when covered in the 40 lbs full-suit body armors we made mandatory 4 years ago."

*Anti-Social Elements

[Ammianus]

Using Berserk's logic about the coming social-cultural apocalypse as a baseline, which apparently some here have already adopted, then what we had the past 4-5 years (VTech, GiffordLoughner, HolmesColorado, and now LanzaConn.) are going to be mere drops in the bucket. We're talking about McVeigh style domestic terror a la mass mall shootings, car bombings, maybe even anthrax letters redux in the next 10-12 years. By that notion, all of our current debate concerning gun control is going to be passe. If anything, it'll potentially be considered the least expensive and intrusive measure in response to those attacks.

Hey, just putting it out there. If your going by the doomsday scenario, you ought accept the collateral consequences.

[Mr. Perfect]

Principal: "Sorry Minnie, but we had to let Ms. Edgeworth go."
Minnie: <Sniffle> "But Ms. Edgeworth was such a good teacher..."
"There's no denying that. But she weighed only 120 lbs, so she could not carry the heavy machinegun and ammo for short school trips. Our repeated warnings to go to the gym and bulk up were met with the lame excuse that she had to prepare for classes..."
"I know, I'm just sad."
"And she was getting short-sighted, which meant her target-range scores have been plummeting lately."
"Well, Johnnie had offered to shoot the Glock for her whenever ASEs* would come by."
"I don't have anything against arming 10-years olds, Minnie, it's just that 10-years olds can't shoot well, at least not when covered in the 40 lbs full-suit body armors we made mandatory 4 years ago."

*Anti-Social Elements

Well it's not like we don't have a rich heritage or legacy to draw on, guns and schools used to go hand in hand, ala shooting teams and kids bringing guns to school to hunt to and from.

Then social liberalism came into play and testosterone began to recede from the culture. Now the culture insists on shrieking and jumping on chairs when a mouse comes in the room.

[Typhoon]

You earn your true John Moses Browning underpants when you worry about the rights of others before your own rights. You worry about the ability of other people to defend themselves before your own. You fight for the freedom of others before your own.

The idea is appealing, even after I looked up John Moses Browning.

At the same time many a unsolicited and unwelcome invasion has been justified by claims of worrying about the rights of other, the ability of other people to defend themselves, and presented as fighting for the freedom of others.

To paraphrase Maréchal Villars:

Defend me from altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends

Some fight for no one's freedom.

http://americainchains2009.wordpress.co ... n-control/

I've seen plenty of such material and I've become more than a little skeptical that allowing or forbidding guns is the, or even a, determining factor for a free democratic civil society.

Never have so many people owned so many personal guns as in the USA today, yet continue to give up their personal freedoms and liberties without a peep of protest.

Contrary to local popular belief, the US does not rank particular high in the subset of nations that are held to be democratic.

For example, 19th in the EIU | Democracy Index.

So much for the guns hypothesis.

[Endovelico]

I think I'm going to get a bit unpopular, but violence is never an isolated phenomenon. Crazy people who shoot children don't come out of thin air. Society breeds them. Lately I noticed that some people in the US tend to call their soldiers "warriors". And I'm not talking about the skinhead, nazi types. I'm referring to apparently normal people, namely within the Armed Forces themselves. In my simplistic vision, soldiers are people who use weapons to defend their community. Citizens in arms, who go back to their normal activities once the danger is gone. Warriors are people who know nothing and do nothing besides fighting and killing. A separate caste which must be paid and supported on a permanent basis by the community. Is it surprising that a country which chooses to call its soldiers warriors has an inbuilt tendency for violence? In fact it is glorifying violence. Presumably such a country expects that violence to be contained and released only when the community is at risk. But that's ignoring the fact that some people will see the glorification of violence as a sign that it may be used at random. Glorification of violence plus 200 million weapons at large, and you get regular tragedies such as the latest one in Connecticut. Yes, do control your guns, but try also to control your far too ready acceptance of violence as a legitimate means to something...

[Mr. Perfect]

Well CS we're clearly not talking about foreign policy, we're talking about little kids who really could have been served by 1 or 2 armed and trained school teachers, heck I was a proficient enough shooter at the age of 10 to figure this one out, even young girls can do it.

YX8dfi31Pw8

And don't worry, I'm under no illusion in terms of the state of America, "democracy" or whatever they call it now, it's all over, the American people put the stamp of approval on state slavery in November. They are coming for the guns. Berzer was fatally wrong in his assessments and innocent people will pay the price. However, some will have guns and some will not, much like the way it works with drugs here. Illegal, but all over the place. And of course sheep just make food for wolves. "Gun free zone" = "easy place to kill people".

[monster_gardener]

My concern is that what we used to call mourning, is becoming for some people a way to get high on other people's suffering... We need to "feel" and anything which gives us that sort of emotional kick is welcome. Mind you, there is nothing wrong about feeling sorrow at the killing of twenty children, it's the way that sorrow is expressed which leaves me some doubts as to its adequacy.

I agree. There was a science fiction story I read years ago. I don't remember the name or even how it ended. Maybe something by ray Bradbury. It was about a crowd that appeared every time someone died in an accident. The same people always showed up.


“I want to know what passion is. I want to feel something strongly.” -- Brave New World

In these cases it seems to be the MSM and those watching that are always showing up.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Doc.

I remember reading that story too.....

It was Ray Bradbury..........

Don't remember the title but do remember the ending........

EXACTLY the same people.......... Seemed to be immortal.......

Seemed to be choosing who lived and who died.......

By moving the injured so that they would live or die........

When they figured out the hero of the story was on to them and about to expose them......

He had an accident and got move the wrong way........

[monster_gardener]

I figure the next step is to create a profile from a suspected perpetrator and then dress it up to create the ultimate political demon. Imagine a profile of a suspected shooter that had Obama or Romney political images all over the page. The press would have a genuflecting orgasm with the ultimate enemy. No one remembers anything past the first few hours beyond the first identity being shown and it would drive up web traffic for everyone.

Only question now is should it be a Manchurian candidate for the left or the right? If only he had been wearing a Romney or Obama Halloween mask at the time....

It would definitely sell a lot better than, and I think I am quoting Demon of Undoing here: "Whatever happended to the guy was crazy!"?

Maybe these types are media Manchurian candidates.....

Thank you Very Much for your post, Simple Minded. And for your kind words elsewhere.

If only he had been wearing a Romney or Obama Halloween mask at the time....

Or if he was a Presidential surfer dude........

And Bank Robber........







http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Break

[Typhoon]

Well CS we're clearly not talking about foreign policy, we're talking about little kids who really could have been served by 1 or 2 armed and trained school teachers, heck I was a proficient enough shooter at the age of 10 to figure this one out, even young girls can do it.

YX8dfi31Pw8

No objections to a shooting club at a school as per your Far Rockaway example.

And don't worry, I'm under no illusion in terms of the state of America, "democracy" or whatever they call it now, it's all over, the American people put the stamp of approval on state slavery in November.

The current erosion of civil liberties goes back to the creation of the US DEA under the POTUS Nixon admin [a Republicrat, btw, if memory serves]

They are coming for the guns. Berzer was fatally wrong in his assessments and innocent people will pay the price. However, some will have guns and some will not, much like the way it works with drugs here. Illegal, but all over the place. And of course sheep just make food for wolves. "Gun free zone" = "easy place to kill people".

Well, fewer handguns and automatic weapons ie., non-hunting weapons, would be better for the US.

Obama is not the Anti Christ, but rather George Bush III.

The level of violence in US society is an anomaly in the OECD.

As is the widespread belief that a serious economic crisis would lead to a Mad Max scenario.

[monster_gardener]

.

it wont be long before someone claims 'if only the elementary schoolers were armed'..

.

Yes,

Monster arguing if only woman would be armed and learn shooting it would stop violence against woman

next would be to arm elementary schoolchildren



.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Azari.

next would be to arm elementary schoolchildren

Actually I was armed when I was a student in Elemental School.

By Religion I was a Baptist Sikh

Tried to make sure I always had my Boy Scout Kirpan with me........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirpan

And sometimes my comb.......

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ks

Didn't need it as much........

The Haircut I got at Home made me look like an Indian.......

Mohawk that is.........

Later on in the School of High Wizardry oops I mean School of High Science........

It was common to see the pick up chariots of the Teachers and Students with Rifle Racks parked in the parking lot......

Preparatory to Hunting the Large Horned Mice called deer after school........

And I don't remember as many Juve hunting incidents inside schools.......

Monster arguing if only woman would be armed and learn shooting it would stop violence against woman

Clarifying.........

Implementation of the Gospel of the Gun for Grrls will NOT stop violence against women....... but it should sure hopefully slow it down some......

Depraved Sinful Female Chaos Monkey Killer Apes are not inherently saints as similarly in their own peculiar ways the Male Chaos Monkeys are not inherently saints & Tzaddiks..

Lot's of Bad Grrlz.......

Kill each other as well as Boyz both Bad & relatively "Good"......

Sometimes they even Kill their Kittens

Watch "Snapped".....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snapped

Or read the Tanakh/Old Testament.......

But IMVHO especially in the Malignant Malicious Male Oriented Muslim Culture where the power equation tilts so far in the Male direction.......

IMVHO the intervention of the Holy Holey Horse*, St. Sam the Colt could be VERY beneficial......

G_d may have created the Chaos Monkeys but St. Sam Colt made them more or less equal.........

In a Mappo World like ours, IMVHO best not to try for perfection so much as try for the best practical good while remembering the Law of the Conservation of Evil

*Perhaps an "angry" manifestation of the Horse Headed Avalokitesvara, Bodhisattva of Compassion/God/Goddess of Mercy and Child Bearing/Stella Maris..

[monster_gardener]

Well CS we're clearly not talking about foreign policy, we're talking about little kids who really could have been served by 1 or 2 armed and trained school teachers, heck I was a proficient enough shooter at the age of 10 to figure this one out, even young girls can do it.

YX8dfi31Pw8

No objections to a shooting club at a school as per your Far Rockaway example.

And don't worry, I'm under no illusion in terms of the state of America, "democracy" or whatever they call it now, it's all over, the American people put the stamp of approval on state slavery in November.

The current erosion of civil liberties goes back to the creation of the US DEA under the POTUS Nixon admin [a Republicrat, btw, if memory serves]

They are coming for the guns. Berzer was fatally wrong in his assessments and innocent people will pay the price. However, some will have guns and some will not, much like the way it works with drugs here. Illegal, but all over the place. And of course sheep just make food for wolves. "Gun free zone" = "easy place to kill people".

Well, fewer handguns and automatic weapons ie., non-hunting weapons, would be better for the US.

Obama is not the Anti Christ, but rather George Bush III.

The level of violence in US society is an anomaly in the OECD.

As is the widespread belief that a serious economic crisis would lead to a Mad Max scenario.

Thank you Very MUCH for your post, Typhoon.

And again for your patience with a Monstrous Chaos Monkey Pig like Me

The current erosion of civil liberties goes back to the creation of the US DEA under the POTUS Nixon admin [a RepublicRat, btw, if memory serves]

(capitalization etc. added by MG for comedic purpose....... no offense intended)

Probably close to correct if it didn't start earlier...... Prohibition followed by Reefer Madness when the Big Booze Boys were Back and didn't want little ole Mary Jane taking market share....

At yeast , You could grow Mary Jane nymphs without Benefit of Fermentation.....

Obama is not the Anti Christ, but rather George Bush III.

But isn't George W.W. Bush the Anti-Christ's younger and dumber brother.......

Which might make Choom Hog the Lying Son of Bitch Eater Obama, the Nasty Nephew of the Anti-Christ

And Choom is smarter but not necessarily wiser than his plant Uncle........ Makes him more dangerous.......

Just like a Highly Intelligent Devil or Chaos Monkey is more Dangerous than a Bad Dog.... or a stupid Bush Plant...

The level of violence in US society is an anomaly in the OECD.

IMVVHO maybe not when you consider that Uz has been perhaps the favored location for many of the brightest, most active, most agile AND Most Aggressive Chaos Monkeys in the world to Migrate.......

And form the Mongrel Nation that is Uz..........

[Simple Minded]

All violence is a quest for identity.

When a two year throws explosive tantrums, it is because his ambivalent feelings about being re-engulfed by the mother lead to panic. He feels his new and precarious sense of self dissolving and, lacking the behavioral vocabulary to fight back and ground himself he explodes into a violent tantrum, which immediately re-establishes him as a cause, a center, with observable effects on the world around. The panic of annihilation subsides, and it only remains to clean up the mess. The behavioral vocabulary of many adults is also quite limited, and the semiotic vacancy of a vapid suburban world is leaving more and more people with a desperate hole where a rooted identity used to be. When grown ups have tantrums, their boundary acts can be considerably more devastating than a two-year-old's.

Very interesting perspective JN,

I would like to read some expansion on this sentence:

"The behavioral vocabulary of many adults is also quite limited, and the semiotic vacancy of a vapid suburban world is leaving more and more people with a desperate hole where a rooted identity used to be."

[/qutoe]

"Semiotic vacancy" is one to remember, as in "As I gaze at you, all I see is a semiotic vacancy."

As a subsistence farmer, ones identity was nothing if not permanently rooted [pause for a chuckle from the Aussies]. I doubt that it was much better.

[Simple Minded]

the chattering class push their primal impulses into hiring security guards or calling the police, then they can also tut tut if those hired thugs go overboard and shoot/maim the source of fear that triggered it.

tis genius, they can maintain their own illusion of peaceful angelic perfection and then go the extra mile gushing vanity over the bad outcome.

and dioscuri you are dead right, they will demand some detectable something that can seperate them from the evil... we are perhaps beyond the crudest of symbols like clothes but a lifestyle symbol or better yet a gene symbol or brainscan symbol would be the perfect thing to reassure oneself with.

Black or white cowboy hats have been the traditional indicator, but how to make the bad guys dress (or post) non-deceptively?

Nowadays, the dude wearing the cowboy hat might get beat up for being gay, or straight, or arrested for a hate crime....