The thing is that Americans are already demanding more police powers and funding them and this still happens. The FBI gets powers no matter what anyone says because unlike cops, they don’t need the extra responsibility of putting on a show for the community; they just do whatever they want. But nobody in the government cares about school shootings, not even using it as a trojan horse.

It seems like a nihilistic, end of history version of a strategy of tension where the government encourages and/or allows and/or fails to stop stochastic terrorism, but ultimately no one cares about any of events to even take advantage. White children were massacred by a neurodivergent gunman during Obama, and… nothing happened afterwards. No heavy handed gun laws, no extra policing or surveillance that wasn’t already planned beforehand. This modern strategy of tension doesn’t produce fear and compliance, it just produces apathy.

Why would they care when the government is just a capitalist sibling rivalry rather than being in an existential war between opposite ideologies like the Years of Lead?