The real issue is that people are even talking about terrorism at all. By the state definition more people have died from tripping over their own feet than from terrorism in the last thirty years.<p>It is not about degrees of abstraction, it is about composition. Terrorism is a wrapper function to obscure the true intent behind the militarization of the police, the expansion of the military, and the implementation of the surveillance state - as a politician, you fear uncertainty and a lack of control. The natural state of affairs is to trend towards totalitarianism - the centralization of power and authority in a society absolutely - and it takes the vigilance of participants to repel its advances.<p>We have been doing a <i>very</i> poor job of that for quite a long time now, and the results of that gradual trend become more and more evident and indisputable.