Senseless. Evil. Silver Linings.

Senseless. The president said it during his addresses to the nation; newscasters said it at the scene; people on the streets of Boston could be heard crying it into cell phones: a senseless act of terror. But the sadism on Boylston Street at the Boston Marathon was the opposite of senseless—in fact it made great swaths of sense to the two sadists who inflicted it upon us. It might appear senseless but that is appearance only, our bafflement before such barbarity. The terrorist is among the most sensible of killers because he comprehends the difference between correlation and causation: dismember civilians in a city of liberty and watch whole quadrants of that city shut down. This is where the terrorist parts paths with a mass shooter like Adam Lanza: he is no hair-trigger madman, no psychopath—madness and psychopathy would render him unknowing of his crimes. In his methodic preparations and clandestine deployments he knows precisely what carnage he aims to create.