Why is it always the leveraged fault, the market is down?

Whenever the market crashes, the culprit is quickly found: it's the leveraged traders, who got liquidated, causing a cascade of further forced liquidations, until everyone's position got closed.

This seems reasonable, but leaves the question, as to what caused the liquidation to start.

Saying the market is down, because of liquidations is like saying, "the sun is up, because it's shining". When in reality, the latter is a result of the first. Initially the market went down. The long liquidations can only happen, if the market is on a down-trend. The following liquidation rounds can create more sell-pressure and thus increase the downtrend, but it's only an extension of an already existing trend. Leverage makes market swings more volatile, but it doesn't lead the market.

So can we please stop with posts "the market is down, because longs got liquied"?