boston bombing

[kandrathe]

Being that the Boston marathon is held on Patriot's Day, a state holiday in Mass, my initial impression was that this was a far right militia group staging a new Boston Tea Party around the anniversary of the Waco fiasco.

I considered that for a moment too. Although, the day was not the 19th -- and I'd think that even the most insane of right wing extremists would choose a more Federal target -- many were available. While OK city was big and bad the target was a Federal office with the casualties being due to proximity.

Maladjusted Chechen and his impressionable younger brother didn't even register on my list of possibilities.

Only on mine in the sense of possible youth angst. It reminded me more in quality of the smiley face mailbox pipe bombings from 2002, except this seemed maliciously to be aimed at hurting the most number of innocent people. You'd either need to be incredibly emotionally detached from the harms you cause (psychopathic), or actually hate or despise the people you are targetting (extreme anti-social). Terrorists tend to be either, or both. In this case, maybe more of a "Beslan meets Columbine."

Organized international terrorists tend to have more meaningful target selection. This seemed rather more like the Iraqi, drive a car bomb into a crowded marketplace to show the impotence of the current government. Which is very much a fish out of the water, when comparing to the sense of proportion and order in Boston, Mass.

What was more incredible to me was the scale of the response. We shut down a major city for a day, which cost like billions? On the one hand, I'm impressed, since I'm one of the righteous citizens, but on the other I'm shocked at how eerie it echoed "Enemy of the State" starring Will Smith (and of course he was innocent). I sort of agree with this NYT Opinion blogger. "And yes, I too worry more about the encroachments of security theater than the threat of a police state — but the problem with flirting with the police state approach, even in a voluntary, only-for-a-day way, is that it makes those “small, manageable” encroachments seem, well, smaller and more manageable, and therefore harder to resist."

Sometimes you'll want to buy a pressure cooker, just to do exactly what is was intended for, canning your gardens excess. Now, you'll have the store clerks second guessing your motives, and if you happen to look like an extremist, or unusually foriegn, or have a certain accent, more often than not, you'll get a visit from your friendly federal police authority.