That Whole "Banality of Evil" Thing
I can't help thinking of Adolf Eichmann when I look at 1) our Elvis-impersonating terrorist who thinks the local hospital is hoarding body parts and 2) the Chechnyan Beavis and Butthead who managed to kill and maim scores of people despite being bigger screwups than the entire Reservoir Dogs gang.
Don't let your freedoms be taken away by people who say such and such a place or event is vulnerable or open to attack. If these guys can successfully terrorize people, there can't be any way to stop serious threats short of a North Korean police state. Every occasion and location is theoretically vulnerable. Our best protection is to build a society that eschews violence. And, when someone does go off the farm, we want a society where there is no general toleration for the act. In Chechnya or Syria or Iraq, these two boneheads would likely have found help and protection from some percentage of the population. Not so in Boston, or anywhere else in America.
PS- Today must have been CNN's wet dream. This was like a real-life version of the Running Man (the enjoyable Richard Bachman aka Steven King book, not the awful movie), with similarly high ratings.
