The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves… to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection [and] opens the door to foreign influence and corruption….

— George Washington

Young Tsarnaev

Photo: FBI
Photo: FBI

There’s your bomber.

You’re looking at the face of the kid the Boston paramilitary police were hunting for. By the time they found him hiding in a boat, his brother had been killed in a firefight. Children of one of imperialism’s most brutal conflicts, five thousand miles from their parents, drifting in a place not quite home, it’s easy to imagine how they went astray. How do kids like that not go astray?

A joke from the young man’s social network page:

В школе задают загадку..
Едет автомобиль. В нем сидят – дагестанец, чеченец и ингуш.
Вопрос – кто ведет машину ?
Мага отвечает: – Полиция.

Translation:

At school they pose this riddle:
A Dagestani, a Chechen, and an Ingush are riding in a car together.
Question: who’s driving the car?
Magus (?) answers: the police.

Just a silly political joke for a central Asian audience. Not long after, the Chechen who posted it found himself being driven to the hospital under arrest.

Our country has had its fair share of crazies and murderers in the news in recent years. For some reason, this most recent (alleged) bomber has evoked a more sympathetic response from me than usual. Sure, the guy could be genuinely evil. But my guess is that more likely he is genuinely confused.

Pray for the kid. Good or bad, he’s going to need it.


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