I'm of course evoking Hannah Arendt in the title. It may not be the perfect description of what we're seeing in this young suspect currently in "serious condition" after his apprehension but it at least touches on it.
I wrote in previous posts that we see the futility of rushing to judgment or profiling as they suspects have turned out to thwart both the preconceptions of conservatives and liberals-like me. Many conservatives immediately said al Qaeda. What al Qaeda amounts to is first and foremost Muslim. It also means Arab, and foreigner.
Many liberals countered that it could be a domestic terrorist who's a good Bible believing Christian who's a soaring American patriot-a la Timothy McVeigh or even like the White Supremacists that recently have declared open season on District Attorneys in Texas.
In the end both sides were right and wrong. The Right was right at least superficially. The young suspects are not American born but actually ethnic Chechens. Chechnya is a majority Muslim country-many conservatives still think that Muslims are more or less mutually inclusive with terrorists. In addition there are some Islamic terrorist groups in Chechnya including an al Qaeda group that engineered a terrorist attack that killed 50 and injured 100 a few years ago in Moscow.
Conservatives may well feel they can declare victory based on this as some at least on the Internet have in fact done. Meanwhile you have anti immigration conservatives suggesting this is a reason to reconsider immigration reform.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/04/oh-no-they-didnt-immigration-opponents.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/04/oh-yes-they-did-chuck-grassley-ties.html
However, it's not so simple as this. These young men grew up in the U.S. They were also totally
Amercanized. Thiey weren't wild eyed fanatics chanting Allah is Great. Death to the American Infidels! all day long.
It's actually very striking how surprised the kids who went to school with Dzokhar
Tsanaev were. One friend called him to warn him he'd been mistakenly fingered as the suspect-he looked a lot like the terrorist his friend warned him. He's described as 'just another pothead.'
“He didn’t seem like a dangerous person at all,” said Chris Barry, a sophomore at UMass-Dartmouth, who became friends with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — now a bombing suspect — on their first day of school. “He was a pothead, a normal pothead. I couldn’t even imagine him being mad at someone, let alone hurting someone.”
"Barry and Tsarnaev met through high school wrestling. While they didn’t hang out much at school — Barry said he hasn’t seen Tsarnaev this school year — they remained friendly after freshman orientation, he said."
“He never talked about politics. I know on his Facebook, it says he’s Islamic, but I didn’t really look into it,” he said.
"As for religion? “He never brought it up. It seemed like he could care less,” Barry said, also noting in the interview that Tsarnaev was always friendly and “very, very nice."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-pot-90350.html#ixzz2QyzW8X8w
However, another classmate, Zachary Levine-Caleb does provide a much darker picture of him.
"Zachary Levine-Caleb, also from Newton, wrestled the younger Tsarnaev in 2011 in the 135-pound weight class and said Tsarnaev took a passive approach to the sport."
“I could tell he was intimidated by me,” Levine-Caleb, now 20, told POLITICO. “There wasn’t a size disparity, he just kept backing up. I pushed him out of bounds, he was wrestling very non-aggressively.”
“He was just a kid who wasn’t spectacular at wrestling,” Levine-Caleb added.
If this is the face of evil it sure is unimpressive. It also shows if not the absolute futility of profiling it's imposing limits. Though to be sure I never can totally trust a guy who's not so spectacular at wrestling much as I try.
I wrote in previous posts that we see the futility of rushing to judgment or profiling as they suspects have turned out to thwart both the preconceptions of conservatives and liberals-like me. Many conservatives immediately said al Qaeda. What al Qaeda amounts to is first and foremost Muslim. It also means Arab, and foreigner.
Many liberals countered that it could be a domestic terrorist who's a good Bible believing Christian who's a soaring American patriot-a la Timothy McVeigh or even like the White Supremacists that recently have declared open season on District Attorneys in Texas.
In the end both sides were right and wrong. The Right was right at least superficially. The young suspects are not American born but actually ethnic Chechens. Chechnya is a majority Muslim country-many conservatives still think that Muslims are more or less mutually inclusive with terrorists. In addition there are some Islamic terrorist groups in Chechnya including an al Qaeda group that engineered a terrorist attack that killed 50 and injured 100 a few years ago in Moscow.
Conservatives may well feel they can declare victory based on this as some at least on the Internet have in fact done. Meanwhile you have anti immigration conservatives suggesting this is a reason to reconsider immigration reform.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/04/oh-no-they-didnt-immigration-opponents.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/04/oh-yes-they-did-chuck-grassley-ties.html
However, it's not so simple as this. These young men grew up in the U.S. They were also totally
Amercanized. Thiey weren't wild eyed fanatics chanting Allah is Great. Death to the American Infidels! all day long.
It's actually very striking how surprised the kids who went to school with Dzokhar
Tsanaev were. One friend called him to warn him he'd been mistakenly fingered as the suspect-he looked a lot like the terrorist his friend warned him. He's described as 'just another pothead.'
“He didn’t seem like a dangerous person at all,” said Chris Barry, a sophomore at UMass-Dartmouth, who became friends with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — now a bombing suspect — on their first day of school. “He was a pothead, a normal pothead. I couldn’t even imagine him being mad at someone, let alone hurting someone.”
"Barry and Tsarnaev met through high school wrestling. While they didn’t hang out much at school — Barry said he hasn’t seen Tsarnaev this school year — they remained friendly after freshman orientation, he said."
“He never talked about politics. I know on his Facebook, it says he’s Islamic, but I didn’t really look into it,” he said.
"As for religion? “He never brought it up. It seemed like he could care less,” Barry said, also noting in the interview that Tsarnaev was always friendly and “very, very nice."
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/04/dzhokhar-tsarnaev-pot-90350.html#ixzz2QyzW8X8w
However, another classmate, Zachary Levine-Caleb does provide a much darker picture of him.
"Zachary Levine-Caleb, also from Newton, wrestled the younger Tsarnaev in 2011 in the 135-pound weight class and said Tsarnaev took a passive approach to the sport."
“I could tell he was intimidated by me,” Levine-Caleb, now 20, told POLITICO. “There wasn’t a size disparity, he just kept backing up. I pushed him out of bounds, he was wrestling very non-aggressively.”
“He was just a kid who wasn’t spectacular at wrestling,” Levine-Caleb added.
If this is the face of evil it sure is unimpressive. It also shows if not the absolute futility of profiling it's imposing limits. Though to be sure I never can totally trust a guy who's not so spectacular at wrestling much as I try.
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