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Originally Posted by dvd316 America has always been like that. It is human condition that makes it possible, not some terrorist act.

Yes and no. You could cite the civil unrest of the sixties or abolition or a thousand other lesser causes of "I'm going to kill those colors on sight" syndrome from American history, but those were at least about LOCAL shit. If you were an African-American then/there, your causes for concern and outrage were real, right there in your face, every day. Or maybe you're gay, or maybe you're Latino or an Emo or just ugly -- or maybe you're just the fella who hates one of the above. In eah case, there is an inter-personal reality that the people involved have to deal with, whichever side of the tension they are on. It INVOLVES them. They can't escape it. But I see this as fundamentally different somehow. This... this HATE is operating at a different level than I think I've seen before. It's very abstract. Think about it... this is just about a difference of opinion, an idea -- no, more accurately (more basically), it is about whether you are angry and whether you are directing that anger in a general direction to the EXTERIOR of your experience.

Somebody smart probably once said "Attacks are specific. Defense, however, must be generalized..."

I am worried about the unprecdented generality and non-specificity of our defense. It's only because we can find no objects for it to operate on that we turn to each other, as enemies. Consider the fate of an America that is "at war" within itself and in a GENERAL STATE OF DEFENSE towards the rest of the world... ???