@georgeob1,
georgeob1 wrote:
I understand (from a possibly incomplete news report) that none of the "suspicious packages" found so far have any fuse or trigger mechanism incorporated in the supposed "pipe bombs" they contained. I'm not yet ready to draw any conclusions to draw from that, or from the consistent use of the term "suspicious packages", by various news media in describing them. However it does appear that none of the packages have detonated and none are reported to have required any special handling after their discovery.
If all this is factual then much of the media commentary on these events appears to have been exaggerated.
I've heard conflicting reports. I'm fairly confident that in the end all of the facts will be known, but as "terrorist attacks" go this one was pretty feeble.
I don't think any of the specific targets were ever in any real danger (regardless of whether or not the bombs were functional). If I worked in a Post Office in a major city or the mail room of a media outlet, I'm sure I would have approached my job over the past few days with some trepidation, but it didn't take long at all for it to become pretty clear that either the perpetrator didn't actually intend to harm anyone or was amazingly inept (I suspect the former).
If I came across one of these easily recognizable packages, I would not have blithely dismissed the potential danger, but there was no reason for the average citizen to be fearful. It also became fairly clear; rather quickly that this was not part of a larger terrorist plot that sought to injure or kill randomly. I doubt very much that many people in NYC, DC or FL felt terrorized in any way. Certainly, no one in other parts of the country did.
Thankfully no one has been injured, but if they had been the level of fear among average people probably would have been higher, but still not in a "crippling" way as I heard commentators on TV talk about.
There's a number of reasons why this is an absolutely legitimate, big news story, but still, it has been hyped by the media, not least of all because the
targets were critics of Trump.
It's lucky that no one has been injured. This could have been a far more serious matter, but it still comes down to one person, most likely mentally ill to some degree, generating an influence on society that is vastly disproportionate to their importance as an individual.
All the facts aren't known, so we will see what we will see, but I think in the end it will be, as it usually is, the malignant actions of an individual miscreant.
Unfortunately, it has been and will continue to be politicized and the MSM will continue to cover it differently than they would have had the targets been Republicans. Many of our liberal friends will deny this or in the alternative, explain that in this case, assigning the guilt of a disturbed criminal to a political figure is appropriate...just as in was in the case of Rep. Gifford, but of course not in the case of Rep. Scalise.
