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A Tale of Two American Terrorists
One Was Radicalized, and the Other Suffered from Mental Illness
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”— Charles Dickens-A Tale of Two Cities
The novel A Tale of Two Cities, published in 31 installments by Charles Dickens beginning in 1859, could easily describe the year 2025. Something unique to 2025 is the use of motorized vehicles to carry out terrorist attacks. We saw two of these recently in New Orleans and Las Vegas.
The perpetrators had things in common. Both were born in America and served in the US military. One was an Army veteran, and the other was an active-duty Army Ranger on leave from his unit in Germany. The way the two men have been portrayed in the media is strikingly different. One demonstrated the need to…
