Tamerlan's Anti-Americanism Unremarkable in Cambridge

Resident Admits Tsarnaev’s Hate For US is Typical in Cambridge

In interviews, Luis Vasquez, a Cambridge native who was in the same year at the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School as the dead suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, said that the hate for America that Tamerlan expressed was so commonly heard around Cambridge that it was essentially unremarkable.

In response to Tamerlan’s claim that he had not a single American friend, here is what Mr. Vasquez is quoted as saying:

“[The first part of Tamerlan's quote], when you say that around here, nowadays it would be suspicious. But a few years ago it would’ve been like, yeah, whatever. That’s attributed [sic] to how diverse this area is… we have a big international community here,” Mr Vasquez told The Independent.

The fact is, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of the left-wing Harvard University, people slamming the USA is so common that no one paid any attention at all to Tamerlan’s hate for the USA.

Nearly everyone in Cambridge nods in approval when they hear anti-Americanism openly expressed. That is because the largest number of people in Cambridge are liberals, leftists, communists, socialists, foreigners, Marxists, and University professors and employees–all these terms being nearly synonymous with each other in that area.

So, when terrorist Tamerlan was seen and heard wandering about Cambridge full of hate for the USA, he didn’t on the surface seem any different than anyone else in the city. His hate was entirely, boringly, prosaically common.

Having been in and around academia for all of my adult life, I know how common those sort of expressions are. Liberals, who love the America they think is still to come, are congenitally unhappy with the America that is, and are not shy about expressing those opinions  when they think they are among friends, or at least think they substantially outnumber those conservative who would defend America as it exists in the present, and would even prefer turning the clock back a bit in some respects.  While this has toned down during the Obama years with the left getting its way on a number of issues, it is still not entirely absent.

I don't really believe they mean they hate America, they're just  expressing their displeasure with their inability to get everything they want, right now.

Now, this gets to the Marathon bombers unknown or missing motives, how Tamerlan became "self radicalized" although I believe external trainers were involved as well, afterthe fact. While we won't ever know what went on in Tamerlan's mind (unless necromancy is discovered soon), let me speculate here a bit.  A child comes from abroad, as a child of political refugees.  He settles into a new country, without the basic background of the society.  He hears those around him, both adult authority figures, young adults  and the older teens routinely trash the country verbally, and, perhaps, in his mind, the country does become the seat of all evil.  He doesn't understand that the vituperation he's hearing is not entirely serious; it's the grumbling of the small child who says he hates his parents because they won't let him have his dessert before dinner.