Domestic terrorists

I watched on CNN this morning an 88 year old White Supremacist opened fire at visitors to Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum. A black security guard was shot at close range and died and the culprit was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with police.

I recently posted a video on the Ruby Ridge incident, after stumbling upon it when watching the BBC documentary "How mad are you?". The same poster also put up the Ruby Ridge documentary, which I found a revealing example of the US government's excessive use of force.

From there I watched another documentary, part of National Geographic's "Inside" series, called Inside American Skinheads. I found this one hard to watch.

I wonder how much the US government spends on suppressing these terrorists who are breeding and plotting on home ground, since it focuses so much on the "war on terror". How much money and effort does the US government spend cleaning up its own backyard vis-a-vis the rest of the world?

I was also interested to watch on CNN that it is not true hate groups in the US are mostly in the mid-west or deep-south. Rather, the groups correspond to population density. There are many in Florida and California for instance. This map shows the spread and concentration.

Today's incident comes just a few days after a Christian, Scott Roeder, murdered Dr. George Tiller, a physician from Wichita, Kansas, who performed late term abortions. And these people are terrorists, according to the USA PATRIOT Act:

Under current United States law, set forth in the USA PATRIOT Act, acts of domestic terrorism are those which: "(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States."

I struggle to understand people like these and can only conclude that the human species is a pretty pathetic one. Despite having the faculty of reason, there are still many people (perhaps most) who are just plain stupid, ignorant, superstitious, weak and despicable. I don't know what else to say.