Given the larger political climate, Matt Yglesias raises an important observation.
[I]t's striking how differently the country behaves when you see a non-Muslim individual attempt or succeed at killing some people based on quasi-political motivations versus when it's a Muslim who does it. And the important thing, I think, is not merely to make a pure hypocrisy argument but to point out that the country's response to non-Muslim killers ranging from Bedell to the IRS plane crasher to the Holocaust Museum shooter is much, much, much better and smarter.
In the wake of an incident involving a non-Muslim we of course look back and try to see if there's any reasonable preventive steps we could have taken to prevent the murders. But wild overreactions and wholesale reconfigurations of the constitution, of US foreign policy, or of daily life are considered off the table by definition. And rightly so!
What do fear muppets like Liz Cheney and Rudy Giuliani do when Joe Stack and John Bedell kill people? Nothing like they would if they were brown. Publicizing attacks by government-hating white men undermines their message, so they stay quiet. Fear of the white man is not the fear they need.
Right Wing violence is justified to them and their base. Anything else is an outrage. This sense of justified violence should be ringing alarm bells across the country. The Truthers, Birthers and Tea Partiers are hitting a breaking point as the real world is moving on without them. They think they have to be heard, by any means necessary.
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