long shadows and such

The FBI wouldn't tail *this* guy on a Russian tip.

Now that the alleged perp has been captured we can start our favourite sport, the blame game. It seems that the FBI will be the primary finger-ee for having had a tip on Tamerlan and dropped it. Yeah well, where did that tip come from? The long shadow of the Cold War guarantees that the FBI, of all agencies, wouldn't take a tip from the Russian government seriously enough to keep an eye on Boris Badenov, let alone a Chechen nobody.  Nor would any Republican in Congress now lining up to lynch the agency and its director.

Whatever the facts,  we seem to have given Russia two things. First, Putin can now say "We told you so" very loudly. Second, he now has a licence to go in and take the Caucasus apart whether there is an active rebellion or not. When he's done, he can smile and say how he'd done it to show friendship with the US. Blech.

On other matters, I'm glad Dave Henneberry, who whose boat was literally in the line of fire in the capture of DzhokharTsarnaev, is getting more than a little online help. Had he not been so dedicated to his boat that his first act, aside from lighting up, on being allowed to step out of the house, was to check up on it, this drama would probably still be going on, and there might have been more innocent casualties. I'm sure many of the half-wit internet comment mob are condemning this generosity, but it wouldn't be necessary if he could expect institutional help. First, if his boat or homeowner's insurance company had immediately manned up to cover the damage or loss, there would be no need for support. As for government? I still remember the comment of one of my junior high history teachers, over 50 years ago, that there were then, still,  government Civil War claims that had not been paid. So, good luck with that source.

Having dumped on the legitimate media over the last few days, let's not spare the wannabe media of the social networks. These would be the ones whose Reddit crowdsourced "news" identified two or more innocent people as Marathon bombing suspects, people whose lives are likely to carry this stain forever. Not, you say? Imagine these people being Googled by some HR person as stupid as the Redditors in five or ten years. What do you suppose the results might be?

Some of the crowdsourcers have defended their actions with equal parts of vigour and stupidity. If you don't yet believe in the widespread idiocy of this news source, remember that this lot can't tell the Czech Republic from Chechnya: more proof that the education of Americans in geography is the worst in the world. Even though this sort of thing can be fact-checked with a couple of keystrokes, these journalistic wannabes are too lazy to do so.

If you rely on social media for information, these are the people giving it to you, about the only ones who can manage to make the American mainstream media look good.

And finally, one thing that most red-blooded Americans don't understand is why a Tamerlan Tsarnaev could turn against a country that "had taken him in," rescued him from the perpetual conflict of the Caucasus.

I do. My studies taught me that the older an immigrant is, the less likely he or she is to fully assimilate. It's most evident in language. Children under ten still have very fluid speech patterns, and adapt readily. After that, adaptation becomes progressively more difficult on every front.

In my young adulthood, I learnt a dirty little secret. My grandparents, especially my grandmother, never fully assimilated to the United States. During the Depression, with my grandfather unemployed and my grandmother only working part-time, they were angry, resentful, and not careful to keep their opinions away from their children. My father and aunt, by then in their teens, were just as angry with their parents. They were assimilated and more American than my grandparents. Sorry, red-bloods: failure to assimilate is more common than you may think.