Were the Tsarnaevs nuts or revolutionaries?

[BeyondGeography]

29. This article is dangerously stupid...These kids didn't have an "ideology"

The older one was rebelling against what America did to his hoped-for rock star lifestyle, not what we did to the victims in Iraq and Afghanistan. What's interesting about Tamerlan is what happens when you combine the real-world difficulties of carving out a life for yourself in America with the outlet that radical Islam provides for rage and disappointment. This kid was both ambitious and unwilling to pick himself off the ground when hard times hit. That's hard for anyone, but especially someone who feels entitled, and who is surrounded by enablers, like his shoplifting mother, his submissive and probably scared-to-death spouse and every angry person who would listen to him.

There is something to be gained in digging deeper if we want to make ourselves safer, but spare me the talk of "ideology." This was a young immigrant Muslim male whose first inclination was to believe the hype and go all-in with America, found the place both difficult and incomprehensible and consoled himself with violent revenge fantasies that he eventually acted upon. He then gave every indication that he wanted to enjoy his fame, bragging about the crime to his carjacking victim and apparently planning a blaze-of-glory ending in New York. Terrorism was the ticket to celebrity that he couldn't purchase through conventional means. His ideology? Party of one.