Disclaimer: I am a US citizen by birth.
Disgusting. All idealistic notions of liberty just get thrown away without a second glance when someone introduces a little chaos into our precious order. Self-appointed internet justiciars completely destroying the future of perfectly innocent people based on racial profiling of cell phone pictures and speculative Facebook profile browsing. Street mobs cheering on the police, waving American flags, chanting "USA". "Euphoria in Boston" tops the CNN front page. Constitutional rights tossed aside at the whim of prosecutors. And I thought witch hunts ended a few centuries ago.
Perhaps Christopher Nolan was not a director, but a prophet.
Democracies are well able to cope with normal crime. Simple murders of family members are not even regarded as newsworthy even though more people are murdered that way in a year than by terrorism in a century.
Democracies find organised campaigns of violence harder to deal with. There is something unnerving about killers who are simply ordered to go somewhere and kill people at random. There is a feeling you can't reason with these people. There are feeling that you are not safe to go out. This causes draconian laws like the Offences against the State Act in Ireland which abolished the right to silence and the right to jury trial for suspected terrorists and the US Patriot Act which I believe does the same.
If Irish history is anything to go by, things do get better. People get used to terrorism and it becomes just another crime. Stupid laws stop being used because politicians are fed up with the hysteria. Sadly, you will need a fair few more attacks before the US gets things in perspective but it will come.
