Is it merely "coincidence" that the Boston Marathon bombing occurred on Patriots Day?

The Boston Marathon bombing not unpredictably excited a great many theories as to the identity of the perpetrators. The usual Middle Eastern suspects have been silent on the topic, but that did not stop Fox News from “speculating.” News that law enforcement had initially detained and questioned a Saudi citizen and the “similarity” of the explosive device to IEDs used in the Afghanistan was an excuse to wax grim about our overseas foes. But by Tuesday morning, anchor Megyn Kelly was telling viewers to ignore what they had been reporting for the last 24 hours; after all, everyone makes mistakes. Kelly—wearing a low-cut blouse and short skirt—was doing her phony emoting bit, equally stiff trying to be “sympathetic” to the parents of a victim who were initially misled by hospital staff, and then trying to appear “grave” talking in generalities about the event.

As of this writing, there has been no arrests in the Boston tragedy, but I certainly wouldn’t count out the perpetrators being domestic terrorists with a “message” to put forth. Is it just coincidence that the marathon took place on the same day as “Patriots Day,” a commemoration observed in Massachusetts to mark the first battles of the Revolutionary War in 1775? This wouldn’t be the first time that terrorists chose a specific date on the calendar  to “rationalize” their actions. On July 4, 1940 the British Pavilion of the World Fair in New York City was bombed, and two police officers were killed. The Nazis and the Irish were variously blamed, but the perpetrators were never identified. The World Fair had been in progress since the year previous, so it was not likely that this was a “random” date chosen by the bombers, and the July 4 obviously has a particular meaning in Anglo-American history; the U.S. had not yet entered the war, and this may have been meant to be a message that some Americans were not happy about the pressure from Britain on U.S.’ “neutrality.”

And of course there was Timothy McVeigh choosing April 19 to bomb the federal building in Oklahoma City; it was the day of the ATF raid on the Branch Davidian compound that ended in a conflagration and the deaths of many Davidians. For anti-government fanatics, they didn’t need any more proof to justify their beliefs.

These days, people who call themselves “patriots” are usually anti-government types of varying levels of fanaticism. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified over 800 of these groups throughout the country. Some states have a surprising number of them within its borders; the state of Washington has always been a hotbed of right-wing extremist and white supremacist types (like militia star Shawna Forde, currently on death row in Arizona for the racially-inspired murder of a Latino man and his young daughter), but its tally of 27 of these “patriot” groups seems to give it more of these outfits per capita than any other state. 

Some of these groups are dangerous; the recent attempt to mail order ricin to President Obama and others is hardly new. In 1992, the so-called Minnesota Patriots Council had the same idea, except that law enforcement was its target; however, these "patriots"  seemed particularly disturbed about the "mud people" and other "godless" elements inhabiting the state and how to make them disappear.   Four members of the group purchased castor beans through the mail, offered by a ""company" called "Avenging Angel Supply" in Ashland, Oregon. An advertisement--offering customers an opportunity to play amateur assassin on the cheap--was printed in the CBA Bulletin, an Oregon-based right-wing religious extremist and rabidly anti-Semitic screed. Instructions were provided to transform the beans into a “silent tool of justice” causing “silent death.” This “patriot” group was the first to be prosecuted under a new biological terrorism law passed in the late 1989. 

At the present moment, two “suspects” are being sought, although photographs that may or may not be the bombers show little detail but the clothing they are wearing. I’m betting that this is the work of an anti-government fanatic or group, although I could be wrong; the arrests of a disgruntled former justice of the peace and his wife who are alleged to have tag-teamed in the shooting deaths of a Texas district attorney, his wife and a prosecutor seems to rule-out the work of a white supremacist prison gang or a Mexican drug cartel, as had been previously speculated.