In The Crack-Up, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, appear to fit the biographical pattern of those involved in domestic terror plots, according to research by terrorism expert Brian Jenkins of Rand Corp - young, male, disaffected consumers of radical internet propaganda.
"These are individuals who were disenfranchised with their station in life and they decided to take action," said Rick "Ozzie" Nelson, former US counterterrorism official and a senior affiliate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
"The motivation for these two would have been very different from the people on 9/11," said Akbar Ahmed, an American University professor who recently published a book about tribal Islam. "It's not an act for a political point. It is an act of nihilism, and the frame is not Islam."
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Their median age is 27. They have come from a cross-section of ethnic backgrounds. They typically show signs of profound alienation.
"Religious belief does not appear to be the key personal factor," Jenkins said. Participants have been motivated by "grievance, sense of anger, desire for revenge, feelings of humiliation, desire to demonstrate manhood, participation in an epic struggle, thirst for glory."
