A Blow To The Head

Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle. Now some babbling liberal moonbat is questioning whether the Boston Marathon bombing was somehow caused by the fact that the older, deader brother was a Golden Gloves boxer.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is telling no tales. The older of the two brothers who committed the Boston Marathon bombings was likely the one who planned the attack, but when he died in a shootout with police just days after the blasts, his thoughts and motivations vanished with him.

But the brain that was home to his angry mind remains, and in this case that may mean something.

Tsarnaev was an amateur boxer who won the New England Golden Gloves competition as recently as 2009 and 2010. That speaks to a young man with a healthy sense of discipline and focus, and if he had a violent streak, it was violence well-channeled.

But his sport of choice suggests the possibility of something else too: traumatic brain injury.

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear.

It was inevitable, then, that questions would be raised about whether Tsarnaev's brain may have been similarly traumatized during the years he boxed, and if there had indeed been damage, did that spark his murderous behavior?

I played football, and had my bell rung more than once. I used to ride dirt bikes, and experienced a few spectacular spills. I've trained in martial arts, and been smacked around pretty good. I've been thrown from a horse and knocked unconscious. I've been in a car wreck and suffered a fractured skull. My official concussion count is four, and I'm sure there were several more that went undiagnosed. My poor old brain has been shaken, rattled, and rolled. While there might be some who question my mental status, I have yet to go out and blow up people.

Since the bombing required premeditation, planning, and foresight, that would rule out the impulsiveness, situational anger, and paranoia that is typical of CTE. A much more likely explanation, as dictated by Occam’s Razor ("the simpler the explanation, the better"), is that the brothers Tsarnaev became radicalized islamists, and like all radicalized islamists are violently opposed to the United States of America and everything we stand for.

Here’s another point of view that the apologists who feel sorry for those poor, misguided brothers should think about. Maybe they should be held accountable for their own actions.