A different slant on Boston Marathon and other Islamic terrorists

Wikipedia link to "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair

What little personal history I can read in the daily newspapers about the brothers Tsarnaev suggests to this old socialist less esoteric motives for them than possession by some maniacal Islamic terrorism demons. There is simply the immigrant experience in America. Coming here, or even to a similar capitalist democracy like France, can be bitterly disappointing. The young daydreamers do not escape oppression and exploitation and the alienation that Marxists often write about. And what can be more embittering than a humiliating failure to support your own wife and children?

Some readers may recall the Upton Sinclair classic "The Jungle." I think the Tsarnaev brothers, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan, and their immigrant family, have a lot in common with Sinclair's character, the Lithuanian Jurgis Rudkus. But at the end of this great American novel Jurgis is prepared to fight for Upton Sinclair's vision of socialism- still in dreamland perhaps but a lot more constructive than blowing up innocent people.

In a strange way is 21st century terrorism partially explained by the collapse of the old Soviet Union?

Submitted to: letters@usatoday.com