It's easier to set off a bomb that kills innocent civilians in a market than it is to plot an assassination, but that obviously was true before as well. I also think it's now easier to get attention for a small attack that goes off in a random market. It's almost like there's a marketplace for terror in the media, and these people are supplying the attacks, knowing that the media will cover them sensationally.

I guess my point in general is that, if you look closely, who is in politics to self-identify - these are the people who flip easily, from right to left, pro-Muslim to anti-Muslim, etc. - versus who, whether on the right or left, is moved by genuine interest and empathy.

I'm pretty private as a person - people generally think they know more about me than they do, because I gregariously advertise what I want known. So it pains me to think people might feel they have an insight into my personal matters, which they most certainly do not.

It's very good for us to say, as liberals, that we should be moved by everything, but the fact is that there's just so much competing for our attention.

I think I know a lot of fake two-faced Ivy League liberals, and I am constantly testing them to see if their liberalism is a conversational liberalism, one that depends solely on what will fly at a party. And I can tell when stuff like this happens, I swear to God, they are tomorrow's conservatives.

The only solace can come from the state. In the Boston bombing, only a handful of people died in the end, even though a huge number were injured - and that was a huge attack in America. The government was very involved in providing aid and following up in the investigation.

People in the East get a very skewed sense of America as this enormously rapaciously sexual place, this place where you have rappers and you have Donald Trump and things like that, which leads to a lot of confusion.