(Just looked and didn't see anything on this, so decided to quickly put something together to see if folks wanted to talk about it. )

My partner texted me this afternoon from midtown Manhattan to see if I'd heard about what appears to be coordinated bomb attempts aimed at high profile Democratic Party members, as well as in the media. I purposely have watched none of the coverage and only did a very bare, cursory scan of Twitter before writing this.

I did immediately think of an essay I had read years ago (possibly at TOP) about something called Stochastic Terrorism (here's the original article, not TOP). Made a lot of sense.

Here's some excerpts:

Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.

This is what occurs when Bin Laden releases a video that stirs random extremists halfway around the globe to commit a bombing or shooting.

This is also the term for what Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, and others do. And this is what led directly and predictably to a number of cases of ideologically-motivated murder similar to the Tucson shootings. As of this writing, there is no evidence to link Jared Loughner to a specific source of incitement; but some of the other cases can be clearly linked.

The stochastic terrorist is the person who is responsible for the incitement. For example they go on radio or television and stir up hatred toward a particular person or group.

Then he breaks it down into categories:

The lone wolves:

The term "lone wolf" is used in law enforcement and intel to refer to an individual who is emotionally unstable, who lacks obvious ties to known criminal gangs or terrorist groups, and who pops up seemingly out of nowhere to commit a violent or terrorist act.

The three-letter agencies can keep an eye on organized groups, and do a damn good job at stopping violent actors associated with those groups. At least three intended car bombings were stopped last year by the FBI intercepting the bombers and substituting fake explosives in time to save hundreds of lives and arrest the would-be bombers.

Lone wolves don't have obvious connections through which they can be discovered. They don't communicate much if at all about their intentions. They keep their plans to themselves. And then, apparently at random, they pop up from obscurity and commit murder. They are law enforcement's and intel's worst nightmare, and on the 8th of January one of them became America's nightmare.

The elements are there, the environment created, then it's just sit and wait:

Stirring the pot:

At any given time there are hundreds of thousands of Americans with combinations of personality characteristics (such as emotional instability, a paranoid ideology, and a propensity for violence) that put them at risk of going off the deep end and becoming lone wolves. All it takes is the right push, the right nudge at the right time, to dislodge a few of them and send them on their way to fifteen minutes of fame surrounded by dead bodies.

There's nothing mysterious about this process. It is not much different to other instances where a person is almost ready to make a decision, and the right combination of inputs makes them act. For example you have an old car and it begins to break down more often: now you're thinking about replacing it, and you might be swayed by something in an automobile advertisement. Anyone who is familiar with marketing and advertising knows how this works, and advertisers often target their messages to people who are "ready to buy" and just need a little persuading. Political candidates often target their ads to the undecideds, hoping that a little nudge will win them some votes. This is perfectly normal and hardly insidious.

It becomes insidious when these practices are used in such a manner as to deliberately or negligently stir up lone wolf violence.

So let's take Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly. There is no question that their emotional rhetoric appeals to people who are emotionally unstable. And, since their audiences are tracked and analyzed in detail, there is no question that they know it.

When they go on TV and shout and sputter, rant and rave, and weep and wail, they are not expecting to persuade liberals or even undecideds to change their votes. They are "playing to their base," that they know includes people who are emotionally unstable. In short they are "stirring the pot." And if you turn up the temperature and keep stirring, you know that the pot will boil. Bubbles will come up from the depths and pop.

He gives a long list of specific examples in the essay. Someone on Twitter today attached an article from Medium.com that had more examples.

I do believe Stochastic Terrorism is a very real thing. It deserves a lot more consideration, especially to the attested power of extreme ideologue propaganda.

Whether it's an ISIS beheading video; or relentless, incendiary Fox News propaganda; or Trump's reckless, bigoted prods. Inflammatory content stirs the pot, for an emotionally unstable and paranoid ideologue(s), who then carries out a violent act in their service. Remote control, in effect.

But then part of me wondered if this couldn't be an inside plot just before the midterm elections to engender votes for an aimless, floundering Dem Party, who refuse to budge from their pathetic no-position-at-all of, "We're Not Trump." Upon seeing that the targeted people were almost all very high profile Democrats and the media and the top names brandished by RW extremists hooked on RW media, it just seemed in the realm of possibility, given the histories of the FBI or CIA, that they could have hatched a plot to help the Democrats by focusing on the ones most known to the average Fox News viewer.

This is how fucked up things are in this Upside Down epoch. And, the FBI seems to have been transparently helping the Dems lately. Reminding us again that, relative to the Duopoly, the Parties are to the Intelligence arms one and the same in terms of the consolidated power of the 1%. And for the insiders charged with keeping this status quo in place it's all about keeping their personal gravy train's going.

What troubles me most about this outrageously specific and obviously coordinated plot (targets include the last two sitting Dem prez's, and then a veritable punching bag of RW media paranoia, from Maxine Waters to George Soros) is that legitimate concerns about increased RW extremism, no doubt ratcheted up by the Pure Scumbag In Chief, could be sidelined if this comes to light. Because there is some seriously bigoted and racist shit disconcertedly coming to the fore much more freely these days.

If this sounds like far-fetched conspiracy stuff, then just contemplate Operation Northwood. Or what the FBI and Chicago PD did to Fred Hampton, and the full scale disruption and framing of the Black Panthers, and also the anti-Vietnam War movement. Or the Red Scare illegally deporting dissidents without due process. Or McCarthyism to crush Leftist dissent. Or what the US gov't did to Sacco & Vanzetti.

If the CIA can come to a sitting President (JFK) and lay out various plots they could engage in, which included "possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities," in order to set the grounds for an official attack on communist Cuba, then what would prevent high ranking officials inside government from plotting something similar? (note: surprised to see that the Wikipedia quote above is intact there)

Two NYPD officers were killed just after the Black Lives Matter movement exploded in NYC. Protesters were so widespread and diverse, and so savvy at shutting down many arteries all over the city, that the current Commissioner admitted grudgingly that the cops, even with the latest, highest tech surveillance apparatus, were frequently outflanked and flustered. It's not crazy to think the pair of murdered cops, which included a Chinese-American, were sacrificial lambs in order to stem the massive tide of popular discontent after the Eric Garner non-conviction. Wall to wall coverage of the ostentatious funeral, complete with back-turning cops as disrespect to the Mayor who simply uttered some innocuous truths about the protesters' cause, and the Police Union threatening a work slowdown (and incessant whining about how nobody likes them) effectively throttled the whole movement, or dramatically slowed it down.

Human life is totally expendable to these psychopathic bastards. Power and money blinds them to commit the worst atrocities. From the RW Hate Machine propagandists who spew their bile all day everyday over the vast airwaves they cover, to the real Power Elite who can mask and provide cover for any act to be interpreted as something other than just another power play to achieve the result whatever it is they deem necessary at the moment.

I hesitated even publishing this. Maybe I'm just too tired and beleaguered by how pathetic politics, its coverage and the players have become.

But I've read enough about the real history of America and how the ruling class have operated since the beginning.

UPDATE:
(just a couple of links)

Taibbi takes the unpopular (in a 24/7 news culture that demands IMMEDIATE ANSWERS, which incidentally is the same sort of mindset that leads to the police panic that illegally frames innocent, young black boys, dubbed the Central Park 5, to be falsely convicted of crimes they never committed) but reasoned approach. He's been writing really great stuff lately (you must read his series about media manipulation called, The Fairway.)

Taibbi: Is It Fair to Blame Trumpism for These Latest Explosive Devices?

I have no love for Trump, his disgraceful rhetoric, or the blatantly anti-Semitic attacks against the likes of Soros. And no sane person can have anything but contempt for the kind of incitement of violence that has become routine online (witness Bill McKibben’s story about anti-environmentalists calling for someone to dig up his address and bring “civil disobedience” to his home). Even without these bomb incidents, this should all be denounced in the strongest terms.

But if there’s one thing history tells us about terrorism, it’s that these stories often end up having very different narratives than what is first suspected in the heat of the moment. Facts that later emerge often leave us in a completely different place than we’d have expected.

Because of the 24-hour news cycle and our addiction to second-to-second updates from reporters, celebrities and politicians alike on social media, it’s almost impossible not to speculate and point fingers right after we hear scary news. This is a form of journalistic malpractice that has gone sideways on more than a few of us in the business over the years.

He then lays out a handful of examples. After which he returns to the media's reckless rush, in a climate of chronic fear-mongering, to make hay out of very little to go on.

A huge problem with terror stories is that journalists are rushed for scoops and often take short cuts they otherwise wouldn’t. An infamous case involved Channel 4 in England, which relied on one source to identify the culprit in the Westminster terror attack. The man turned out to be in prison at the time of the incident.

Worse, a lot of TV programs have national security consultants who are paid specifically to speculate before facts are in, in cases just like this. Same with analysts from think tanks, whose job at least partly is to sit at desks, waiting to supply calling reporters with quotes. This is how you’ll get wildly divergent guesses about how terror incidents have “fingerprints” that “point to” this or that group, even before there’s a suspect or any kind of evidence.

Just as bad is the penchant for non-press actors these days to engage in phony terror attacks in order to get eyeballs and clicks. We’ve seen a YouTuber pretend to throw acid at people in England, trying to surf on real fears about a real rise in acid attacks in Britain. There’s a whole genre of staged “terror” attacks online.

Truthdig disappointingly opts for a perfunctory, mainstream take on it.

I like the general view that the author at Medium.com piece took, which was linked in the body of the essay.

Something is motivating white men to murder immigrants, women and people of color. The rise of violence on the right, especially the loose bundle of white supremacists, revanchist losers, and neo-fascists known as the “alt-right” has been well documented. Donald Trump’s demagogic tendencies on his way up, and the open admiration for fascists among his inner circle, has raised the spectre of a right-wing SA-style paramilitary that would grease the skids for American fascism. That’s not what we’ve seen, however. By and large the right-wing talks a big game, but when the rubber meets the road, they’re cowards. They flee their own rallies under police escort or pen themselves in in gazebos. It doesn’t help that they can only summon a scant few dozen or couple hundred at most, while left-wing counterprotests regularly number in the tens of thousands.

This makes sense. Despite the heavy focus on the white working class, and of course the ugly classism of coastal liberals, the fascist base of the alt-right comes from the comfortable suburban middle-class. These petit-bourgeoisie would always form the base of any fascist movement in America, hungry to defend their little slice of prosperity from usurping outsiders, yet eager to lick the boots of the truly wealthy and powerful. Fascism forms around a core of conformity and subservience, and fascists are always looking for a Strong Daddy to serve. The militias that show up to menace left-wing protesters are kitted out in “tactical” gear they bought online at exorbitant markups; they’re cosplayers in expensive costumes, not domestic-terrorists-in-waiting.

What right-wing killings all have in common is the perpetrators. They tend to be loners, losers, washups, the addicted, the ill, the antisocial, the crazy. This excellent story by GQ profiles Roof’s life before his attack on the church. He was a high-school dropout with a history of social withdrawal, substance abuse and mental health problems. Adam Purinton scraped by doing odd jobs, but his drinking had spiraled out of control following the death of his father. Jeremy Christian had a history of violent behavior and confrontations with law enforcement, who was in and out of jail due to his allergy to any kind of authority at all. James Alex Fields, Jr. was a loner who had failed out of boot camp and assaulted his mother when she tried to get him to cut down on video games. These men were, frankly, fuckups, and they were fuckups before they started drinking right-wing poison from internet sewers like Reddit, 4chan, and Stormfront.

...But these men are vulnerable to radicalization because the material conditions of their lives are falling apart and the community safety nets that might once have caught them have been shredded. Mental health care, substance abuse programs, and direct outreach to these groups can turn young men lured into stochastic terrorism away from that path. Presenting them with an alternative reduces the chances that they channel their frustrations into murder. Racism and xenophobia are at the core of the alt-right’s resurgence, and we must combat those through education and exposure, ensuring that racist speakers and writers are denied a platform to spread their poison. At the very least, keeping tabs on them may help defuse some of these threats before they happen, like the man recently caught by the FBI attempting to blow up a bank.

De-radicalizing the young is a long, difficult job, but it’s essential if we are to curb violence in the future. A generation’s futures have been stolen from them, and they’re pissed as hell about it. We can set to work dismantling the predatory architecture that has done this, ensuring health care and economic security for the many, and acting to curb the spread of racism in communities through direct engagement and education. Or we can double down on the failed police state and live with the human cost of stochastic terrorism.