Harriet quoted Jon Ronson in the Guardian Weekend magazine.

"McVeigh was fully aware that innocent secretaries and receptionists would be killed as a result of the massive truck bomb he detonated on April 19, 1995. ... The bad guys were beaten. That was all that really mattered.'"

I can understand if no one feels like having the Blake-at-Star-One thing just now, but it did make me pause to think about why McVeigh feels wrong and Blake mostly right. Real dead people instead of fictional ones? The photo of the small child being carried out of the building? The fact that, even at my most jaundiced, I don't quite put any part of American government on a par with the Federation? Or just that McVeigh is at the furthest part of the political spectrum from me?

I think the beyond the obvious difference, pointed out, that this real life rather than fiction, there are others. Most USA-ans, when sat down and pressed hard consider themselves to be the most pampered of humans on the planet. Not people oppressed within a dome. So what are we to be liberated from, exactly? Paying taxes? Blake, in contrast, is fighting a government who is an equal opportunity oppressor.

Next, McVeigh has mentioned in interviews that he might have chosen a different target, had he realized that there was a daycare center in the building. Why? Not because he necessarily felt any remorse in killing them. After all, they were the children of the people who supported the evil empire, but because he realized that it obscured his message and made his cause look less sympathetic. Blake, OTOH, would have done his research. And he would have felt personally guilty about killing 19 children under the age of 6.

Finally, the target was large symbolic. Star One was not. If McVeigh had targeted the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms headquarters in Washington, DC it would be one thing, but he did not. He went after an office of bureaucrats in podunk nowhere, achieving nothing.

Obviously IMO--rs