Shattering Southern California's Illusion of Safety — #SanBernardino

Following-up, "An Existential Fear of Foreign Infiltration."

Now, at the Los Angeles Times, "San Bernardino terrorist attack shatters Southern California's illusion of safety":

As terrorist attacks fueled by extreme Islamist ideology convulsed cities in the U.S. and Europe over the last 15 years, Los Angeles and its sprawling suburbs were spared.

It couldn't last forever.

The assault on a San Bernardino social services center last week by a U.S.-born Muslim man and his Pakistani wife was an event of national significance, potentially reshaping next year's presidential contest and raising Americans' fears of terrorism to levels not seen since the World Trade Center attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But the killing of 14 people by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik has had a particular effect in Southern California, a densely populated region whose residents have at times felt themselves remote from the transatlantic waves of terror that have washed over New York, London, Paris, Madrid and Washington, D.C.

That sense of separation is deeply rooted in the state's culture and history, experts say, though it is in many ways unrealistic. The truth is that the Southland — home to more than 22 million people, as well as an entertainment industry that is arguably the foremost exporter of the secular culture denounced by Islamic fundamentalists — is as vulnerable as anywhere else in the U.S. to extremist violence in the post-9/11 era.

"We used to call California an 'island on the land.' There was a sense of — take your pick: outside history, ahead of the curve. But that's simply not true," said William Deverell, a history professor at USC who studies the American West. "The notion that this is an island that can't be breached, that's wrong. And San Bernardino has proven it."

Deverell said the attack was in a sense more jarring for having happened in the far-flung Inland Empire, where many ex-Angelenos have sought refuge from high housing costs and urban crime, rather than at an iconic location in Santa Monica or the Hollywood Hills. Security experts say assaults on "soft" targets unprepared for politically motivated violence are now as much a risk as the spectacular, symbolically resonant attacks on famous buildings or tourist sites.

Farook and Malik appear to exemplify this brand of "homegrown" or "self-radicalized" terrorist. Federal officials have said the pair may have quietly plotted a mass killing for years in relative isolation, taking inspiration but not direction from overseas terrorist groups.

"You can't think of it in terms of, 'Here is someone sitting at terrorist central control who says we have to look at California more seriously.' It's not that at all," said Brian Michael Jenkins, a national security expert at the Rand Corp. "Whether or not something in California is a target of terrorism depends on whether someone who is radicalized lives in California."

Debbie Maller, 55, has lived in San Bernardino for two decades and was at a coffee shop in the city's downtown Friday afternoon. She said she had sometimes worried about terrorist violence when visiting big cities after the 9/11 attacks, but had never had such fears in her hometown.

"I would have never thought of the words 'San Bernardino' and 'terrorism' together," she said...

Still more.