Sorry dude, I can't buy in. Until I see a concrete connection between the act and the movement - like in the Pittsburgh cop shooting - this is just a poor misguided guy acting out against his perceived tormentors.

Although I do have a foreboding that acts like this will continue, but not from direct agitation from the tea party or any other political movement.

I've been re-watching an Anime series (Ghost in the Shell) that takes the theory of Emergent Behavior and wraps it's plot line around it, calling various terrorist and misguided acts a "Stand Alone Complex"*. Stating that there does not need to be a conscious trigger or event, but that these actions arise by themselves from the media swarm of daily existence.

I think that is what we are seeing here - and what we will continue to see.

*Taken from Wikipedia

A Stand Alone Complex can be compared to the emergent copycat behavior that often occurs after incidents such as serial murders or terrorist attacks. An incident catches the public's attention and certain types of people "get on the bandwagon", so to speak. It is particularly apparent when the incident appears to be the result of well-known political or religious beliefs, but it can also occur in response to intense media attention. For example, a mere fire, no matter the number of deaths, is just a garden variety tragedy. However, if the right kind of people begin to believe it was arson, caused by deliberate action, the threat that more arsons will be committed increases drastically.

What separates the Stand Alone Complex from normal copycat behavior is that there is no real originator of the copied action, but merely a rumor or an illusion that supposedly performed the copied action. There may be real people who are labeled as the originator, but in reality, no one started the original behavior. And in Stand Alone Complex, the facade just has to exist in the minds of the public. In other words, a potential copycat just has to believe the copied behavior happened from an originator-when it really didn't. The result is an epidemic of copied behavior having a net effect of purpose. One could say that the Stand Alone Complex is mass hysteria over nothing-yet causing an overall change in social structure.

This is not unlike the concepts of memes ... and second-order simulacra. It also has ties to social theory, as illustrated in the work of Frederic Jameson and Masachi Osawa.

more on emergent behavior: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergent_behavior

more on stand alone complex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_Ghost_in_the_Shell