An Unserious American Elite

The NYT's David Brooks on "The Rush to Therapy" in the terrorist attack at Ft. Hood.

The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.

It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.

Brooks is being kind (or circumspect) in not naming his own editors as being complicit in this unseriousness. It is liberal elites - both political and in the media - that fall victim to this kind of dangerous political correctness. Even military elites are suseptible to its power in the name of "diversity."

Brooks:

Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.

Such is the contempt these brilliant feelers have for the American people. No wonder, more and more they are being laughed at and ignored.