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The Rush to Therapy -David Brooks
[M]any Americans had an understandable reaction. They didn’t want the horror to become a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry. The possibility of Islamic extremism was immediately played down. This was an isolated personal breakdown, not an ideological assault, many people emphasized. Major Hasan was portrayed as a disturbed individual who was under a lot of stress.
A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness. There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
The conversation was a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war 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.
[New York Times]
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