David Brooks had me going there, with the first several paragraphs in his column today. He had me thinking a new David Brooks had suddenly emerged, as a butterfly from its chrysalis, with powers of insight and perception the old David Brooks could only dream of having.
Alas, it is the same old clunky, clueless David Brooks:
Here is what inspired the false hopes:
We’re all born late. We’re born into history that is well under way. We’re born into cultures, nations and languages that we didn’t choose. On top of that, we’re born with certain brain chemicals and genetic predispositions that we can’t control. We’re thrust into social conditions that we detest. Often, we react in ways we regret even while we’re doing them.
But unlike the other animals, people do have a drive to seek coherence and meaning. We have a need to tell ourselves stories that explain it all. We use these stories to supply the metaphysics, without which life seems pointless and empty.
[…]
Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.
And then the bucket of cold water, as Brooks proceeds to do exactly that which he decries:
That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.
This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and then start murdering.
When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan did that in Fort Hood, Tex., last week, many Americans had an understandable and, in some ways, admirable reaction. They didn’t want the horror to become a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry.
So immediately the coverage took on a certain cast. …
[…]
A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. …
This is, indeed, the narrative that has been flitting about among the literati in the chattering class and in the blogosphere. Marc Lynch confronts it:
Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I’ve seen a meme going around that it somehow exposed a contradiction between “political correctness” and “security.” The avoidance of Nidal Hassan’s religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the “political correctness” of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the “tough questions” about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans.
This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong. There is a connection between what these critics are calling “political correctness” and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction. The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combatted. Fortunately, American leaders — from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials — understand this and have been acting appropriately.
That last is critical, because whatever anti-Muslim sentiments exist among ordinary Americans (and statistics show that it’s actually decreasing) are less significant than how public officials and authority figures react to those sentiments:
… Asking whether “Americans as a group are virulently biased against Muslims” isn’t really the right way to look at the issue. If you’re a member of a minority group that suffers discrimination, you don’t want to know what the average American thinks about you; you want to know whether there’s a substantial and persistent group of Americans who are strongly prejudiced against you, and whether their expressions of prejudice will be generally tolerated. You’re afraid, basically, of the Cossacks, and what you want to know is whether the Tsar will clamp down on them or not—or whether, in the old worst-case scenario, the Cossacks work for the Tsar. The immediate and unequivocal statements of public authorities are ways of codifying political mores and saying, no, the Cossacks don’t work for the Tsar, and in fact the Tsar will put them in jail if they try anything.
[…]
… Certainly, the most important thing for Jewish Americans is that society as a whole recognise the existence of anti-Semitism; everybody knows it will never be eradicated entirely. That’s why the immediate efforts by General George Casey and by Janet Napolitano to head off anti-Muslim reactions to the Fort Hood massacre have been so compelling and reassuring. And this is also why attempts to link the massacre to “political correctness”, and to imply that Muslims should be subjected to greater discrimination and surveillance, are so misplaced and dangerous. The fever swamps of the nativist internet are currently awash with anti-Muslim bigotry; they always will be. The question is whether the major media and responsible public officials make concerted, pro-active attempts to prevent such bigotry from spreading into the mainstream. …
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