They don’t attract people like this:
The FBI closely monitors online communities that discuss ISIS, at times running so many undercover accounts that agents end up investigating one another: An FBI policy guide, obtained and published by The Intercept, notes that online investigations have “previously resulted in resources being wasted by investigating or collecting on FBI online identities,” or employees working undercover. The Bureau also takes tips from a network of sources—from security firms to random vigilantes—who monitor these communities.
The small group of people who have been arrested on ISIS-related charges are an idiosyncratic bunch—they come from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds, and each case is distinctive. But many do share important traits with Moe and Jaelyn. According to the Center on National Security at Fordham University’s School of Law, their median age is 25. Three-quarters are American citizens. Nine out of 10 are male. Over one-third are converts to Islam. Although roughly a quarter of cases have involved people of Arab descent like Moe, whose father is Palestinian, most come from other ethnic backgrounds, including African Americans like Jaelyn. Few have criminal backgrounds. Many live with their parents. And roughly 90 percent of cases involve social media, sometimes including online conversation with a recruiter, either real or undercover.
So why is voting for Trump so scary? Have Americans really lost the capacity to discern different kinds of threats? Even words that trigger PTSD don’t have the same effect as a guillotine.
But the biggest problem with the jeremiads against the new P.C. is that they treat the so-called politically correct as radical freaks who are outside of mainstream American society—opposing the common sense free-speech position held by wholesome liberals and conservatives. Yet far from outlier ideas, trigger warnings and safe spaces grow out of impulses that are broadly shared. For many decades, the United States has been the home to a thriving vernacular therapeutic culture, where ordinary citizens borrow concepts from psychology and use them as tools of self-improvement, often, in the process, forming distinct political and social identities. In a society where Oprah Winfrey is a guru to millions and self-help books are perennial best-sellers, the adoption of folk therapy is hardly the mark of eccentricity. Moreover, trigger warnings and safe spaces echo the larger jitteriness that has marked American culture for many decades, gaining special salience after September 11, 2001.
Imagine that kind of understanding for white evangelicals.
And then duck.
Old Life 