Ft. Hood Hot Potato
Following NPR’s report on the handling of Major Nidal Hassan by his colleagues at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, right wingers felt vindication that for once their knee-jerk blaming of “political correctness” had been validated by reality — and by no less than the most pinko of the Liberal Media MSM Establishment Thingy! Roger Simon even takes it a step further:
But that pathology of political correctness has now been laid bare before us. More than the two handguns, it was the murder weapon in that room at Fort Hood. Those thirteen innocent people are indeed PC deaths because it was PC that allowed Hasan to be there. The question is, as it is with all emotionally loaded learning, what will we do with this new information?
To begin with, we must explore what attracted us to political correctness in the first place. Several explanations suggest themselves: political expediency, increased power in certain quarters, the desire to be left alone, the desire to be loved, even psychosexual masochism. There are more, I am sure. But they must be ventilated. Nothing can bring back the thirteen who were killed. But the most fitting memorial to them would be that their murders would signal the death knell of political correctness.
Put down that rhetoric, son. You’ll shoot your eye out.
To Simon’s credit, he notes that “political correctness is derived from the more intellectually respectable doctrine of cultural relativism (it’s sort of CR’s public ‘happy face’)” — which has an element of truth to it. Of course, he doesn’t spend much time making the important distinctions between the two, so let me do it. “Political correctness” is an easy way for liberal idiots to claim sensitivity and cultural awareness — and for conservative idiots to avoid those responsibilities altogether — without having to do the intellectual heavy lifting that real “cultural relativism” requires, such as learning something about another person’s culture in order to understand how they think. Ya know, listening to them. “Political correctness” is bureaucratic shorthand; it sets down unambiguous rules, a “zero tolerance” policy to enforce, treating everyone “equally” before the letter of the law or the policy manual. You don’t have to think, you don’t have to take risks, you don’t have to demonstrate any real judgment or leadership or human communication. Institutions love it, because it makes it easier to avoid lawsuits, to mouth pieties, and to keep the status quo in place without a real challenge to the power structure.
In a bureaucracy like the military, it makes sense they passed on a hot potato like Hassan. Maybe they thought the larger psychiatric facilities would help him out, or that he’d get lost in a huge place like Fort Hood. Either way, he won’t be in his Walter Reed colleague’s hair, not their problem. And hey, if they ship him off to Afghanistan, who knows what might happen? Unfortunately for 13 people at Fort Hood and their families and friends, Hassan was a problem not easily disposed of.
November 18th, 2009 at 7:20 am
Sums it up nicely. I’m retired from the military, they do in fact move their “problem children” around.
November 18th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Thank you. My wife tells me that she had an uncle in the NYPD whose alcoholism was so bad, his fellow officers were afraid he’d get himself or someone killed on the beat. So they desked him. Gave him a lot of paperwork and let him drink himself toward early retirement. It’s a compassionate move, in its way, but doesn’t actually address his real problem nor really help him in the long run. Cheery thought for the day!
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm
It just occured to me that the line between religion and mental illness is getting harder and harder to find.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:52 am
The problem is ‘political correctness’ allows people to not have to make hard decisions. In many cases, like Hassans, it actually tied the hands of people. No ‘policy’ should replace commen sense and just plain intelligent choice.