Mark Steyn: "He's not Muslim, he's just mentally ill."

The incomparable mark Steyn remarks, in his inimitably un-PC way on the way the media (including FOX) treats certain people who commit certain acts and belong to a certain religion.   And the insular and insulated, protected and pampered Ruling Class. 

Diversity seems to be working out fine in the upper echelons of society. But lower down the ladder identity-group politics requires ever more virulent demonization of "the other". Otherwise, how's an ugly thug race-baiter like Al Sharpton supposed to stay in business? And so #blacklivesmatter, and Rafael Ramos and Wen Jian Liu are serviceable stand-ins for Bull Connor, as was "white Hispanic" George Zimmerman a couple of grievances back. Aside from being a respectable NBC anchor and a welcome guest at Obama's White House, the Reverend Al is said to be the "co-mayor" of New York. This term is largely metaphorical - for the moment. But you can already discern the contours of the American future: A chichi Green Zone within which the consequences of identity-group politics are confined mainly to sudden vapors over microagressions and nanoaggressions, and the plump prosperous power-brokers of "social justice" live lives comfortably undisturbed by the passions they foment when they jet forth with ever larger entourages to toss some red meat to the mob in Ferguson or Staten Island. And beyond the Green Zone a land of minimal economic opportunity fracturing into ever fiercer tribal resentments that find ever more violent expression.

If you want the picture in a nutshell, the same Department of Homeland Security that declines to fence America's vanished southern border is recommending the fence round the White House be made even taller. The Obamas and de Blasios and Sharptons will always be inside the fence. The effects of their policies are largely on the other side.

~Is it relevant that Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley is a Muslim? Maybe not. But it isn't so irrelevant that every news outlet (including Fox) has to be quite so cautious about mentioning it at all. Newsday, one of the few papers that did, reported the view of Robert Boyce, the NYPD's Chief of Detectives:

Boyce said Brinsley had no gang affiliation or tattoos. His family is Muslim but the NYPD found no indication that he was religious or that the slaying was motivated by religion. He said the family said he never manifested "any radicalization."

So the preferred explanation is mental illness:

The shooter may have had an undiagnosed mental illness, according to his family, and may have been on medication "later on in life," Boyce said in a briefing in Manhattan. But he said he had no official reports of any mental illness.

Indeed. In fact, there's less hard evidence for any mental illness than there is for "radicalization", at least to the extent that Brinsley appears to have posted on his Facebook page the Koranic soundbite about "striking fear into the enemies of Allah". Nevertheless, the preferred explanation is that Brinsley was mentally ill, just like the guy who beheaded a coworker in Oklahoma was mentally ill, and the Sydney bloke who took those hostages at the coffee shop was mentally ill, and the son of the Canadian Refugee Board honcho who killed a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial was mentally ill. They were also all Muslim. Oh, and the fellow in France who ran down 11 people with his car while shouting "Allahu Akbar!" only yesterday has already been pronounced mentally ill. By sheer coincidence, he was Muslim, too.