From a reader:
Jonah:
In the mid 1970’s a tribe of people in New Guinea were discovered that were so remote they had never had any contact with modern civilization. These people did not even know who Mary Anne is, or for that matter, Gilligan.
When the scientists studying the tribe requested more supplies a helicopter was dispatched to the tribe’s location. The reaction of the tribe was that an “insect” of that size simply could not exist (they obviously had missed not only Gillian’s Island but all those 50’s monster movies). Their way of dealing with this impossibility was they refused to look at the helicopter. It was impossible in their worldview, so it did not exist, or at least could not be acknowledged to exist.
I fear that the “softies” you speak of are like that primitive tribe. The fact of terrorism is so counter to their world view that it simply cannot exist. They can read about it, have it shown to them, even get killed by it, but they can never, ever “see” it.