My take is slightly more complicated that “intelligent people can’t feel disenfranchised” but I didn’t want to write more on the subject because I think it’s complicated, and reflects my thinking, but not careful considered research done by anyone.
My take on it is that smarter people figure out how to get to a place like Syria to join ranks. Alternatively, they become recruiters. It’s more about selection bias in the current geopolitical climate. When I said the issues were systemic, I meant that in a deeper way than just, “smart people don’t become disaffected” but rather “smart people become disaffected in ways that might be more harmful but which accidentally conspire to lower the overall threat of lone-wolves in western countries.” The causes of global terrorism and armed proxy wars in the Middle East are currently intertwined in ways that may create counter-intuitive outcomes, like less terrorism in the Western hemisphere, and coupled with the successful suppression of IS this has resulted in a global decline in terror attacks. Of course, we also have to couple the decline in fractional terrorism (only stuff brown people do) with an increase in terrorism (stuff white people do + stuff brown people do) because these are linked by a variety of phenomena like right-wing radicalization of members of the armed forces. But as far as I know, no one runs the numbers like that.
Obviously, I’m no terror expert like Sebastian Gorka*, but when I do think about it lately, this is how I tend to think of it.
*that was sarcasm, folks.
