Frank Bruni tries desperately to salvage the Utopian dream of Evergreen State College following the videos revealing the flies trying to feed on the carcass of Bret Weinstein.

Racism pervades our country. Students who have roiled college campuses from coast to coast have that exactly right.

But we’re never going to make the progress that we need to if they hurl the word “racist” as reflexively and indiscriminately as some of them do, in a frenzy of righteousness aimed at gagging speakers and strangling debate.

That’s a mechanism for shaming, not a strategy for change. It mesmerizes all. It converts none.

The argument begins with a facile premise. It’s not facile because it’s necessarily false, but because it’s necessarily unilluminating. It’s unhelpful to call something “exactly right” before defining what it is. And Bruni’s post achieves circularity by condemning the use of hurling the word “racist…reflexively and indiscriminately” as a “mechanism for shaming.”

If people are racist, do they not deserve to be shamed? If racism pervades our country, is it debatable? You can’t have it both ways, Frank.

Bruni goes on to describe the “ugliness” at Evergreen which was either done to, or caused by, according to one’s perspective, bio prof Bret Weinstein.

It was a reasonable perspective and a prompt for discussion, not fury. It drew fury nonetheless. Dozens of students interrupted one of his classes, screaming at him about racism, white privilege and even white supremacy. The campus police chief advised him, for his own safety, to steer clear of school grounds until tempers cooled. Students demanded that he and two other college employees whom they deemed insensitive to minorities be fired.

There may be no place on earth more dedicated to the cause of social justice and equity than Evergreen, which is why any of this happened.

“Hey hey, ho ho, these racist teachers have got to go!” they chanted. When the college’s president, George Bridges, met with them, several of them pelted him with profanity and ordered him to shut up.

Racist teachers? Remember, Bruni’s premise is that racism pervades America, so either the students are “exactly right,” as he glibly asserts, and as embarrassing as the whole affair may be, is totally justifiable in the scheme of eradicating racism, or his premise backfires. Because if these aren’t racist teachers, and this isn’t a racist school, and these outraged students aren’t “exactly right,” then there is a problem with social justice Utopia.

But that doesn’t diminish the significance of another bit of that video. Confronted with a loud barrage of questions, he asks the students, “Would you like to hear the answer or not?”

“No!” several shout. And there you have it. They’re not conducting an interrogation. They’re staging an inquisition.

Remember in the early days of the social justice revolution when its advocates called for a “conversation”? We need to discuss these issues, they informed us, and by discussion, they meant that the privileged, which meant anyone but them, needed to shut up and listen to them because they are marginalized and vulnerable.

Now, Bruni aspires to “interrogation.” He bemoans “inquisition.”

At Evergreen State College, an experiment in the Utopia social justice wants to create for all of us, Bruni’s premise was tested. Bruni doesn’t grasp it, although Weinstein did.

And in a video of Weinstein’s exchange with protesters outside his classroom, he proclaims, “History could pivot on this hallway right now.” It’s Olympia, Professor Weinstein, not Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima wasn’t Iwo Jima until it was, Frank. As is Olympia, now. Things happen as, and where, they happen, and where else would one turn to see what social justice Utopia looks like then one of the most social justice-y places in America? It just happens to be in Olympia. And it just happened to get caught on video. As did Yale, a precursor that forewarned us what would come if the adults acquiesced to the children.

Were the Yale students merely fueled by anger or were they high on it? What about those at Evergreen and other colleges?

Like plenty of adults across the political spectrum, they use slurs in lieu of arguments, looking for catharsis rather than constructive engagement. They ratchet up their language to a degree that weakens its currency for direr circumstances. And they undermine their goals — our goals — by pushing away good-hearted allies and handing ammunition to the very people who itch to dismiss them.

Calling the children adults doesn’t make it so, Frank. But then, there were adults as well, like Evergreen president George Bridges, who willingly chose to be the next target of the inquisition, and thanked the children for the opportunity to be subject to their abuse.

Before the experiment played out in Olympia, the Iwo Jima of social justice, there may have been hope that there could be a discussion, maybe a debate, about what constituted racism and what should be done about it. Maybe the marginalized could inform the majority of their feelings, and we could reach some consensus about how to achieve equality for all.

But that’s why Evergreen has become the focus of so many, why what happened to Bret Weinstein has evoked this degree of scrutiny and outrage by the unwoke and unwashed. The Utopia ends in inquisition, where the children rule with an intolerant iron fist, shrieking “racist” at the heretics.

Right-wing media have had a field day with Evergreen, but not because they’ve faked a story. No, the story was given to them in ribbons and bows.

No, Frank. It’s not right-wing media. It’s adult media. It’s American media. It’s all media that refuses to wear the blinders of social justice, to dress up in Mao jackets and burn the witches. Just as the children call anyone who questions them racists, you call any media that doesn’t adhere to your agenda right-wing.

This leaves you as the neutral, reasonable voice, apologizing for the children by explaining that the “real problem” is they yell mean words too much, but only because they’re exactly right to be furious at pervasive racism and those evil people who perpetuate it. Like Bret Weinstein? Like Yale’s Nicholas and Erika Christakis?

But more importantly, the problem isn’t that the story was given to them “in ribbons and bows.” The problem is that this is the story, this is the Utopia. This is what you wanted and this is what you got. Meet your social justice Utopia, where you will adhere to the orthodoxy or be subject to the inquisition.

Racism, to the extent the word has any remaining meaning, is bad. If this is the cure, it’s worse. Social justice tried its Utopian experiment in Olympia, Washington. This is what came of it.