The riots in Baltimore the other day were pretty mild by the standards of these things. The riots in the late sixties burned out big chunks of major cities, including Baltimore. This riot broke a few windows, mostly in neighborhoods that can’t get much worse. A few broken windows is not going to change much. The big damage was to the tourist trade as the news made it appear that the city was just sacked by the Goths. As a result conventions have been cancelled and who knows how many holiday plans have been altered in order to avoid the city.

The funny thing about these things is we have three narratives. There’s the one from the Cult of Modern Liberalism we get from just about everywhere in the media. That’s the one where the poor, dispossessed blacks have been brutalized by the Pale Penis People to the point where they revolt. Their peaceful protest against the PPP is turned into a riot by overzealous cops, the same cops who killed the poor innocent black body, this time named Freddy Gray.

The trouble with this narrative is it is never supported by the facts. In most of these cases, the truth makes the liberal narrative appear insultingly stupid. Michael Brown was a giant thug. The guy in New York was a career criminal. Freddy Gray appears to have died by accident. Of course, Baltimore is a black city run by blacks and it has a black police force. Whatever problems they have are not the fault of the blue-eyed devil.

Conservative Inc. swings into action with its own spin on things. This piece by Kevin Williamson is fairly typical of their role in the public drama. They point out that the people in charge are all members of the CML and have been following all of the favored policies of the Left for generations. Their argument is that the riots and the squalor are the logical result of liberal policy making. Kevin’s article makes that case in the specific as well as the general, referencing other dilapidated cities.

The problem here is other cities have extremely liberal governments yet they manage to avoid the mayhem we see in Baltimore or Detroit. Kevin briefly mentions San Francisco, but prefers to focus on the black arrests rates, as if they are somehow unwarranted or out of line with black arrest rates nationwide. He’s ham-handedly trying to argue that the pasty-faced lefties running these cities are bigots. The fact that the Hispanics and Asians seem to be doing just fine in these places is conveniently avoided.

Then there’s the other narrative, the one no one dares say for fear of being labeled a monster. On the television you see young black males mugging for the cameras as they commit pointless acts of mayhem. You see blacks running from burning stores with arms full of goods. Of course, the liquor store is robbed and you see blacks carrying away the liquor and beer. These scenes are narrated by the same old voices saying the same old things. To spice it up, they interview a local, who mumbles through the interview, confirming everything you see on TV.

This, of course, is the simple reality of places like Baltimore, Detroit, East St. Louis and so on. When the government banned private discrimination in in the 1960’s, whites fled the cities to avoid having to send their kids to school with blacks. Responsible and intelligent blacks tried to keep it together, but they threw in the towel in the 80’s and 90’s when crack turned American cities into war zones. They headed for the suburbs to live with the whites. What’s left in these urban reservations are low-IQ violent nitwits.

Of course, no one is allowed to say any of this in public. Racial solidarity requires blacks, who know better, to defend their dimwitted brothers rioting in the streets. Liberal whites think there’s profit in the riots so they cast about for a black hat on whom to pin the blame. Crime thinkers like John Derbyshire believe that the truth of things will eventually will out. I think John is right that reality will always win eventually, but I know I’ll never live to see it. Everyone alive today is too deeply invested in the myth that if we just turn the right knobs and push the right buttons, biology will be overcome. Fantasy is powerful stuff.

The fantasists may be onto something though. Baltimore has about 200,000 people that are useless. The males just want to commit crimes, get high and screw. The females just want to get high and screw. The city would love to ship them off somewhere, but somewhere does not want them either. John Derbyshire’s dream of race realism is not going to change the fact we have a lot of useless people and nowhere to send them.

Maybe we’re better off leaving reality as the hate that dare not speaks its name. The fantasy keeps everyone committed to papering over reality and doubling down after each failure. Ferguson will fade away and those people will go back to doing what they were doing before they got famous. Baltimore will go back to being Baltimore. The dogs will bark and the caravan will move on.