Something that I find interesting is the professional liar. Everyone lies and some lie a lot. That’s not a big deal. Getting paid to lie is a rarity. Lawyers are the most obvious example of people who are paid to lie. Not all lawyers are paid liars. In fact, most are just pushing buttons on the great machine of justice, filling out forms and submitting them when asked. The liars are the criminal defense attorneys. In almost every case their client is guilty and they stand up in court and claim otherwise. I suppose prosecutors are also paid liars, but they have the luxury of knowing the defendant is probably guilty as charged.

Politicians are another class of professional liars. Maybe it is because I’ve met more pols than defense attorneys, but I think most pols believe their own bullshit, while lawyers know they are lying. There are always exceptions and people can kid themselves about all sorts of nonsense. Politicians are a different breed of cat from normal people. Most are stunningly shallow and self-absorbed. It’s not that they know they are lying it’s that they simply don’t care. Words are just noises they hope are pleasing to you. Joe Biden, for example, has no idea what’s coming out of his mouth.

I bring this up because most of us are troubled by our lies. Even little lies like “You look great in that honey” hurt a little bit. Deliberately fooling someone is not something normal people relish. I asked a defense attorney I once knew how he feels about lying on behalf of dirtbags. He said he really did not think he was lying, but that too was just another lie, I suspect. If you stand up in court and say your client is not guilty when you know he is guilty, you’re lying for money. I did not make that argument at the time, thinking it rude, but I’ve heard others dance around this with sermons about how even the guilty needing good representation.

Anyway, deliberately lying for money is a strange thing. I’m not talking about one time things, but the regular lying. Steve Sailer has a post up about a column by Charles Blow. The disgust in Steve’s commentary is obvious. Charles Blow is fairly emblematic of his class, which means he sings the old time religion whenever called upon. He also has to know his words are, at best, nonsense. In reality they are intended to deceive his readers or at least allow them to remain deluded. Judging from the comments, the readers want to believe what amounts to a global conspiracy and Mr. Blow is happy to feed them heaping piles of baloney for a fee.

Of course, Charles M. Blow could believe what he writes, but that seems implausible. The general tone and structure of the column suggest he knows he’s full it. His final paragraph gives the game away.

There is no way in this country to discuss crime statistics without including in that discussion the myriad ways in which those statistics are informed and influenced by the systemic effects of racial distortion.

Individual behavior is not the only component of the numbers; bias is the other.

The previous 735 words, a bunch of assertions and dubious statistics, are intended to dispute the obvious picture one must draw from the FBI crime reports. Yet at the very end, when his intended audience is nodding so enthusiastically they cannot keep up, he admits that those statistics in the crime reports are true. He would just prefer it if his coreligionists remain convinced otherwise.

Again, maybe he is just as deluded as his readers. Maybe that’s just how people cope with disconformation. When the facts of the world are unacceptable, people find ways to wrap them in magical thinking and lots of hooting and hollering. It’s the lawyer who defines his work in moral terms, when he is just a guy who lies on behalf of criminals. It’s the politician who thinks he is doing the Lord’s work as he lines his pockets with the people’s money.

It’s is hard to know. Magical thinking is a part of the human condition, probably a necessary part. Wishing for things to be a certain way is the seed of inventiveness. It is also the genesis of all sorts of crackpot ideas intended to avoid facing reality. Maybe that’s all that it takes for a guy like Charles Blow to write these columns every week for his employer. Like an aging minister delivering yet another version of the same old sermon, it’s not that he believes what he is saying, it’s that he has nothing else and the flock seems to like it. Why bother with reflection or circumspection when life is good?