Deliberately lying for money is a strange thing.  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. That seems unlikley as the way he tells his lies suggests he knows he is lying. maybe he would like others to know he is lying too. Sociopaths often take pleasure is knowing that others know they are lying, running a scam or getting over on them. 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.