The Willfully Ignorant

There are some things that legitimately have two or more sides. They’re generally opinions, not disputes over the facts.

Should the Kansas City Royals have sent Alex Gordon in the bottom of the 9th inning with two out in game 7 of the World Series? I think yes, absolutely. But many people I know think holding him was the right move—that he would’ve been out easily. Since he was held, we will never know what could have been.

That’s fairly common in most instances when there are areas of ambiguity. Two people can have differing opinions over whether a day is a “hot” day or a “nice” day, but there is no dispute over that it is, in fact, a day.

At least that’s how it used to work.

Now, thanks to progressive journalists and activists, basic, irrefutable facts no longer have meaning. And a large swath of the American people willingly soak up the ignorance. Lies become some people’s reality.

Michael Brown is dead. He was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson. Those basic facts are all that everyone involved in the sloppy mess in Ferguson, Mo., agree on. But there are many more facts in that case, indisputable facts, about which people lie, and gleefully so.

Michael Brown did not put his hands up to surrender and was not shot in the back. Yet those knowing untruths, those lies, are repeated by progressives daily. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus took to the floor of the House of Representatives this week to bring attention to this lie, to spread it further.

The CBC members are either ignorant of the forensic evidence and the eyewitness testimony that proves that did not happen, or they are counting on their audience to be. Neither is particularly good, but the latter is particularly bad because it is the truth.

The people who believe the “Hands up, don’t shoot!” lie are not interested in facts or reality, they want Darren Wilson to be a racist who woke up that morning wanting to kill someone. They need George Zimmerman to be white and have hunted down Trayvon Martin.

And they desire more black lives to be ended by white people so they can keep the ignorant marinating in their clueless bliss.

Attorney General Eric Holder famously said that, when it comes to discussing issues of race in America, the United States is “a nation of cowards.” That, like much of what Holder says, is a lie. No one is afraid to have a conversation about race, but an honest one is impossible when one side isn’t willing to stick to reality in that discussion.

Remember that book “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus”? At least those were both planets. On the issue of race, normal people are, well, people, and progressives are a nebula.

The worst part of all of this is not that progressive activists, journalists and politicians lie—most people in those professions lie, progressive or not. It’s that people believe it.

The facts are readily available to anyone actually interested in them. Too many aren’t interested.

There are more people knowingly lying about police hunting black men, but there are many who buy it. They also buy the lie that the “system is rigged” against them, a lie often repeated by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.

But just because people lie to you and count on your being ignorant doesn’t mean you have to believe that lie or remain ignorant. Those are choices. Choices made by adults who have other options.

Statistics show that areas that are heavily minority are also economically depressed. They are also fiercely loyal Democratic Party voters. They put progressives in office who promise the world and deliver nothing but misery. Then they re-elect them, repeatedly, not because they’re improving anything, but because they believe the lie that things would be worse if they voted for someone else. It’s difficult to care for someone who continually bangs their head against a wall and complains of a headache.

An honest discussion of race involves an admission that this country, thanks to southern Democrats and early 20th century progressives, has had a horrible record when it comes to treating minorities fairly. But it also would include an acceptance of the fact that those days, with rare exception, are long gone. That the problems of the black community are, in large part, a result of the actions of leaders elected by that same community.

No one but Michael Brown caused Michael Brown to attack Darren Wilson, try to take his gun and charge at him. Just like no one made 70 percent of black babies be born out of wedlock except the two people who went to bed together. Pregnancy is as easy to avoid as being hit by a train, and out-of-wedlock births are the fastest way to live a life stuck in poverty. None of this is hidden. None is secret. Yet millions of people of all races each year stupidly make that choice, none at a higher rate than in the black community.

Forget the discussion of how race affects America. We need a discussion of how progressive reinforced stupidity affects America. Get rid of that and the issue of race fades away, because it’s not really about race at all, it’s about progressive manipulation.

Marcia Fudge, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, on the House floor Monday called the Grand Jury’s refusal to indict Officer Wilson “a painful reminder…that law enforcement officers kill our black and brown men and boys without repercussions.”

Fudge represents parts of Cleveland. Cleveland has seen 58 homicides through the first half of this year, up from 50 through the same time in 2013. How many of those bodies did she have to metaphorically have to step over to get to the floor to make that false claim about an incident nearly 600 miles away? The answer is simple, and the same for every CBC member who did the same thing – as many as it took.

Life is about priorities, and the progressives’ priorities are only the lives they can use to entrench their power.