Recently, Professor Wilfred Reilly came out with a new book discussing a few things, but he mostly discusses racial differences and disparities. What he finds is not surprising to anyone who has done any meaningful research into the statistics.

Blacks with similar IQs and similar backgrounds do the same as whites in life outcomes with regard to education and crime. Cops are not much more likely to shoot a black person as opposed to a white person. In fact, in almost every racial disparity, factors other than racism do a better job of explaining them than racism. (This is not to say that racism doesn’t exist and that it isn’t a problem and it is an evil. But rather that it is not the biggest evil in America today.)

Charles Murray fans will debate with silently disagree with Professor Reilly about whether or not the IQ gap between whites and blacks is genetic or societal, but besides that, his book is entirely noncontroversial to people moved by empiricism and evidence.

I doubt his book will move debate at all.

Now I haven’t read his book, he did a great job selling it in a Quillette podcast. But my entire experience says that facts don’t matter to the left. They often don’t matter to the right either but that’s another essay.

Why don’t these plain and easily researched and (mostly) easily understood facts mean anything to our debate? Recently, Trump mused about new treatments for the Coronavirus and the left convinced themselves (or lied, I’m never sure which) that Trump urged people to drink bleach.

The 30-second clip that proved that Trump was just musing aloud and asking doctors about new treatments failed to move debate, or at least, it failed to inform media narratives.

There are a whole host of superstitions and fallacies that I could go into but ultimately my one question is, “Why don’t facts matter to narratives?”