One of the things that constantly stuns me about the American left is the cognitive dissonance. We live in the most affluent, safe, healthy, well-fed, well-lit, comfortable society in the world, but for leftists, it’s always the year 536 AD for the comforts of life, and the 1950s when it comes to race and abortion. It’s not the “best of times and the worst of times.” It’s just the worst of times, especially in America and especially if you’re black.

America abolished slavery in 1865. America began the process of culturally eradicating Jim Crow in the 1950s and politically eradicated it in 1964. Today, to the extent you can dig up the occasional American white person who is prejudiced against blacks, that’s because on the bell curve of human behavior, you’re always going to find people who are irrationally prejudiced. For the most part, as demonstrated by the number of blacks from Africa and the Caribbean who want to come to America, it’s not a bad place to be.

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Indeed, in this day and age, it’s a very good place to be. Leftist “social justice” policies mean that blacks are routinely granted preferential treatment and admission to all sorts of schools and other institutions, as well as going to the head of the line for certain business opportunities. The fact that this is unconstitutional hasn’t stopped the left, nor has the fact that it doesn’t necessarily benefit blacks to acquire things they haven’t earned or be placed in situations for which they’re not qualified.

Moreover, if you’re talking race hatred, the numbers are amazingly small. While blacks are still disproportionately likely to be murdered (they are 54% of murder victims, although they’re only ~12% of the population), the great tragedy of black America is that the ones doing the murdering are fellow blacks, with 90% of all black homicides being black on black.

And yes, there are still hate crimes against blacks in America—that is, incidents where people of one race attack people of another on solely racial grounds—but the number of reported hate crimes is infinitesimally small. In all of 2023, there were only 11,862 reported incidents of any type of hate crime (racial, religious, sexual orientation, etc.), out of a nation of 340 million people.  

Of those reported hate crimes, 3,027 were anti-black. There are 41.3 million blacks in America, meaning that 0.007% of blacks experienced hate crimes severe enough to report. Meanwhile, there were 1,832 antisemitic hate crimes against a population of 5.7 million Jews, meaning that 0.03% of Jews experienced hate crimes severe enough to report. In summary, acts of race-based hatred in America that are severe enough to warrant reporting are very rare.

When all is said and done, being black in America isn’t so bad, whether compared to historical norms or the rest of the modern world. That’s especially true in my neighborhood. I am fortunate enough to live in a very nice neighborhood: It’s clean, safe, and friendly, and the homes range from modest to really spectacular. It’s a half hour away from one of America’s most beautiful and historical cities, so it’s really a great thing to live as I do (and I am grateful every day).

One of my black neighbors friended me on Facebook, and I find her feed utterly fascinating. What I see on her feed is that she’s a relatively famous artist who travels widely, giving presentations and getting accolades. She has a large and loving family, all of whom seem to be living quality lives. She’s also a very nice woman when you meet her in person.

That’s one half of her Facebook feed. However, the other half is about the horrors—the 1619 or 1861 or 1955 horrors—of living in Trump’s America, a place where systemic and cultural race hatred is epidemic and the government revels in fascistic cruelty. I will not violate her privacy by giving her name or copying her posts (even with the name redacted). However, I can tell you that, interspersed with her posts about the fine life she lives, this is what you’ll find:

You get the picture. This is a woman who lives a truly blessed life in America, and hates everything about the country, both its traditions and its values, and who sees in Trump and his supporters the living embodiment of the KKK and Hitler. And of course, judging by the enthusiastic responses in her comments, as well as what we see in the media every day, she is not alone.

I honestly do not know how someone can cope with the cognitive dissonance of a world in which reality and theory are so far apart. No wonder leftists are going mad.