Lying Without Lying: Do Millions of Americans Really Believe Police Kill 10,000 Unarmed Black Men Each Year?
Countdown to America’s 250th birthday
You can teach people lies without actually lying to them.
If you do sprinkle in some lies, artfully told, that will expedite the process of deception. But lying itself isn’t necessary.
Consider how the monoculture operates.
The Eight Percenters who dominate our cultural institutions have long played an outsized role in shaping public opinion about America. Of course, our nation’s many faults are fair game, but the monoculture exhibits a half-hearted devotion to truth. When addressing America, journalists, professors, filmmakers, and others often focus far more on the negative than the positive.
They give short shrift to context and compare America to some theoretical ideal rather than to the many other flawed collections of humans who have and continue to inhabit planet Earth. Too often they render verdicts on America without grappling with that all-important question: Compared to what?
Now that Independence Day 2025 has passed, Americans’ view of their nation has entered an important stage. That’s because, as of July 5th, we’ve begun the countdown to America’s 250th birthday, and with it the race to define—or redefine—the United States.
Is she a liberator or an oppressor?
Does she protect the freedoms of the many or the few?
Does she deserve our gratitude or our scorn?
Brace yourself for the barrage. Because in the coming year, we’ll hear from countless scribes, pundits, politicians, artists, academics, influencers, and celebrities. Yes, the heterodox community will weigh in too, but you can bet the Eight Percenters’ takes will continue to enjoy the most attention. And they do get part of the story right. America’s saga does include many racist chapters.
But Eight Percenters don’t tell the whole story. They tell a story with holes. They present a Swiss-cheese version of America, one with lots of important information omitted or downplayed. They may pull it off without telling a single lie, yet they still communicate lies to readers, students, and viewers.
Last week I explored the issue of slavery. It doesn’t matter if no professor, journalist, or director has ever said that slavery originated in America. Decades of deceptive storytelling have led many college students to the historically illiterate conclusion that America invented slavery.
And Duke Pesta, the professor who administered the quizzes that revealed the depressing results, delivers more depressing revelations. The students also believe slavery was practiced almost exclusively in America. They don’t see it as the global institution it’s been for thousands of years.
And what’s with my use of the past tense? Well, students apparently don’t realize that approximately 50 million people still suffer in slavery today, most often in nations such as India, China, and North Korea.
Pesta further notes that students are often as confident as they are ignorant:
They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets.
There you have it, the power of the monoculture. And slavery is just the beginning.
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The Whole Truth vs Holes in the Truth
If a Skeptic magazine survey is representative of our nation in general, we can assume that many millions of Americans believe police officers kill at least 10,000 unarmed black men each year.
What’s the actual figure? It’s not 10,000. It’s not 1,000. It’s not 100. The actual figure is 12.
That’s according to The Washington Post’s “Police Shooting Database,” and the figure is for the year 2019. Skeptic first conducted the survey in 2020, the year the George Floyd saga erupted, so 2019 was then the most recent reference point.
Of course, there are many ways our nation could improve policing, and we would hope officers kill zero unarmed Americans. But we must still grapple with the Skeptic survey. We must still grapple with the massive chasm between perception and reality.