You can’t convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it’s based on a deep seated need to believe.

-Carl Sagan

When Celebrity-Physicist Carl Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, he decried the proliferation of psuedoscientific and faith-based arguments used to decide arguments of the day. While Sagan approached this problem from the Left and worried primarily about issues such as Nuclear Weapons proliferation and environmental degradation, he did make a few interesting points about approaching faith-based claims with an intelligent skepticism. Following Dr. Sagan’s advice would have done wonders for the current reputation of both Slate Magazine and the once highly-regarded Oberlin College.

Instead, progressives insist that America is evil and racist at its core with the same unthinking, dogmatic manner that an unthinking church member would drone forth The Nicene Creed without comprehension of why it was originally written. I’m sure every Torre’ has his own version of the particulars, but Charles C.W. Cooke describes the progressive creed well below.

The progressive insistence that America remains a deeply racist nation occasionally takes on an air of desperation, transmuting itself in its more difficult moments into the perverse, almost infantile, asseveration that if America is not sinful, it should be.

Just as over-zealous and unquestioning Christianity filled the coffers of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, the scofflaws and scam-artists play the diversity racket like Lionel Hampton on the vibes. Oberlin College recently fell victim to the mother of all scams. The Legal Insurrection Blog gives us the basic lay of the land.

A massive racism hoax took place at Oberlin College in February 2013 in which two students made seemingly racist, anti-Semitic and other such posters, graffiti and emails for the purpose of getting a reaction on campus, not because they believed the hostile messages. At least one of the two was an Obama supporter with strong progressive, anti-racist politics. School officials and local police knew the identity of the culprits, who were responsible for most if not all of such incidents on campus, yet remained silent as the campus reacted as if the incidents were real. National media attention focused on campus racism at Oberlin for weeks without knowing it was a hoax.

The Oberlin Review gives a more detailed list of the actual false-flag hate incidents. Suffice it to say, this was quite an elaborate troll-job. A fair question to ask here is why does a place full of high-3-digit IQs like Oberlin get intellectually boatraced so comprehensively by the two punk scam-artists? That would be because it gets right through the wish-fulfillment filter through which even the smartest of the smart strain information concerning reality.

Now Mr. Logic would tell you that wanting a hate crime sounds about as bright as wanting to stick your tongue on the flag pole as the snowflakes whirl past. However, Charles Cooke (linked above) expounds on how this perversity is effective in justifying the pathetically overrated existence of a select cabal of Salem Judges lamentably forlorn of witches to burn.

The prospect of some real campus racism is an oasis against the desert, offering as it does the chance to play Rosa Parks on television and, crucially, to assuage a small part of the crushing disappointment and misplaced guilt that the MSNBC set apparently feels for not having been born during the civil-rights movement. The method by which the architects of fake hate crimes elect to raise awareness is functionally indistinguishable from that of the show trial. As dictators of all stripes justify their behavior on the grounds that the message is more important than are the facts of the case.

So what we see here is not so much the superior intellect of the faculty and staff of Oberlin College, but rather their deep-seated need to believe. I’ll go one further than the great Dr. Sagan. The world of the racialist left is not only demon-haunted, but would collapse into existential angst if Father Murphy ever successfully held an exorcism. For only in a Halloweenish dystopia of Klan Robes and burning crosses does the worldview of MSNBC’s Caucasian male Rosa Parks of The Short Bus, Chris Matthews even approximate well-adjusted equipoise. Absent a marauding Klavern of Klansmen, the grievance industry would have to invent them. This is exactly what recently occurred at Oberlin College.