Totally not related to another post in this community…
What fearmongering do you find laughably wrong? What do you witness everyday that makes others clutch their pearls while watching the news?
Totally not related to another post in this community…
What fearmongering do you find laughably wrong? What do you witness everyday that makes others clutch their pearls while watching the news?
I’ll start with the obvious one, I live in a very urban area. Our crimerate is probably higher than average, but not obscene by any means. The most I’ve had to do is make sure my wallet is put away when walking around - but mostly it’s standard “city mode”. Don’t make eye contact, don’t engage - standard for any urban environment.
When my rural and suburban friends visit though hoo-boy am I exposed to the fear they’re pushed. They think every step is terrifying. “Wouldn’t it be safer to take an uber?” (vs getting on the train). “Are you sure it’s safe to eat here?” I’ve had conservative family call me to ask if I was “safe” during political protests - that happened 10 miles away from me in a single park, lasting for 2 days - claiming they saw “<<my city>> is on fire, I saw it on the news!”.
It always amazes me how people who don’t live in my city keep trying to tell me how I’m wrong about living there. It’s completely arrogant.
Conservatives use the word “urban” as a dog whistle for “minorities,” probably most often black people.
But anyways, as to your point, even if an urban area has a higher crime rate, it’s inevitable because of the density. If you take the same number of people and cram them more closely together, there will always be more crime because the people interact with each other more often. More chances for crime usually results in more crime.
But the conservative mindset is also completely wrong about what to do about it. People usually commit crimes for a reason. Like you steal something because you cannot afford to buy it. Conservatives want to stop crime not by looking at the reasons people commit crimes and looking for ways to solve those issues, but by trying to scare people into not committing crimes. But that doesn’t work.
Spot on, and definitely right about per capital crime rate as well. They always seem to leave that out. Maybe because it’s been proven that the most unsafe cities in the US per capital are in redder areas, by a pretty wide margin.
Conservatives are wrong about pretty much everything. I don’t know of a single problem where they have a sensible policy. They’re worse than toddlers.
A couple of years ago, we were coming home from visiting my in-laws in Florida and I sat next to a woman on the plane who found out we were “going home” to SF and wanted to talk my ear off about everything that’s scary there. First of all, I didn’t want to talk to you anyway, lady, I just want to read my book. But since you asked, no, I don’t know what you mean when you are talking about how dangerous it is. I played it as simply confused about what she was talking about, and eventually she got confused at my response and left me alone. I wasn’t going to be successful convincing her; I knew that. But playing it that way was non-confrontational and still seemed to have the desired effect, which was to put a chink in the armor of her misinformed opinions.
Good on you, at the very least maybe she learned not everyone has the same lame ass regurgitated opinion as her. It’s how I shut down my family as well, they asked if I was safe and I literally just laughed and asked why I wouldn’t be. They said the riots and I just said don’t believe everything you see on the news. They stopped bringing it up. They still watch, but for one moment I think I broke their brains
I’ll never forget my first trip out to North Lawndale for work. So many people acted like I was headed into Fallujah or something.
In reality though, it was just another neighborhood with regular people trying to get by.
They always seem to forget that normal people live there, going to work every day and doing normal things. If it was as bad as they claimed it would be on worldwide news daily