I’m in Illinois, and my entire family thought I was nuts for supporting bail reform. My cop brother said that we’d have hordes of criminals on the street causing more crime, and my parents again voiced how they “want to move out of state” (because Indiana is sooooooo much better /s). They never could answer why paying to be set free until court was so central to security because it never made sense to tie pre-trial lock up with ability to pay.
They never bring it up anymore, and for that, I’m grateful.
“I’m opposed. Cable news told me that California is being overrun by criminals because of woke politicians and I believe them over voices from my own community or crime statistics.”
You joke, but I’ve seen polls where there’s a big consensus of people saying the country’s economy is going down the toilet, but also that their own state and their own family situation is doing quite a bit better than that going-down-the-toilet average.
That second half sheds some fascinating insight on the first half, and yet, it’s almost never included in reporting of the polls.
It was a joke but it’s also real. I live in a city in California and I’ve heard suburbanites say it’s literally not safe to come to my neighborhood because they actually think they will be spotted and attacked instantly. Meanwhile, as I mentioned, crime rates have dropped considerably and I can’t even think of a single person I know who has had a recent problem with crime. It’s like the media has whole-cloth fabricated a crisis that just isn’t happening and I feel like no one but me can see it. Insane.
Yeah.
Media for free has produced a system where the only sustainable business model is producing, effectively, propaganda for people who have a bunch of spare cash lying around and want to invest in your media if you’re willing to promote their narrative.
At the same time, the tools of constructing an imaginary worldview and convincing your viewers / readers that that imaginary reality is what’s going on have gotten incredibly more powerful. And there’s a huge incentive to do it, because if you can do it well enough you can win elections and gain access to a river of money that is literally billions of dollars.
It would be weird if there weren’t a bunch of people walking around with this weird constructed narrative in their heads that they think is reality. But it’s still super jarring when you run into them and their picture has some kind of confluence with the actual real world and you can see how wrong it is in reality.
Unlike Canada, where the consensus seems to be that the country is ruined now. Not damaged, or heading in the wrong direction or anything, but actually ruined. The only things that can save us now is banning all gender bathrooms and adopting bitcoin.
Almost like a right-wing media apparatus that started as “Fox News lies” has now expanded out and is gaslighting the whole country.
The country pretty much shrugged their shoulders after 9-11 so why not?
