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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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We saw the largest single-year increase in violent crime ever recorded immediately following the Floyd riots. The violent crime rate has since declined somewhat, but is still massively elevated over the pre-Floyd baseline. There's good evidence that the elevated crime rate extends to other categories as well, given the effects on major business chains. That seems like good evidence for "mass lawlessness" from vectors other than Fox News.

I don't feel particularly unsafe. Do you?

It appears that you've moved from statements of fact to statements of emotion. Would that be fair description?

To answer your question, yes, I feel significantly less safe than I did in 2020, and I felt less safe then than I did in 2014 when all this mess kicked off. I think this feeling is the result of an accurate assessment of the evidence available, given the events of the last decade. Things are a lot worse now than they were before, and there are a lot of solid reasons to expect the trend to continue.

You were ready to go to war a decade ago. Now you're happy just to chat about it online. I would think that to any reasonable person, it seems like you feel more safe now.

So we've moved from you talking about facts, to you talking about your feelings, to you engaging in overconfident speculation about my feelings. This does not seem like a promising progression. With due respect, I do not particularly trust your assessments of what a "reasonable person" should think.

I do not, in fact, feel safer now. I found religion, which means I'm willing to commit to rejecting the hatred that used to motivate me, and it means I'm willing to contemplate dire outcomes with a greater degree of equanimity than I used to possess. That is why the tenor of my comments has changed; I don't hate Blues less, but I am attempting to feed and express that hatred as little as possible.

The other part of it is that four years ago, I believed that the coordination problem was fundamental, and that Blue Tribe had a probable path to victory unless Red Tribe could find a solution to it. I no longer believe that.

So you feel less safe but more assured of an after life? Shouldn't that make you feel more safe since worst case scenario you get to spend eternity in heaven?

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