alt Hacker NewsI think we are just fundamentally disagreeing on what "reality" means. My reality comes from measurement by experts, reports and documentation--hopefully broad, impartial, and highly cross-sectional studies. Yours appears to be about people's everyday perception and lived experience. But lived experience is like looking through a keyhole. It's never going to be complete and applicable broadly. But people believe it's reality because they hear it somewhere or they see a tiny slice of it with their eyes. Your keyhole view of Columbus shapes a broader idea of reality that "crime is rampant everywhere".
Even if these keyhole slices of reality were not being fed by right-wing propaganda (let's assume for the sake of argument that there is no right-wing propaganda at all), it's still not a reality that is applicable broadly across the country.
As an example we saw this during COVID. "Nobody around me that I know personally has died of COVID, therefore it doesn't exist, it's a hoax, or it's not a problem."
Well no I don't think we're disagreeing, it's more about terms that are not captured in measurements, reports, things like that.
The example I gave is just an example. It's real no matter what the data says. When folks experience that, they experience it and it informs their opinions about the rates of crime and how safe an area is. I can tell you I believe the area I live in is safe, but with the introduction of these anti-social behaviors it is less safe regardless of the level of reported crime.
I think statistically the numbers show there is much less crime than there has been, but the statistics aren't perfect. For example, can you provide a report or measurement that measures how unsafe people feel when they walk by a pile of needles and have a homeless person screaming at them? If you can't, then you can clearly see there are flaws in the measurements that need to be addressed.
Chalking it up to right wing propaganda just doesn't help here and only serves to lose votes. I'm not "right-wing". I live in a city. I walk by this stuff. I don't feel safe of comfortable walking by these people. I also don't think my quality of life is improved when I have to go ask someone to unlock a case so I can buy a razor blade or something. If your metrics aren't capturing that then that would explain the disconnect you are seeing.