Yes, it's a heck of a lot safer where I live now than most of the places I lived the bulk of my life, especially my early adulthood.cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 12:03 pmSo unless my memory fails me MD lax you live in such a secure home environment you don't even feel the need to lock your doors at night. It must be nice to have that sense of security that a rich Republican like you enjoys.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 10:34 amEmotions are much easier to "manipulate".cradleandshoot wrote: ↑Tue Jun 11, 2024 5:50 amStatistics are fun things to manipulate. I don't know of any Americans who feel safer in our country today.MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 10, 2024 9:03 pm Dark times here in America.
Chaos in the streets.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/10/us/us-vi ... index.html
Especially fear.
These are "statistics" gathered the same way over time by the most credible non-partisan group we have.
At different points in time, the numbers may indicate bad news just as they may indicate good news, all based on same fact gathering practices.
The trendlines are real. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
However, the peddler's profit is in the fear. Beware the source who profits from fear. Examine whether they are peddling anecdotes to demonstrate a reason to be fearful and ignoring actual facts that belie their hyper fear mongering. That's likely on purpose.
Note the numbers don't indicate causal reasons for the trendline, that's where additional analysis of correlation and causation is necessary. And indeed, it's worth examining whether such analysis has an agenda and there may be other, more accurate analyses.
But these numbers are just reported as the best estimate available of factual reality, for better or worse.
I actually agree with you that people are more fearful right now about street crime than they have been in a couple of decades despite good factual reasons not to be, and especially in contrast with several earlier periods in our lifetime, much less earlier times. But I don't chalk up that fear to actual reality, rather it's a combination of our hyper media attention to "if it bleeds it leads" and the ubiquity of instantaneous awareness of various tragic events in a much wider radius, regardless of whether the actual incidence of such is going up versus down. We're simply more aware of more events.
And some of that media, heck all of that media, profits by drawing our attention...and some media and politicians specifically profit from the manipulation of our emotions, doing so quite intentionally and with no compunction about untruthful information.
The neighborhoods I lived in in Boston in the '80's, Cambridge then the South End, were way, way more dangerous in those years than they are today...same neighborhoods. The South End in particular was 'transitional' with our block being half boarded up shells of brownstones and everything north of us on Columbus Ave to Mass Ave and Roxbury beyond being 100% boarded up. Car broken into many times, house several times, purse snatch right in front of home walking back from dinner. That said, we enjoyed it a lot. Today it's entirely renovated and very safe, at least in comparison to that period.
There are, of course, also neighborhoods in various towns and cities that are less safe....but the number don't lie about the trendline to safer overall. And that's a very good thing.