No. of Recommendations: 8
This is an interesting observation, somewhat echoed by Krugman who writes "we’re clearly entering an era of policy driven by feelings rather than facts". Policy that ignores facts is likely to fail to improve those facts, because improvement is not the goal. The feel-good policymaker's goal is gaining power through the manipulation of people. Create a crisis and then claim only one person can solve it. So, expect ineffective policies, deteriorating facts, manufactured crisis, and talking points centered on feelings. Soldiers near the Washington monument are not solving any problem.
But that's exactly wrong, which is what I've been trying to emphasize in this thread.
Democrats keep pointing to city-wide statistics on serious crimes in an effort to prove that there is no problem, that the GOP is making this up. But it's the Democrats that are wrong on the issue, because they are either unintentionally or deliberately mischaracterizing the problem that the GOP is targeting.
The urban disorder that they are attacking consists of minor crimes, socially maladaptive behavior, sanitary and aesthetic conditions, and disruption of public civic life in public facilities and central business districts/downtowns. The crime rates that Democrats are measuring are serious crimes that (for the most part) largely occur in a different part of the city. So it's the Democrats that are fooling themselves with policies that aren't being driven by the facts - because they're pointing to a set of facts that is largely unrelated to the issue that's making voters unhappy.
So, for example, large homeless encampments in public parks and municipal downtowns factually end up degrading those specific areas for anyone trying to use them. Whether overall domestic violence cases or burglary cases or other major crimes across the entire municipality are up or down or level has no bearing on that. The homeless encampments create a specific problem in a specific area for specific people, and the city-wide crime rates don't make that disappear. It's absolutely true that if you address the fundamental society-wide root causes of homelessness you can create a benefit for both the currently-homeless (by housing them) and for everyone else (by removing the negative effects of their homelessness). So it's true that shutting down homeless encampments and driving them out of public spaces and downtowns doesn't solve the problem for the homeless people. But it does solve the problem for the people trying to use the public spaces and downtowns.
The GOP response is entirely fact-based. People are actually made afraid when they encounter displays of socially maladapted behavior in public spaces. Or minor crimes, or unsanitary conditions or discarded drug paraphernalia or what have you. It has an actual, real negative impact on them. They want that to stop. Citing city-wide major crime rates doesn't mean they're wrong in what they see in their public spaces, and it makes the Democrats look out of touch when they keep telling them that they're wrong.
