Danielle Paquette has a piece today in the Washington Post about Tony Thurman, a home security dealer in Kansas City who says business is brisk:
But Thurman is troubled by what he senses is driving much of the demand: Americans’ growing preoccupation with the specter of deadly threats. They fear burglars, gangs and child predators. They believe crime is rising, even in places where it’s dropping, which tracks with what surveys have found nationwide. Over the last three years, the number of people who reported deteriorating safety in their area has spiked, especially among Republicans, though crime ebbed and flowed well below the bloodier levels of the 1990s. Gun purchases soared to record peaks. The home security industry boomed.
....[These] fears, he noticed, are often influenced by the news they watch, the social media they consume, the politicians they support.
Here is Kelli Cox, who is having a pool built in her backyard:
“I’d like to get the cameras up soon,” said Cox, handing Thurman the blueprint, “before the workers start.”
Not that she had a problem with the workers. They were simply people she didn’t know in a world where headlines like “Teenagers killed in double homicide” popped up on her news feed and someone had just posted on the neighborhood Facebook page about a “suspicious man” in a “white unmarked van.”
It's the Fox News effect, now expanded to the NextDoor effect and the MAGA effect. Fear of criminals, fear of the Deep State, fear of what schools are teaching, fear of trans people, fear of immigrants. Fear of everything, even though we have less to fear today than almost anytime in history. Thanks, Donald.
Some people are a lot more easy to manipulate and a lot more easy to make paranoid than others.
There is so much on tv right now no one watches anything like the same body of material, not the same news, not the same sports, not the same movies or 'hit network shows', and the large population of the US makes even niche audiences very large, large enough to create an isolated, alienated subculture.
Red states have spent a century working hard to prove they're incapable of self governance. With fewer capable people willing to live in them it's not just a brain drain, it's a character drain. Conservatives like to say all kinds of people are moving to red states in droves, but who are they? Mostly it will be people who aren't going to help.
Nor is it all in the same language.
Don just rode the wave. He didn't create it. That's true of all good con men. All good con me do, and he's the best anyone has ever seen.
For Kevin, there must be The One To Blame.
TFG may not have created it, but that doesn't mean he hasn't made things worse. The alternative is he made things better, which is clearly not true.
In the 70s and 80s when urban areas were a spit ton worse than today most of the news we consumed were local -- newspapers, maybe a local news broadcast, radio in the car -- and so we only heard about the local crimes.
Now with FOX, OAN, CNN, MSNBC, and -- of course -- the Internet any time a salacious crime occurs anywhere in the country we all hear about it.
As a result, we hear about crimes a lot more than we used to even as there are fewer crimes to report on. It's a mess.
I was about to respond saying the same thing. If your news source now covers a much much larger area, of course you're going to hear about more crimes than you used to, even if overall crime rates are actually far lower than they were in the local-news days.
The other part of the equation is that security cameras are pretty inexpensive nowadays and cell phones make getting alerts from them easy.
Again, the actual fear is of loss of White Christian Supremacy, which is very real. This calls up powerful group instincts which cause people to lose rationality and judge everything on the basis of us versus them.
Supporting racism still can't be said out loud by national leaders, so Republicans tap into the basic tribal fear with substitute issues - more dog-whistles.
BINGO! This is being pushed as a proxy war against the forces of DEI. Scratch the surface of the folks who hyperfocus on crime and you'll find an Authoritarian type who believes that the man is the king of his household and wants school choice to be able to avoid his kid mixing with the others in school.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hatred. Hatred leads to suffering.
There isn't much good to say about The Phantom Menace, but Yoda's summary of the path to the Dark Side is as good a description of the process we see playing out here as you could ask for.
Can't really blame Donald Trump for this. It's the product of years of selling paranoia. I listen to sports talk radio, which seems to be a domain mostly populated by old white right-wingers. The ads - not the content - are almost all paranoia: your home is not safe, your identity is not safe, inflation is rampant, buy gold because the economy is collapsing, and so on. These messages have impact and are part of a reinforcing cycle of fear. True crime shoes that are almost all about young white female victims as well.
Good for business. That's all that matters to the media managers. The reporters themselves are hard-working and often heroic. But their bosses are motivated only by sales. That's also the reason that our elections are so closely divided: it's what drives campaign donations to the max, and all that money ends up in the bank accounts of the media companies who sell ad times.
The reasons for the explosion of home security (particularly cameras):
1. The police explain to you that, while you're free to file a report, it's unlikely to go anywhere without any evidence -- the evidence that your home security system would have recorded on its cameras, if you had one installed.
2. Your deductible is higher than a simple array of wireless cameras that could act as deterrence, and after your second incident you've come to realize that it would have been cheaper to get a whole house system.
3. The growing % of single, older women who find the peace of mind of a security system, especially after a first-time break-in.
Right… but allegedly first time break ins are down in most parts of the US. And until you have the first break in, you don’t personally encounter (1), (2) or the “especially” part of (3).
I think (3) is the prime driver of installations, honestly. Once you know that someone in the neighborhood has been broken into, that fear is heightened considerably.
I'm certainly not going to be that person who tells the women I know who have security systems installed, that their fears are unwarranted.
I think the driver of installations is the politics. If you by in to the Sinclair Broadcasting propaganda about crime being up, you get a security system.
A decade plus ago, I did a Drum crime analysis. I went back to the 80's when I was in high school and compared crime to the most recent year in the city I grew up in. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think violent crime had been halved, and if you consider the population had maybe doubled, it was even less. It was the same thing for property crimes for the city.
However, property crime had increased in the richer touristy cities in the area.
I asked my mother and she was certain crime had increased when it not only hadn't increased it had massively decreased.
I'm not going to speculate on why she thought that, just providing an anecdote.
And you'll never be able to disabuse her of that notion.
Haha. Something similar. When I was a kid we left the doors unlocked- kids going In and out day and night. We used to subscribe the NYT and Newday only - NY Post we’d buy as well before Murdoch. Then my Mom started getting a free subscription to the NY Daily News. About 2 weeks later the doors were locked. Mom suddenly discovered crime existed. Mind you we had zero crime were we lived (beyond juvenile delinquency). It was quite humorous. Until we had to throw rocks at each of our siblings windows to get in at night. Damn News!
"...Thanks, Donald."
This has nothing much to do with Trump. Liberals consistently signal that they don't care much about crime. Naturally conservatives are going to attack them for this. Even if liberals think this is unsporting.
Ugh. I’ve been hearing this “liberals don’t care about crime” thing for my entire life. Somehow though when republicans control the state government of all the cities I’ve ever lived in, they don’t seem to do anything about the supposed rampant crime. (States do have the ability to force cities to care about things they allegedly don’t want to care about.) It’s almost as if “crime” is just a weapon Republicans wield against Democrats to gain and maintain power.
I have met damned few conservatives who have any idea of the actual facts about crime.
I'm a lifelong liberal. I also spent a third of my career as a prosecutor. The elected prosecutors I worked for were all Democrats, with one exception. And the exception was the least capable of all my bosses.
I don't think you are well-informed.
"I don't think you are well-informed."
Whenever I hear liberals talking about crime they are making excuses for criminals or calling for lighter sentences or attacking the police or spreading disinformation about who commits most crimes. Which gives the impression they don't care about crime.
Your anecdata is very convincing.
"Whenever I hear . . ."
You? Who are you?
1) "making excuses for criminals" - or maybe that's studying the socioeconomic factors that explain why some neighborhoods have more crime than others, and look for ways to mitigate those factors. When you can predict the likelihood that someone will end up in prison just by knowing their childhood address, there's clearly work to do here.
2) "calling for lighter sentences" - because a 10-year prison sentence does not deter twice as much crime as a 5-year sentence, but does cost taxpayers twice as much. Swift, Certain, and Mild has been shown to be very effective, but is ignored in red states.
3) "attacking the police" - insisting that police be held accountable for their actions
4) "spreading disinformation about who commits most crimes" - see #1
Thanks for proving his point.
Whenever I hear conservatives talk about crime they're calling for the elimination of civil rights, the execution of petty criminals, trading in racial dog whistles and excusing their political allies of fomenting insurrection. Which gives the impression they think crime is a political issue for election purposes.
See how that works?
"... Swift, Certain, and Mild has been shown to be very effective, but is ignored in red states."
There may be something to be said for this but it isn't a liberal position. Liberals favor bail reforms which make punishment less swift and they oppose any penalties for low level crimes like shoplifting or stealing packages off of porches or fare jumping.
People are lousy at evaluating risk to begin with and by definition, half the population are below the median when it comes to intelligence. Nextdoor is a cesspit of fear mongering. Between that, if it bleeds it leads local news, and Fox, small wonder people get scared.
And today we are treated to: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna99598
And not just on Fox.
Topenga Plaza! The shopping mall of my youth and one of California’s first indoor malls. Opened in 1964.
It's my mall now. Not that I go to the mall much anymore. But the place just went through a big renovation and now has a state-of-the-art movie theater, so there's that.
Because it's local, the incident drew my attention. The report on one local station had a reporter asking a bystander outside what she thought while the reporter played the video taken in the store. The bystander said (several time): Why are we letting people get away with this?
I thought that was a strange reaction. It implies the fault lies with someone other than the people involved in the crime. The security people were sprayed. The criminals were gone before the cops arrived. The mayor promised the investigation will be a priority. I don't know if there's anything more that can be done. Why do people assume we're letting them get away with it?
I was curious to see the results of the investigation into the SF Union Square mob smash and grab. Came across https://sfist.com/2023/02/09/one-union-square-smash-and-grabber-sentenced-to-three-years-prison-in-harshest-sentence-yet/ suggesting that but for the one (of those caught) the sentences were light. And his was only because he continued while on bail.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it was one of the few reports I found talking about sentencing. Most were of the robbery itself.
Smash and grab criminals should not be let off lightly. These are not mere shoplifting incidents. If the law needs to change to reflect that difference, then Sacramento ought to get on it pronto.
Unfortunately, it's often hard to track what happens after crimes are first reported. Are arrests made? What are the verdicts? What are the sentences? Very few cases are in the public eye for the duration. Often you hear of an incident and never know any more. Some enterprising person/organization could do the world a favor by building a system -- a searchable database! -- that makes it easy for the public to learn the progress and outcome of cases. Police and DAs might not like the scrutiny but tying the pieces together would be a good public service.
Journalism (in today's model) is not built for the job.
One beef of mine is the hijacking of the perfectly fine term "flash mob" to describe incidents like what happened at the Topanga Mall.
This is what a flash mob is and should be:
https://youtu.be/kbJcQYVtZMo
That kind of database would be an excellent idea!
The type of crime in the story is a felony. The perpetrators could go to prison. This type of crime is usually high priority because of the politics and the perpetrators are caught more often than an ordinary robbery might be. It really is a crime for stupid people.
I do think that there should be more follow up by the press regarding the disposition of these cases. There is more likely to be a deterrent effect if it is well known that most of these people get caught. And really they should get caught. I’m pretty sure that lots of people who were not involved know the perpetrators and good detective work would lead to their capture. The police have no excuse for not making arrests in a high percentage of these cases. But it’s my opinion that the press is terrible at follow up on any story.
It’s my understanding that a lot of those involved in this type of crime are teens. In those cases even when caught names and sentences aren’t announced.
I am wondering the same thing regarding the laws maybe not up to organized smash and grab and are still assuming most shoplifting incidences are petty crimes. On the other hand, it seems you should be able to charge these folks with some other crimes that would have jail time.
Obligatory IANAL disclaimer.
Absolutely. The regular airing of people shoplifting in all kinds of stores, not just upscale, and the reluctance of some city D.A.'s to prosecute, conveys the impression that the old way of staying safe is no longer viable.
Shoplifting is a nuisance but is usually not a threat to people or our way of life.
The smash-and-grab incident is a different animal. It was an organized operation involving dozens who fled the scene in BMWs. Don't know who they are or why they did it, but my guess is the greed of stealing merchandise is secondary to the thrill of breaking norms and attacking the values of a peaceful society. It's more than an attack on the store, its workers and shoppers.
There have been a lot more professional shoplifting rings lately. A lot of shoplifters are dumb kids who need to be taught a lesson, broke losers trying to get a few bucks ahead or people with a compulsion to steal things that aren't nailed down. There tend to be fines and light sentences, especially for non-stereotypical shoplifters. The rings are more organized and require a more organized approach. Setting that up takes time and strategizing, that is, competent police work.
That said, the reason all those drug stores have been closing is that chains have merged and there are too many stores too close to each other. The whole point of monopoly power is to cut competition, so they're closing stores. A few publicized shoplifting incidents just makes it easier. The real crime was the corporate merger.
A lot of this is true, but it’s just not the whole truth:
“It's the Fox News effect, now expanded to the NextDoor effect and the MAGA effect. Fear of criminals, fear of the Deep State, fear of what schools are teaching, fear of trans people, fear of immigrants. Fear of everything, even though we have less to fear today than almost anytime in history. Thanks, Donald.”
Indeed, Fox News, Donald Trump, and MAGA have inflicted damage. And NextDoor earns its reputation as the craziest place on the Internet (check out The Best of NextDoor on Twitter, or X, or whatever it’s called).
But, sorry, the Left simply has not remained any sort of pillar of sanity in response to either these provocations and/or to related recent events. Far from it.
Hence, I would add NPR to the list above, and if you don’t think NPR is contributing (in its own way) to a climate of doom, gloom, fear, distrust, and polarization, then I would humbly suggest that you should at least try to consider what sort of epistemic closure you may be suffering from.
Certainly since the rise of Trump, but especially since the death of George Floyd in 2020, my own NPR stations (mostly broadcasting nationally syndicated shows) have been relentless in their social justice messaging that we are an irredeemably racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and otherwise historically evil, brutal, and utterly unrepentant nation. The fact that we’ve made incredible social progress even in my own lifetime is mostly if not entirely lost in the sheer nihilism of this Leftist narrative.
I imagine an average Lefty might excuse Left Wing media outlets on the understanding that they mean well; but I suspect that an average right winger would assert exactly the same thing about their own preferred media and online outlets.
So, it’s all well and good to point out the many ways that the Right is radicalizing the country. But that’s not enough. That’s maybe half the story. And if we stop there then we will remain in ignorance. Because we also need to acknowledge that our side is doing its own incredibly effective job of radicalizing the populace.
And if you wonder how an Earth anyone can listen to Fox News without realizing how much uncontested political propaganda it promotes, I ask you to just look at your own reaction to your own Left wing media consumption. As is almost always the case, we tend to condemn the same faults in others that we also have, but neither side is ever willing to take the bean out of its own eye.
*The BEAM out of its own eye*
Some guy in the Bible said something along those lines …
"Hence, I would add NPR to the list above, and if you don’t think NPR is contributing to a climate of doom, gloom, fear, distrust, and polarization, then I would humbly suggest that you should at least try to consider what sort of epistemic closure you may be suffering from."
Interesting. I've been listening to NPR since the 1970s. Stations in Tennessee, North Carolina, Missouri and Rhode Island. I don’t think NPR is contributing to a climate of doom, gloom, fear, distrust, and polarization. I would humbly suggest that you should at least try to consider what sort of epistemic closure you may be suffering from.
@Leo1008
Who are these "Left Wing media outlets" of which you speak?
Are you talking about NPR here? The New York Times? CNN? You daily newspaper? I don't know what you mean but it would helpful if you named names. (And for the record, none of these is left-wing media.)
The closest thing in major media that leans left is MSNBC for about six hours a day, while it covers politics with a pro-Dem slant. The coverage may bore you or interest you, but it's hardly the flavor of news that gets its audience to stock up on home security systems or guns.
MSNBC does give lots of time to threats the GOP poses (to democracy, climate, civil rights, and so on), but usually with a focus on what political leaders are doing or not doing. To most sane people the threats are real, and if that strikes you as unnecessarily partisan, that's not MSNBC's problem. It's a byproduct of most mainstream media's inane both-sides coverage that can't ever get itself to say "Democrats are right about this and Republicans are wrong."
"...my own NPR stations (mostly broadcasting nationally syndicated shows) have been relentless in their social justice messaging that we are an irredeemably racist, misogynistic, homophobic, and otherwise historically evil, brutal, and utterly unrepentant nation."
This makes me wonder where you get your news. I listen to a lot of NPR news. That's not the message I hear. It's not what I hear on MSNBC either. But it sounds a lot like the twisted version of "the left" that you get on Fox or talk radio almost any hour of the day.
I happen to have NPR on all the time in the car, so probably 10 hours a week. Its really only 5 hours since they repeat the same stories on Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
There is no way anyone who has sampled the range of discourse could label NPR as "relentless" in social justice messaging. Just yesterday it was an hour of both siderism on the issue of gender affirming care, and it was both siderish to a degree that I am sure was so detailed as to be boring for like 90% of all listeners.
Today's polarization is driven by the two main sides disagreeing on which issues are most important. Fox has decided what is most important: less immigration of brown people, less social spending, more pro gun laws, pro organized religion based laws, especially abortion. If you listen to NPR none of those positions are covered as being the most important, and most are covered with a both siderism what would make the NYT proud.
I don't listen to NPR, but I used to. By chance I heard it again a few times a couple months ago and I was astonished it seemed like re-broadcast of something from 1989.
The voices and the plangent tone of white wine in the daytime were identical.
"...plangent tone of white wine..."
Perfect.
NPR's audience is primarily educated, affluent, and liberal. Its news shows often cater to that audience in how it covers certain stories, cultural news especially. There's a chummy, above-it-all, faux-learned air to everything.
But not politics. There's a Herculean effort to equate the two parties. (The GOP for years worked the refs and it shows.) Trump saying something racist gets the "let's unpack that -- here's what he was trying to say" treatment. Always minimilizing, normalizing the radical right, while bending over backward to ding Biden for any misstep, or making it up if needed. It's nuts.
The NY Times does the same. I contend that "mainstream" media (NPR, NYT, CNN) had a bigger role in swinging the 2016 election than Fox did.
Anyone who thinks NPR is "left wing media" doesn't listen, 'cause it's anything but.
NPR has data on their side. That's why I excuse them. Whether they mean well is irrelevant. They back up their news with solid reporting, interviewing people with relevant expertise, and citing reliable sources. That's what good journalists are supposed to do.
The responses here more or less back up my assertion that, while the Left is very good at noticing the radicalization of the Right, it is more or less blind to its own style of radicalization.
And yet that radicalization could not be more obvious. From NPR’s own website:
“Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Is Not A Project: It Is Our Work”
And from that article, this astonishing statement from a purported journalistic enterprise:
“The stories of those whose voices have been missed — or silenced, or misrepresented — due to systemic racism and blindness can only make our coverage more meaningful, relevant, and compelling.”
Please take a moment to consider what is going on here. NPR isn’t declaring its commitment to truth, it isn’t promising to pursue a journalistic story wherever it leads, and it absolutely is not committing itself to the presentation of a wide range of views;
Rather, NPR is explicitly and unambiguously committing itself to a particular ideology. It’s not even attempting to hide the fact that it’s no longer a journalistic enterprise but is instead an ideological mouthpiece.
Our news sources should be analyzing concepts like “systemic racism,” not committing themselves to any sort of fight on one side of that debate or the other.
And I would add that everything I’m saying is just incredibly transparent. If NPR were pursuing an ideology that we happened to disagree with (as Fox News is doing) the problem would jump out at us instantly. But NPR is ostensibly on “our side,” so we give its radicalization a pass.
And I repeat: NPR has disqualified itself as a news agency, and it belongs on Kevin’s list of media outlets that are adding to the growing radicalization of our national discourse.
You'll have to explain how the ideal that all are created equal isn't the same concept as 'diversity, equity and inclusion', and why that would be wrong for any concept of objective journalism in the US.
And then describe how the general complaint about NPR, that it's aggressively banalizing bothersiderism, suggests a leftist bias.
This question should be posed to NPR (and any other news outlet), not to me:
"You'll have to explain how the ideal that all are created equal isn't the same concept as diversity, equity and inclusion"
That would be an excellent question for a news segment to explore. But NPR can't explore it, because it has already stated its unwavering commitment to one and only one perspective on that issue.
And if you don't see that as a problem, I would ask if it might just be possible that you have been at least partially radicalized by NPR's absurdly narrowminded reporting.
No, it's you. You have to explain your problem here.
Your objection, what is it?
There is nothing radical in my perspective, and there is nothing that I am blind to in it because that is the ordinary basis of American society since 1776.
State your objection.
"there is nothing that I am blind to"
That is the language of fundamentalism. You are using the phraseology of a radical to argue that you are not a radical.
But in truth there are no single ideologies, groups, or individuals with a monopoly on the truth, and that insight is a pillar of our pluralistic society;
alas, NPR has abandoned that pillar, and, apparently, so have you.
And still you haven't answered.
It isn't about me, it's your objecting you won't describe.
NPR states they are about 'diversity, equity and inclusion' and you are against that.
Why?
You have completely missed the point. NPR now states that DEI is the ONLY ideology they are supporting. It doesn't matter what the ideology in question is, the problem is when any purported news source commits themselves to one and only one perspective. At that point, they have more or less publicly announced that they are no longer objective. And they thereby cease to be a news source and instead become an agent of at best indoctrination and at worst radicalization.
NPR's statement in support of DEI might make sense for an advocacy group. Such statements do not make any sense, however, coming from organizations (such as newsrooms or universities) that claim to dispassionately seek the truth wherever it may lie.
I have made this point clearly in each one of my posts in this thread. So, once again, if you truly are unable or unwilling to understand this point then I would highly recommend listening to less NPR.
I never listen to NPR.
But it seems obvious to me, and I would expect to virtually anyone else, that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion isn't some fringe ideology but the actual point of the American system and for that to be characterized as the point of view of a news organization makes it squarely the mainstream.
So, I would say, your view trying to alienate that view is the exceedingly radical view and is something I would expect to hear from a January 6 rioter.
What is it about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion you would reject? Which part of the country are you cutting off, and in furtherance of what?
Like many people above, I think the Donald is the symptom and not the disease. The disease would be our news media but mostly the right regarding crime.
Also at play is the demographic change in our country. Baby boomers have money and want to spend it on being safe. And as you get older, you are much more likely to have experienced a crime or know someone who has. Experiencing crime is a formative experience.
My example, I am pro gun control but I have a liberal friend convince me that personal carry was the only thing that allowed her to leave her house. She had been stalked by a psychopath for years. The stalker's eventual jailing did not change her personal carry habits.
Yikes, I have heard this from my own "intelligent" but likely repulsive neighbour. She has security lights and a security system on her house with all windows barred along the bottom. She was just mentioning yesterday about not feeling safe. Whoa, I lock nothing and my windows are all open. Guess I don't read what she reads. Repulsive distrust of everything and everyone.
Forgot, the next-door neighbour, also a repulsive, has a security camera attached to her phone and it is directed toward the mailbox (a community box) and my driveway. She knows exactly who comes and goes and when. I can't go to the mailbox with out her appearing to chat. I'm being stalked!
Thank the gods I live in New York City, where in 25 years I have never once had to worry about the "random violence" that terrifies denizens of the suburbs.
I think Kevin and a lot of commenters are jumping to conclusions here. Fear of "burglars, gangs and child predators" may be part of the reason people get security cameras but there's also a lot more mundane reasons. There's also a lot of theft of packages from front porches as well as people opening cars at night to steal what they can. It's also nice being able to make sure your kids get home ok if you are not there. And anyway, wanting protection from burglaries is not unreasonable. I mean, it's not silly to lock your door at night or when you leave for the day, is it? We live in a nice area but we've been burgled three times in the last 20 years.
This dynamic long predates Donald Trump.
The fact that we have cheap new technology obviously has nothing to do with it...
Local television news broadcasts are responsible for the belief crime is rising. These programs reporting crime are broadcast from several networks several times a day in most metro areas and they have larger audiences than cable news.
There are plenty of cities that saw really large increases in murder during the pandemic. My city was just 1 murder shy of the all-time record. My individual neighborhood also saw a rise in murders to the highest ever.
Crime rates shift in neighborhoods. I've been in mine for over 20 years, and it used to be just an ebb and flow of people's cars getting rifled through. But we've had more murders and carjackings in the last 4 years than in the 15 before that. I can't blame people for wanting cameras here. Maybe some people in suburban or rural areas are inflating their fears unnecessarily with national news coverage, but sometimes crime goes up locally. It certainly has where I am.
My neighborhood's experience is not unique. Many "safe" neighborhoods in mid-size cities have seen shifts to more violent crime compared to pre-pandemic. Many are slowly going back down, but it's still elevated.