Blotted

The Culture Wars make things strange.

I live in a sleepy suburb of Seattle. Almost nothing happens out here. But from time to time, I'll be online, and someone will ask "I'm thinking of moving there... is it safe?" And one can tell by the answers which side of the Liberal/Conservative divide that people come down on.

For a certain segment of the online Conservative population, playing up their concerns of crime, and their responses to/preparations for it is a form of virtue signalling. They will list off the things that happen in their neighborhoods, even petty offenses like vandalism, and inform people that they carry mace when walking the dog (even if they make it a point to say they leave their guns at home). Every trip out of doors is a cause to be vigilant and ready.

For me, the Seattle Eastside (those suburbs on that sit East of Lake Washington, like Redmond, where Microsoft is located) are about a safe as your average pre-teen sleepover. Most of the crime out here is an annoyance, Cars are broken into, and occasionally stolen and there's a certain background level of property crime in the service of financing drug habits. When I lived in Chicago and Evanston, on the other hand, a roommate was mugged, a co-worker was raped and I knew more than a few people for whom the sound of gunshots didn't warrant a response. (My car, however, was left alone.) By comparison, crime here is more bothersome than worthy of concern. But then, I don't pine for the 1970s. Mainly because I realize that I don't have an accurate picture of the 1970s... after all, I was in grade school for most of it. It had its own problems, but internet culture and high levels of partisanship weren't among them.

Concerns over crime mean different things to different people. For some, they're about the collapse of good government (a.k.a., what they remember as draconian punishments for criminals), for others, it's about the inherent wickedness of mankind and the immanent return of the divine to earth. There are, however, those people for whom it's a real, day-to-day, concern. But when you live were I live, those people are few and far between.