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A cursory glance at the various Wikipedia lists of politicians assassinated in either country rebuts your last point. US political discourse is vastly more hos
by thebooktocome 4y ago
A cursory glance at the various Wikipedia lists of politicians assassinated in either country rebuts your last point.
US political discourse is vastly more hostile than you give it credit for, as well. Veiled death threats (shooting pictures of opponents, burning in effigy, etc.) are increasingly common, particularly on the conservative side.
- chrisseaton 4y ago> A cursory glance at the various Wikipedia lists of politicians assassinated in either country rebuts your last point. Huh? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress_members_killed_or_wounded_in_office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_Congress... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_MPs_killed_in_office https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_MPs_killed_in_... UK 3 in last 30 years, US 2. For a US population of 40x larger, and easier access to guns.
- pfdietz 4y ago> 40x larger What.
- chrisseaton 4y agoSorry thinking of land mass - population of 5x larger. But the absolute number is larger, even ignoring the population size, so not sure what the person I was replying to means.
- ycombigator 4y agoLooking from the outside, I think US political discourse IS far more hostile. Britain won't accept things like Politicians being harassed, or one politician calling for other politicians to be harassed (and that's before we even get to anything Trump related). And the amount of references I see to "civil war" when wandering across anything relating to US politics (i.e. not zero) is disturbing.
- thebooktocome 4y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_American_politicians https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinated_America... Nine in the last thirty years, not including the ambassador killed overseas.
- chrisseaton 4y agoI compared Parliament against Congress as that seemed comparing apples-to-apples. But nine is still less than the UK, adjusting for population! And that's before access to guns!
- thebooktocome 4y ago> In the past few years we've had politicians on both sides killed in politically motivated attacks. I think that's a worse tally than the US as well. (emphasis added)
- chrisseaton 4y agoWorse per capita, for an apples-to-apples group of high-profile politicians. That's got to be a cause for alarm? In a society with less access to weapons?
- squidbeak 4y agoIn your reckoning, you ignore the difference in access to politicians. UK MPs have weekly 'surgeries' where any constituent discuss issues one on one. It's somewhat harder to meet a representative one on one in the States.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThe UK gets it right. Half again as many representatives as the US, while having a fifth of the population. So each MP has about 100K citizens they represent, versus each representative in the US that has more like 750K.
- vmilner 4y agoQuite. Jo Cox, David Amess and Andrew Pennington (a local councillor defending MP Nigel Jones) were all murdered at surgeries. Stephen Timms also survived an attempted murder by stabbing.