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No, DC and Chicago are not Fallujah. I travel to DC frequently and have never had any reason to fear violent crime. I take the metro. I walk long distances, inc

No, DC and Chicago are not Fallujah. I travel to DC frequently and have never had any reason to fear violent crime. I take the metro. I walk long distances, including late at night. I have relatives who live there. They do not worry about violent crime. They certainly don't consider it "Fallujah". I've also seen aides to the same republican politicians who spout all this fear mongering rhetoric out at night at DC bars without any apparent fears for their safety. Frankly, it's an incredibly insulting to say that DC is Fallujah. There is literally an article on the Department of Justice website from January with the title "Violent Crime in D.C. Hits 30 Year Low". The statistics that you quoted are several years out of date and you conveniently neglected to mention the decline after 2023. You chose a number from 2023 of 40 per 100k, but the number from 2024 was 27 per 100k. That's cherry-picking data to make a point. It's dishonest. You also neglect to mention the differences in data collection practices between the United States and a country like Haiti or Iraq. Exactly how trustworthy are wartime homicide statistics in a country undergoing complete social collapse? https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-year-low https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/violent-crime-dc-hits-30-... If you look at the actual list of homicides in a major American city, the victims are often people who are involved in the drug trade. Homicides are often highly concentrated in small areas. A large portion of the city sees no homicides at all in a given year. I don't know if an equivalent map exists for DC, but you can look at a map of homicides in Boston in 2024. There are a few areas where there are clusters with 2-3 homicides within a few blocks. Then there are whole neighborhoods where there are no homicides at all, or just one or two. https://www.universalhub.com/crime/murder/2024 https://www.universalhub.com/crime/murder/2024 Typically a tourist to a major US city doesn't have much reason to fear violent crime. People commuting into the city to work or living in more affluent neighborhoods don't have much reason to fear violent crime. People living in poorer neighborhoods often do have reason to fear violent crime, but it really depends on the neighborhood and things can vary from one block to another. People involved in the drug trade in particular neighborhoods have an extremely good reason to fear violent crime. For decades now, the media has painted a sensationalized picture of big cities. I was traveling once and was talking to an older couple from a rural area. When I told them where I lived, they were genuinely concerned for my safety. I was completely mystified because in the years that I've lived here, I've never had any reason to feel unsafe.

gottorf 1y ago
I've read the same "30 year low" press release. 30 years ago, in the 90s, DC's homicide rate was hovering around the 70-80 per 100k range, which are truly frightening numbers not be seen outside of literal wartime[0]. It's good news that violent crime is down since then, but it speaks to a blind spot[1] that you do not find the current violent crime rate to be utterly unacceptable. > Typically a tourist to a major US city doesn't have much reason to fear violent crime. People commuting into the city to work or living in more affluent neighborhoods don't have much reason to fear violent crime. People living in poorer neighborhoods often do have reason to fear violent crime, but it really depends on the neighborhood and things can vary from one block to another. People involved in the drug trade in particular neighborhoods have an extremely good reason to fear violent crime. I agree with the overall statement of fact in your paragraph, but perhaps we disagree on where we go from here. One is that in my opinion, we have seen in recent years a spillover of violent crime into ordinary people living in big cities. Another is that my concern isn't as much for tourists or those living in wealthy neighborhoods; it's more for those living in poor neighborhoods in close proximity to people engaging in criminal and antisocial behavior. I find it to be a travesty that those working hard to better their situation in life must, in addition, bear the burden of living near people who should be locked up. > I was completely mystified because in the years that I've lived here, I've never had any reason to feel unsafe. As the old saying goes, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. [0]: Did the GP make a ninja edit around Fallujah? [1]: For whatever reason, many Americans take the presence of alarming rates of violent crime as almost like a natural disaster; something that happens and must be accepted.
- apical_dendrite 1y ago
  I think what I was trying to convey is that the image of life in an American city that the parent was portraying, when he described a beautiful, wealthy city as "Fallujah" (which he has now deleted), and what this couple clearly had in their head, is just completely alien to most people who actually live in those cities. The impression that you get from conservative media and often local TV news is just completely divorced from reality - or at best the media has taken the experience of a relatively small number of people who live in particularly dangerous housing projects, or particularly dangerous streets, and presented it as how the city works in general. I know Boston better than Washington, so I'll use that as an example. Admittedly, it's a city with much lower crime than Washington, but I've had plenty of experiences talking to older, more conservative people who live in suburban and rural areas, and seem to think it's crime ridden. I used to work in several neighborhoods that are considered dangerous - Roxbury and Mattapan, and I've spent time in some of the rougher parts of Dorchester. I've been inside a number of low-income housing projects. I've walked and ridden buses in these neighborhoods. What I noticed was that whatever concern I felt about my safety came from things that I had heard from the media, not from anything that I personally saw, or even anything that happened to anyone I knew. There are a few exceptions to this, like a few blocks in the South End where homeless addicts congregate where I would genuinely be concerned about something happening. The neighborhoods where I've lived - which are not necessarily affluent - have all felt perfectly safe, with the exception of some petty thefts - particularly bike thefts. I am not trying to argue that there is no crime problem anywhere - of course there is and people shouldn't have to live in unsafe areas. But as someone who has intimate knowledge of a major American city, it very much feels like there's a propaganda machine that's pumping out distorted images of life in American cities, either for political purposes or simply because sensationalizing crime draws more viewers. People who don't live in these cities are left with a view that completely lacks the nuance and complexity of actual life in a major city.

gottorf 1y ago

I've read the same "30 year low" press release. 30 years ago, in the 90s, DC's homicide rate was hovering around the 70-80 per 100k range, which are truly frightening numbers not be seen outside of literal wartime[0]. It's good news that violent crime is down since then, but it speaks to a blind spot[1] that you do not find the current violent crime rate to be utterly unacceptable. > Typically a tourist to a major US city doesn't have much reason to fear violent crime. People commuting into the city to work or living in more affluent neighborhoods don't have much reason to fear violent crime. People living in poorer neighborhoods often do have reason to fear violent crime, but it really depends on the neighborhood and things can vary from one block to another. People involved in the drug trade in particular neighborhoods have an extremely good reason to fear violent crime. I agree with the overall statement of fact in your paragraph, but perhaps we disagree on where we go from here. One is that in my opinion, we have seen in recent years a spillover of violent crime into ordinary people living in big cities. Another is that my concern isn't as much for tourists or those living in wealthy neighborhoods; it's more for those living in poor neighborhoods in close proximity to people engaging in criminal and antisocial behavior. I find it to be a travesty that those working hard to better their situation in life must, in addition, bear the burden of living near people who should be locked up. > I was completely mystified because in the years that I've lived here, I've never had any reason to feel unsafe. As the old saying goes, a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged, and a liberal is a conservative who has been arrested. [0]: Did the GP make a ninja edit around Fallujah? [1]: For whatever reason, many Americans take the presence of alarming rates of violent crime as almost like a natural disaster; something that happens and must be accepted.

apical_dendrite 1y ago
I think what I was trying to convey is that the image of life in an American city that the parent was portraying, when he described a beautiful, wealthy city as "Fallujah" (which he has now deleted), and what this couple clearly had in their head, is just completely alien to most people who actually live in those cities. The impression that you get from conservative media and often local TV news is just completely divorced from reality - or at best the media has taken the experience of a relatively small number of people who live in particularly dangerous housing projects, or particularly dangerous streets, and presented it as how the city works in general. I know Boston better than Washington, so I'll use that as an example. Admittedly, it's a city with much lower crime than Washington, but I've had plenty of experiences talking to older, more conservative people who live in suburban and rural areas, and seem to think it's crime ridden. I used to work in several neighborhoods that are considered dangerous - Roxbury and Mattapan, and I've spent time in some of the rougher parts of Dorchester. I've been inside a number of low-income housing projects. I've walked and ridden buses in these neighborhoods. What I noticed was that whatever concern I felt about my safety came from things that I had heard from the media, not from anything that I personally saw, or even anything that happened to anyone I knew. There are a few exceptions to this, like a few blocks in the South End where homeless addicts congregate where I would genuinely be concerned about something happening. The neighborhoods where I've lived - which are not necessarily affluent - have all felt perfectly safe, with the exception of some petty thefts - particularly bike thefts. I am not trying to argue that there is no crime problem anywhere - of course there is and people shouldn't have to live in unsafe areas. But as someone who has intimate knowledge of a major American city, it very much feels like there's a propaganda machine that's pumping out distorted images of life in American cities, either for political purposes or simply because sensationalizing crime draws more viewers. People who don't live in these cities are left with a view that completely lacks the nuance and complexity of actual life in a major city.