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Comment by ubermonkey | Hacker News Reader

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> The is primarily due to the conservative party's realization half a century ago that they could motivate their base with rage and grievance politics instead of with good policy, and win doing so

Democrats are mayors of 31 of the nation's 34 largest cities, most of which are places I certainly would not care to live. Is it "good policy" that lead to the reason for this article, or are all of San Francisco's 8 Republicans to blame for this tragedy?

> The GOP is all about anger and, honestly, hate.

Ahhh yes. Supporting school choice to get inner city kids out of crap schools is hate based. Not wanting children who aren't even able to consent to going on school field trips to make permanent, life altering decisions by destroying their bodies? Clearly an anger thing.

> It's easier to sell "hey, just get more cops" than to explain that crime is often driven by economics

Yep, people are stealing iPhones because they're starving. That's 100% a thing that is happening. And violent crime surely has economic advantage attached to it, right? The guy who killed Bob is now richer thanks to his actions?

You appear to be completely unable to engage on the issues in good faith while whining that "the other side" is doing exactly the same thing.

For comparison, the murder rate in two Republican cities: Nashville (100+/annually), Dallas (200+ annually, 1.3m pop) vs San Francisco (<60 annually, 800k pop).

On a per capita basis (i.e., per 100k pop), almost all of the 50 most dangerous metro areas for violent crime are Republican strongholds, the only exception being Detroit at #5.

> The is primarily due to the conservative party's realization half a century ago that they could motivate their base with rage and grievance politics instead of with good policy, and win doing so (google "southern strategy").

I've got no dog in this fight, and this comment is peak American. If you don't see that the other side is doing the EXACT same thing, you're part of the problem.

Please show me an example where in the same period of time the Democratic party has done anything as egregious as the Southern Strategy.

I'd also welcome any example of a policy initiative led by the GOP that addresses any of the myriad serious issues in American life, chiefly those addressing poverty, education, and health care.

> Please show me an example where in the same period of time the Democratic party has done anything as egregious as the Southern Strategy.

Democrats purposefully supporting far-right candidates in the 2022 primaries because they believed they would be easier to win against in the general election doesn't exactly speak towards their supposed self-righteous ideals.

I don't know about you, but amplifying the voices a party claims to be so dangerous purely because they believe it to be in their own short term self-interest is pretty damn egregious to me.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/12/democrats...

https://theintercept.com/2022/11/19/keri-lake-democrats-ariz...

I wouldn't put that anywhere near the activities of the GOP, who have literally spent 5 decades emboldening racism, and who have in the last few cycles flirted with or openly embraced fascism.

But yeah, sure, tHe pArTiEs aRe tHe SaMe.

> But yeah, sure, tHe pArTiEs aRe tHe SaMe.

The root of sarcasm is truth. There are indeed awful people and decent people on each side. Politics is not a team sport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVV2Zk88beY

No one said the Democrats are blameless angels.

The problem in the US is that one party is attempting governance in good faith, and the other is marching towards fascism with absurd levels of party discipline, which means there's very, very little ideological variance in GOP candidates.

I get what you're saying, each party has their flaws, the GOP more so than democrats. I think my point here is that politicians are politicians regardless of what party they are aligned with. But in general, in a country with 300M+ people, there are still many millions of average republicans who hold traditional conservative values. And while I may disagree with them, I can at least hold a respectful conversation with them as opposed to so many of the MAGA-nuts who just want to scream about conspiracy theories. But that's the type of nuance that's lost in comments painting everyone who identifies with the letter R as evil and fascist thus only leading to more division.

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