THREAD. There is a very revealing thing at the heart of the flood of elite media "think pieces" about the San Francisco DA election. If you get past the flowery writing, what's going on is a pretty fascinating fraud. Boudin and the debacle of urban left-wing politicswhy san francisco fired chesa boudin the people vs. chesa boudinhow san francisco became a failed city
First note: each of these articles is embarrassing in many ways: falsehoods or assertions designed to mislead, comical one-sided sourcing, lack of basic understanding of empirical evidence or law, faux-intellectual drivel, etc. But I want to focus this thread on one core fraud.
All of these articles have one thing in common: they lament the supposed fall of San Francisco, as shown by what they say is the "disorder" of homelessness, filthy street tents, rampant mental illness, low-level theft, and open-air drugs.
Several of the articles even express concern about drug users and homeless people! They insinuate that soft progressives with "good intentions" are actually the "cruel" ones. The articles then make a simple move:
Each article's central theme is that removal of "progressive DA" was natural response to problems of inequality, homelessness, drug use, mental illness, etc. (i.e. not product of huge $ misinfo campaign.) What's remarkable is that none of the articles explains why this would be.
None of the articles explains which specific DA policies were responsible for the "disorder" of inequality in San Fransisco. (And, interestingly, when separated from Boudin himself, each of the DA's progressive policies were very popular with SF voters):
Moreover, property and violent crime actually went down under the "progressive" DA, whose policies seem like a huge success when using nearly every conventional crime and budget metric.
And so here is the most incredible thing: none of the articles contains a statement of what the authors are proposing instead. Life in prison for drugs? Mandatory 10 years in a cage for public camping? Detention camps and involuntary electroshock for mentally ill? What exactly?
Why are none of these really smart people talking about what the actual stakes of the recall are? All of these smart people know very well what the right-wing recall organizers from the police union and Republican donors want: more criminal prosecution and more prison.
But none of these smart writers with establishment liberal audiences are acknowledging these brutal policy consequences in these fancy faux-intellectual think pieces. Why? I think there are two main reasons.
First, social scientists have shown that longer sentences don't deter crime. And studies show that reducing low-level prosecutions *decreases* crime. And overwhelming scientific evidence shows that more prosecution doesn't fix problems of inequality.
These writers don't want to talk about actual policy because the positions they are tacitly boosting are like climate science denial: every serious scholar knows you don't solve homelessness, drug use, mental illness with more prosecution and prisons. They don't want that debate.
This probably explains why typical standards for journalistic rigor--fact-checking, a pretense of neutrality, basic knowledge of the subject matter, respect for evidence, attempt to allow contrary perspectives to explain their views--are dispensed with by respected publications.
Second, b/c they are sophisticated, they know they would lose their liberal card if they suggested caging people for being homeless, mentally ill, or drugs. That's what Republicans want! The function of media like this is to achieve same outcomes w/o saying quiet part out loud.
Each article is thus a good example of what I call copaganda cat nip for liberals: the function is to hide the brutality of what is actually being suggested to make people think they can still be good liberals but support massive bureaucratic state violence and science-denial.
These articles are like fentanyl for well-educated liberals. It's like pumping a drug into their veins that gives them the momentary bliss of thinking that we don't need structural changes to make our society more equal. But consuming stuff like this is killing all of us fast.
I think this is the key point, and what writers like @AnnieLowrey @jonathanchait @NellieBowles and @benwallacewells don't want to confront publicly:
I wrote about a similar phenomenon with the "hard news* coverage of the recall here: equalityalec.substack.com/p/new-york-tim…
Here is a beautiful one-eyed cat who has expressed serious concerns to me about the quiet violence of elite media think pieces about crime.

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More from @equalityAlec

Jun 13
Huge news: A federal judge has just issued a significant constitutional ruling against the Queens DA and various New York officials in our 1st Amendment lawsuit. The case is about what things we can tell the public in our effort to expose rampant prosecutor misconduct in NY.
You can read the fantastic opinion from the federal court here: civilrightscorps.org/wp-content/upl…
And you can read more about the background here, including about the work of the courageous law professors who took on this effort to shed a light on prosecutor misconduct:
Read 4 tweets
Jun 11
You wouldn't know it from the media "narrative," but in Los Angeles there was a candidate for City Controller who had billboards across the city about the outrageous, wasteful police budget and huge mobilization among young people. He trounced the pro-police opponent.
Across the United States, politicians like @kennethmejiaLA who run clear, transparent campaigns about addressing the root causes of violence by providing housing, care, teachers, after-school programs, parks, wage-theft enforcement, environmental sustainability, etc. are winning.
The "tough on crime" politicians pushing Democrats toward electoral failure aren't even tough on crime, at least if one follows scientific evidence. Their policies lead to more crime, exactly because they don't address root causes. I wrote about this in my book, Usual Cruelty:
Read 5 tweets
Jun 9
THREAD. Sometimes the bias of the New York Times is so outrageous that it surprises even me. Because what the NYT did yesterday in its election coverage is so dangerous, I try my best to analyze it carefully below.
On June 8, the day after the June 7 elections, the New York Times published a story telling its readers about what it called “the shifting winds on criminal justice”: nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/…
The NYT’s lengthy article and analysis is based entirely on two individual local races, the recall of the progressive DA in San Francisco, and the primary for the Mayor of Los Angeles. According to the NYT.
Read 46 tweets
Jun 8
If you work at a news media outlet, it's important that you ask yourself a few questions this morning:
What role has my news outlet played in linking the problem of violence to the purported need for more police, prosecutions, and prisons when the scientific consensus is that inequality, housing, health care, pollution, and education are far more linked to violence?
How did there come to be widespread fear of police-reported crime (but not other types of crimes cops don't care about) at a time when police-reported crime rates are near historic lows?
Read 4 tweets
Jun 8
In coming months, you will hear a lot from the news media about how "fear of rising crime" means Democrats need to boost police and prisons. This is like saying fear of climate change means people must donate to Exxon.
The actual evidence is clear: real safety is the product not of the machinery of state violence, but comes from reducing inequality, giving people places to live, ensuring that people have access to care, and in investing in the ability of our children to play and to be educated.
One of the greatest frauds but most essential roles of modern "news" is selling people the wrong solutions to the wrong problems in order to prevent the reduction of inequality.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 7
THREAD. Something must be said about Axios. The relatively new for-profit news venture is getting a lot of attention for "simplifying" the news and getting people just what they "need" to know. Some of what it is doing is outright dangerous.
Let's take a look at a recent story that an Axios reporter wrote blaming "crime" for people being slow to return to offices in NYC. Axios complained that workers choosing to stay home is a "drag on businesses."
First,the article is premised on the assertion that "crime" is major reason people aren't going back to the office. Abandoning journalistic curiosity and scrutiny, the article offers no support for this claim.
Read 15 tweets

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