Crime in America is down, rudely interfering with GOP narrative that it's out of control
Some inconvenient facts have come along that threaten to undermine the hard work we've put in convincing our beloved Republican voters their country is a wasteland ravaged by violent leftists.
Rex HuppkeTo: Fox News hosts and producers, far-right AM-radio pundits, Republican fearmongers and scary GOP narrative spinners across all media platforms
Subject: DATA SHOWS CRIME IS DOWN! URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!
We here at the Center for Right-Wing Narrative Protection have received disturbing news that threatens one of the Republican Party’s most-valued narratives: Crime in America, we regret to say, is not rising, nor is it out of control.
In fact, it appears to be going down, which is not our preferred direction.
We’re sure you’re as upset about this as we are, and we’ll get to some sensibly dishonest solutions shortly, but first let’s look at the facts we’re up against.
U.S. crime is down, but at least we're still scaring people
As most of you know, our efforts to frighten the lunch out of the American electorate by repeatedly showing videos of isolated criminal activity and claiming cities led by Democrats have burned to the ground have been wildly successful.A recent Gallup poll found that 63% of Americans “describe the crime problem in the U.S. as either extremely or very serious, up from 54% when last measured in 2021.”
That’s fantastic progress!
Even better, that same poll shows that only 17% of Americans “say the crime problem in their local area is extremely or very serious.” That shows how effectively we’re convincing people that Democratic President Joe Biden has turned the country into a criminal hellscape, even though those same people see no actual evidence to that effect.
That’s what we in the panic-inducing narrative business call a win-win!
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Unfortunately, some inconvenient facts have come along that threaten to undermine the hard and patriotic work we’ve put into convincing our beloved Republican voters that their country is a wasteland ravaged by violent, drug-fueled leftists.
New FBI data comparing crime from January through September of this year with the same period last year shows a number of disturbing (for us) trends:
- Violent crime is down 8%.
- In cities of more than 1 million people, violent crime is down nearly 15%. (Ugh!)
- Murder is down 15.6% nationally and down 25% in cities of more than 1 million people.
- Robbery is down nearly 10%, and burglary is down nearly 12%.
- Motor vehicle theft, in one instance of good news, is up 10%.
All told, these are terrible numbers for us.
This is bad news for those of us invested in bad news
Crime data analyst Jeff Asher at AH Datalytics has the murder rate down 12.6% over last year, and recently wrote that this could be “either the largest or one of the largest national declines in murder on record.”He also wrote: “The decline in crime shown in the quarterly data – if realized – would be historically large. To put some of this in perspective, a 4 percent decline in the nation’s violent crime rate relative to 2022’s reported rate would lead to the lowest violent crime rate nationally since 1969.”
I realize this is depressing news for all of us. But to maintain the success we’ve had at getting Americans to believe something that is demonstrably false, we’re going to have to double our disingenuity.
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Recently our friends at the National Retail Federation tried their best, releasing what The New York Times called a “startling estimate that 'organized retail crime’ was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting.”
Sadly, facts intervened again and the federation had to retract that claim, as apparently retail theft is down, the group was using faulty data and an expert reported that “organized groups were likely responsible for just about 5 percent of the store merchandise that disappeared.”
There is still hope for misinformation
Still, kudos to the National Retail Federation for its effort to propagate our narrative. Better to have lied and lost than to have never lied at all.To keep Americans from learning about these so-called numbers that allegedly represent “what is actually happening around us,” we propose the following narrative-protecting steps:
- Keep saying America is facing a crime spree the likes of which we’ve never witnessed. Whenever possible, compare it to a “third-world country” – they eat that stuff up. Remember, repetition is the key to success. It takes approximately 100 “counterfacts” to defeat each individual fact. So be relentless.
- Look for any video of a crime happening and share it with your audiences repeatedly. It doesn’t matter where the crime is happening, or even whether it’s an actual crime. It could be a cross-country skier in New Zealand falling down next to a group of people. That becomes “Violent flash mobs attack tourist in Colorado ski town, showing no place is safe in Biden’s America.”
- If it all possible, do some crimes. We can deflect attention from the data that completely contradicts our narrative, but it would help mightily if we could get those crime figures up where we want them to be. (Disclaimer: The Center for Right-Wing Narrative Protection is no way suggesting anyone engage in violent crime, theft or any form of property crime, and the center will not be held responsible for anyone who sacrifices their freedom for the good of the aforementioned narrative.)
In conclusion, keep fighting the good fight and don’t let America’s falling crime rates get you down. We were able to get a shocking number of people to believe Donald Trump was a good president. Surely we can keep them believing America is a lawless land of unchecked criminals and rabid death merchants, contradictory data be damned!
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on X, formerly Twitter, @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
NO shyt....
