• bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Your question is a bit like asking if ice cream sales are linked to murder rates. It’s true that there is a link, but only because there are other things going on that affect both. There is no causation between the two. In other words, being conservative doesn’t automatically mean you do more crimes, and doing crimes doesn’t make you more conservative. There is a lingering variable here, which is poverty and income inequality. The parts of the US with the most poverty are linked with high crime rates because people do crimes when they are desperate. And people living in poverty are often poorly educated and can be susceptible to the appeal of conservative dogma, which is often about laying blame for poor economic outcomes, even if it’s mislaid.

    My answer is only with regards to the US and I am not speaking to other places. In many countries there is an actual left-wing party which offers an appealing alternative for the working class. In the US, your options are the Republicans, who acknowledge you are poor and tell you it’s because of things like government overreach and minorities, or the Democrats, who will just pretend you don’t exist if you are poor unless you are also a minority.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      You sidestep the fact that most conservative areas are poor and less educated because of decades of conservative policies. So, not exactly a correlation.

    • remotelove@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I could agree with that. Even though I wrote quite a bit about my own experiences in this post, I still had to add some subtle caveats that were intended to imply things that you said as well.

      Rural areas can have wildly different cultures even if they are just a few miles apart. Some can lean left and some can lean right. It does tend to lean more right the further south of the Mason-Dixon line you get, though. There is a correlation to poverty tucked in there as well.

      While it’s true to say that there is typically more crime in southern states that are mostly right leaning, it’s a misleading statement and not completely accurate when you look at all states.