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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Data shows that injection sites in Canada led to reduced crime in their neighbourhoods. But it’s easier for the right to make a scapegoat instead of follow data.

    That’s a great illustration of why we need more diverse views on Lemmy.

    You’re right, some data supports your view. But there are a bunch of people living near safe injection sites who were having a shitty time. Both can be true at once, and dismissing the experience of people living in the situation pushes people away from us, and into the arms of the right.

    And because conservatives lied, that’s the lefts fault?

    Lefties (like you and me) ignoring people who are suffering because of well-meaning policy that needs to be improved is entirely the fault of the left.

    This is why we need more perspectives on Lemmy: we aren’t always right, and even when we are, lefty policy occasionally doesn’t work. If the left doesn’t hear about it and fix it, the right will.


  • In Canada, conservatives were some of the first to call out the cost of living crisis.

    Folks on the (institutional) left ignored and derided them. But it turns out they were right - lower and middle class people were hurting. We chose not to listen, and ceded the issue. That gave the Conservatives their best electoral showing in the last federal election.

    Similar things happened in Ontario with supervised drug use sites. A bunch of residents near the drug sites had problems with crime and vagrancy. The lefty echo chamber ignored their concerns, so the conservatives ran with it. Now we’re losing safe injection sites.

    Shutting out differing points of view doesn’t make problems go away. It just gives us a blind spot. And that gives right leaning parties the opportunity to build public support.


  • This makes me worried that I’m in some sort of echo chamber. In real life, I do see much more diverse opinions and, if I only used the fediverse for social media, would likely be weaker in defending my own since their arguments would be “new” to me.

    You are in an echo chamber. Lemmy has a very small Overton window. There are lots of excuses and reasons, but it isn’t a good thing.

    I’ve seen a handful of (small c) conservatives here bounce off. It isn’t good - we on the left aren’t always right, and even when we are, our policies don’t always do as intended.

    I wish there were more people here, and we could disagree productively.