I watch no TV and about a movie a year, and I feel like the world is a pretty decent place. I have friends who watch an awful lot of it, and some of them are scared shitless by everyone they pass on the street after sundown. This sounds about right to me.

It may be part of the American mania for marketing that we care more about perception than reality. It seems to me that we're more likely to a news report about how people are more afraid of violent crime than about how violent crime is actually going down. I think this sort of thing ought to be on the news more. In a democracy, people ought to know the facts about whether violent crime is going up or down.

I once had a discussion with a Republican friend about how racist grafitti in his child's school bathroom proved that racial progress was an illusion. "Things don't get better." he said.

Now I realize that many conservatives are claiming the opposite, that racism is dead in America, and I'm not going to attempt to reconcile that. My point is that conservatives believe that things get worse, that progress is malevolent.

Of course, racists simply believe that more diversity equals more crime. I see old people on the local news talking about drugs in the neighborhoods, and you just know it's a code word for "niggers". This used to be a white white white community. I can tell you the name of the one black kid who went to my elementary school. Everybody knew his name.

That's all changed, and It's just intuitive. How can crime be down with all these dark people walking around?

I feel like this concept also applies, although in a less intense way, to numerous global warming/peak oil/social collapse survivalists who I happen to know.