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As a Literal-Minded Person, I am Once Again Asking for Connotation not to Completely Supplant Denotation
The other day, I saw a screenshot of this tweet on Instagram:
I commented that I found it very strange to assert that you're not scared of crime. Crime is bad. All things being equal, no one would choose to be a victim of crime. Of course some people are more scared of crime than they really should be, but that's a far cry from saying that any amount of fear of crime is wholly unjustified. I may have compared the tweeter to Bike Cuck.
People in the comments clowned me. "Admitting you're afraid of general crime and calling someone else a cuck is a bold stance for someone so pathetic." "If you live your life in constant fear that 'someone' is gonna suddenly commit a crime against you every time you go out in public, you have agoraphobia and should get therapy." "Do you want the powice offiew to tuck you in and wead you a night night story?"
Nowhere in the comment did I claim that I live in constant fear of being a victim of crime: I merely stated that it's silly to claim to not to be afraid of crime at all. It's a weird non sequitur: "you assert that it's not unreasonable to experience some degree of fear of crime - ergo you are a bootlicker who worships police officers." It's also strange to be accused of agoraphobia by someone who I can only presume was an enthusiastic supporter of lockdowns.
I found the tweet strange, in its conception that "being afraid of crime" is a trait unique to (American) conservatives. Many of the canonical beliefs associated with American liberalism also entail fear of particular types of crime (perhaps even fear vastly out of proportion to their likelihood of occurring). Rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment (including on college campuses) are all types of crime. School shootings are crimes. Hate crimes are crimes (the hint is in the name). Revenge porn and certain kinds of cyberbullying are crimes in many jurisdictions. If you're afraid of any or all of these happening to you, you are afraid of crime, by definition. This sort of reminded me of the finding Scott cited, that most American are opposed to Obamacare, but in favour of every individual component of Obamacare.
Moreover, it makes far more statistical sense to be afraid of crime in general than to be afraid of any particular subtype of crime. A woman's likelihood of being raped in a calendar year cannot be higher than her probability of being raped or mugged or having her car stolen etc. If you are X% scared of being a victim of a specific type of crime, you should be >X% scared of being a victim of any kind of crime, as there is no circumstance in which the former is more likely to befall you than the latter. This is just basic statistics. (Thank you to several commenters for reminding me of the conjunction fallacy, whose name was on the tip of my tongue while initially writing this.)
Back in the real world, I know why people react this way, in spite of how illogical it is on its face. Generations of Blue Tribers have internalised the idea that politicians who talk about being "tough on crime" are engaging in "dog-whistle politics", and that "crime" is being used as a code word for "the kinds of crimes that black people (or more recently, immigrants) engage in"; using the word "crime" in a vacuum is a signal of Red Tribe membership. Conversely, a person who expresses concern about being the victim of a hate crime, a school shooting, rape or sexual assault, cyberbullying or having their nudes leaked without their consent is signalling Blue Tribe membership.
This leads to a curious situation in which a black man who expresses concern about being the victim of a hate crime will result in all the white people around nodding deferentially, whereas if he expresses concern about being the victim of a crime (a category which includes all hate crimes), the same white people will roll their eyes and call him an Uncle Tom. In part, this state of affairs came about because many of the people who express these concerns believe (erroneously, in many cases) that these specific crimes are disproportionately likely to be committed by members of their out-group. The idea that white men are responsible for a disproportionate share of hate crimes or active shooter-style school shootings is a myth that stubbornly refuses to die.
But I hate the idea that ordinary common-sense words are being ceded as tribal shibboleths so readily. "Crime is bad" (a category which includes all Blue Tribe-coded crimes such as hate crimes, school shootings etc.) should not be a politically polarising statement, any more than "being sick is bad" or "dying prematurely is bad". It seems our culture has now reached the point at which one cannot say "crime is bad" without half of your hypothetical audience immediately responding "lmao, okay whatever you fascist MAGA bootlicker". And this is far from the only ordinary common-sense word which inspires such a bizarre polarised reaction. The most politically loaded question of the last five years was "what is a woman?", for fuck's sake. If this trend continues, I fear that in ten years' time, anyone who uses the word "the" in a tweet will have people in the replies mocking them as a Definite Article Enjoyer which, per this NPR column and Vox explainer, is a dog whistle for... something.
(This is still probably Freddie's best work.)
I see your core point here, but I want to quibble with the linguistic specifics. I don't think what you mean by "afraid of crime" and what your interlocutors mean is the same thing. I have encountered people who are annoyingly, performatively "not afraid of crime" in the sense of arguing that it's actually no big deal if cars get broken into. There's zero chance I'm going to back that position and I don't want to be mistaken for it... but I am not afraid of crime. By this, I don't mean that I think the chances of being victimized by crime is zero (I've had my car broken into, for example), but that I don't generally think about being victimized by crime at all on a day-to-day basis. Encountering sketchy individuals will instantly raise the salience of it to the front of my mind, but the modal number of times that I consider whether I'm going to be the victim of a crime in a given week is zero.
Let's flip this to one where I think we're likely to fundamentally agree - are you afraid of Covid? I'm not and I never was. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous from the start that other people similarly situated to myself were "taking it serious" at all. They clearly are afraid of Covid and many of them will say as much. Part of this is clearly about estimations of the severity of the disease, but it's not the whole thing - I just literally do not experience any fear when I contemplate the possibility that I could get a nasty respiratory disease. I will or I won't, but I'm not going to reshape my whole life to avoid something that just isn't all that likely to be an issue.
Another example - are you scared of afraid of dying in an automobile accident? Much like crime, the only time I give it any thought is when something sharply raises the salience of it, like riding a bike near someone that's driving aggressively. Despite the fact that this is probably the thing that's most likely to kill me in a given year at my current age, I don't experience any fear of it. Someone might run a red light, slam into the side of my car, and leave me permanently paralyzed. In fact, someone did run a stop sign and T-bone me, and that one did stick with me a bit longer, but it eventually faded. I just drive down the road, doing normal stuff, completely unafraid of the activity even while I acknowledge that it's the most dangerous part of my life. I actually do want something done as far as policies go (in fact, decreasing QoL for motorists as a tradeoff for walkable neighborhoods is probably my top remaining NormieLib position). But afraid? No, I wouldn't say so.
I don't think this is just a matter of connotation or denotation - I think this really is a difference in the experience or expression of fear.
Well of course I'm not afraid of Covid, in the sense that I'm not worried about catching it and dying from it. But I am worried that one of my elderly loved ones might catch it and die from it. And if I was an elderly or immunocompromised person, I would think it would be perfectly reasonable for that counterfactual version of me to be significantly more afraid of Covid than I personally am.
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