It has admittedly been awhile. I am doing my writing elsewhere on my own page. I won’t broadcast that here, but some people know where that is. However, I felt the need to address a group called “StopHoustonmurders.com”. They have set their sight on Democratic judges locally and have run a whole litany of ads. These ads tend to find themselves on what I affectionately call “old people television.” I encountered probably 40 of them in the span of an hour when watching “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

When I say 40 I am not exaggerating. The general course is run about five or six of these ads back to back even having them interrupt other ads for other products. The setup is the same. You see a bunch of people holding up posters of dead loved ones with the voiceover focusing on one of those. It tells you that their loved one was killed by a criminal that a “bad judge” had released. These bad judges are “all Democrats” so we should vote them out to help protect our community.

With all apologies to momma, my bullshit detector was going off and it was screaming at me. Immediately we begin to ask the questions everyone should ask. Are we supposed to take your word for it that all of these judges are Democrats? What were the circumstances of these cases where they “released a criminal”? Did they serve their full sentence? Did a parole board grant their parole? Were they convicted of a violent felony or were they nonviolent offenders that suddenly committed a violent offense?

Tip O’Neill once said that all politics is local. You don’t get any more local than the home. Someone that is out of work or can’t afford to make ends meet doesn’t care how well the economy is doing. Someone that has had a loved one murdered doesn’t care about crime rates. I think we all get that. However, most of us don’t have a loved one that was murdered. So, those crime rates matter and it matters in particular if you are going to question the policy of judges and other elected law enforcement officials.

I know everyone is going to be shocked to hear this, but the rates of violent crime in both the United States and Houston are down. For Houston, it went down from 2022 to 2023. So, it would seem that is little empirical evidence to suggest that the policies of these so-called Democrat judges are making things worse. Again, I know you are shocked.

Instead what we have is yet another example of right wing political groups ratcheting up fear and hatred in order to score political points. More insidiously, they are using real victims to put forth this manufactured issue. It is not dissimilar to the Trump campaign using “data” that shows that two thirds of voters are worried about the economy. When you do nothing but tell people how bad the economy is then is it any wonder that people suddenly think the economy is bad?

Similarly, if you tell people that America is becoming a lawless hellscape then is it any wonder that many people assume that crime rates are out of control? It is all they have at this point. By all means, don’t provide any context. Just bombard people with imagery of Gotham and crime that is out of control. Make sure to imply that it is “the other” that is usually committing these crimes. You alone can fix it by throwing them in jail and throwing away the key. That will do the trick.