The people who voted for these politicians are by and large not the demographics being fucked over by those policies. I also used to feel like the right response was to laugh at these states, and being reminded that people who didn’t want these policies are still suffering from them didn’t really convince me of anything–after all, collectively, isn’t that the community they’re choosing to live in?
What changed my mind about that is realizing the harm is disproportionately distributed. Disenfranchised people are LESS likely to vote republican but MORE likely to suffer the effects of republican government. So when “they get what they voted for”, it’s really, “the poor get what the rich voted for”, and that doesn’t make me happy to laugh at at all.
What do people think of a “journalistic integrity” rule? I know that’s also subjective, but I’m trying to think of how to phrase a rule that is basically “don’t post intentionally incendiary crap”. I guess the rule could just be “don’t post intentionally incendiary crap”, with some examples of what that means and community opportunities to in some way indicate that an article is incendiary crap.