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Comment by brightball | Hacker News Reader

> We literally have conservatives disassembling democracy across this nation, and the Left's favorite game to play is "Can we castigate more progressives for not passing the acid test."

I have to say, a rant like that about how things are in SF ending on that note caught me off guard. You explained in detail all of these problems and closed out that you’re worried about conservatives?

I have to ask…why?

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The "left" as practiced in SF fails to get anything done and lets things fester and worsen through neglect.

But... the evangelical/nationalistic right, on the other hand, comes out and says exactly all the things they want. Less healthcare, less regulation of the powerful, more cops for the less well-off, more weapons, less sexuality that they don't like, etc. "Fixing mental health" isn't in that list. "Building more housing" isn't even on that list. There are a LOT of people with good reason to be scared of those moves.

Tell me which of these I should think is more feasible:

1) Working with democrats to add some practicality to how to get to the desired outcomes I support?

2) Trying to convince the right that they should change almost all of their goals?

I might be accused (by some) of being on the right.

It's not that I don't want to "fix mental health". Who wouldn't want to wave that magic wand and be able to justifiably claim to be the savior of what I sometimes read is as high as 20-40% of the population of our country?

That said, I feel like it's a problem that can't reasonably be solved by anyone. Not because they're unwilling or incompetent, but that the science just isn't there. Everyone today wants to solve infectious disease, after all. And we actually manage (sometimes) to accomplish that. But if the year were 800AD and you complained that those in charge weren't solving the perplexing miasmas and dark humors that were making people sick with the black death...

You'd have been a fool. No one knew how to deal with those things then. And no one knows how to do something about mental health now. There seem to be medications that sometimes help some people, but when they don't work (or when they do!) no one can give a straight explanation why. The psychologists fail to give us a working theory of the human mind such that we can (even hypothetically) understand why someone is schizo. Or depressed. Or has OCD.

Don't get me wrong. I am not blaming the left for not fixing this. It's just intractable. Everything I see suggests it's likely to remain so into the indefinite future.

Both sides should stick to "building more housing" if you ask me.

The point of SF's progressive movement is to fight back against conservative policies with an example of what progressive politics can accomplish. It's not exactly working out now is it? SF itself is the city where all of the beautiful progressive ideas come together in harmony and make a heavenly place. It is absolutely incorrect in that assessment of itself. Spend 5 minutes at a city council meeting and you will see exactly what I mean. Same thing happens in Oakland. The city spends an awful lot of time commenting on what's going on in conservative areas and passing rules and laws that seemingly address those things but are really just talk. And then they continue to ignore the real problems of crime and homelessness. Oakland and SF love passing support statements for people having issues in other states, but can't get their own Police Departments to even show up to do their jobs. Priorities are entirely wrong.

There are a lot of people on the left who have never ever liked conservatives or republicans but who are extremely frustrated at what the left is doing. They seem to be failing on a lot of things, and conservatives seem to be succeeding, but whenever we criticize the left or suggest something other than what the current thing is in progressive circles, we’re called fascists.

More importantly though, it kinda sucks you focused on the tribal aspect of the comment because it was full of other things to engage with.

It was simply the part that surprised me the most. I’ve heard so much of the rest of the topic that the poster’s mindset was the newest information from my perspective.

I'd guess that the idea is that left wing politics in a lot of places has gotten bogged down in ridiculous notions of "just do whatever you want, everyone has kindness within them" and lets that override the normal concerns about cohesion and wellbeing in society.

You can have socialism, redistribution, a progressive society etc., whilst also recognising that no, you can't just park your tent wherever you want and bother people.

You can support the fact that people might have unorthodox sex lives in private whilst also believing that people who parade the fact that they "have multiple genders" are attention seekers.

The best way that I can describe the feeling I have is that effectively, there's no "upper bound" for compassion/empathy in the modern left-wing framework and that crashes and burns when it hits the real world.

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