Hard right think tanks - particularly in the US - manufacture these Culture War issues. People inflamed about inherently subjective social policy issues, are distracted them from the way capitalists - who fund those think tanks - continue to pick their pockets with tax cuts, public service cuts, and privatisations of public assets.

Anti-"woke" culture warriors then amplify them, on social media etc,, digging pits lined with spikes. Which liberal culture warriors routinely blunder into.

(13/?) 

 Maipi-Clarke and Swarbrick handled it well in this case, providing *context*, and challenging Donoghue on the facts. 

But IMHO, Standford's response is actually the best one. Calmly name the fear and loathing for what it is, dismiss it as the ravings of minds manipulated by the Dark Side, and move on.

(14/?) 

 #JohnCampbell gets it;

"...one more before I move on: 'Children who experience socioeconomic disadvantage are at high risk of suffering from multiple disorders by the time they reach adulthood. This reflects their experience of a broad range of hardships.'

Hardships. From which all of life is disproportionately likely to be made hard. Or harder. And we’ve probably not mentioned those children, this election, as often as we’ve scaremongered about trans people."

https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/09/30/john-campbell-poulton-poverty-and-the-real-way-to-get-tough-on-crime/

(15/?) 

 "And if experiencing 'intense or regular poverty' in childhood increases likelihood of criminality later in life, we may actually have achieved the remarkable perversity of having economic policies that create the disadvantage we then spend election campaigns arguing over how best to punish the consequences of."

#JohnCampbell, Poulton, poverty and the real way to get tough on crime

https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/09/30/john-campbell-poulton-poverty-and-the-real-way-to-get-tough-on-crime/

Fucking. This.