I'd say at least some of this has to do with differences in perspective based on location, but I'm skeptical that it's most of it. A good example is one you mentioned - police shootings of unarmed black men. If we think of a number that a city has to have to "feel like it has a lot of police shootings of unarmed black men", maybe we'd say five, or maybe we'd say ten. But in the first case we'd have four cities that "felt like they had a lot" and in the second case only two, and then we'd be completely out of unarmed shootings of black men for that year. Every other city would have zero.
So there has to be at least something else going on here; I generally favor "uncritical belief of things that make you feel moral". Ditto with the starving thing - they know it's not true or could know if they spent any mental time on it, but they don't - since the reason for that definitionally has to be outside of what they are observing.
You write: "Leftist hyperbole is just parochialism"
"Parochialism is the state of mind, whereby one focuses on small sections of an issue rather than considering its wider context. More generally, it consists of being narrow in scope. In that respect, it is a synonym of "provincialism". It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to universalism."
From my link:
"The midwit is incapable of drawing on multiple streams of information, from many different domains, to understand the novel information in the broader context of a system. To compensate, the midwit turns inward, focusing with increasing resolution and detail into the confines of the information itself. To the midwit, this is nuance. To the genius, he is missing the forest for the trees. To the idiot, he is gullible."
I'd say at least some of this has to do with differences in perspective based on location, but I'm skeptical that it's most of it. A good example is one you mentioned - police shootings of unarmed black men. If we think of a number that a city has to have to "feel like it has a lot of police shootings of unarmed black men", maybe we'd say five, or maybe we'd say ten. But in the first case we'd have four cities that "felt like they had a lot" and in the second case only two, and then we'd be completely out of unarmed shootings of black men for that year. Every other city would have zero.
So there has to be at least something else going on here; I generally favor "uncritical belief of things that make you feel moral". Ditto with the starving thing - they know it's not true or could know if they spent any mental time on it, but they don't - since the reason for that definitionally has to be outside of what they are observing.
Reminded me strongly of this piece: https://theredqueen.substack.com/p/its-a-midwit-world-and-were-living
You write: "Leftist hyperbole is just parochialism"
"Parochialism is the state of mind, whereby one focuses on small sections of an issue rather than considering its wider context. More generally, it consists of being narrow in scope. In that respect, it is a synonym of "provincialism". It may, particularly when used pejoratively, be contrasted to universalism."
From my link:
"The midwit is incapable of drawing on multiple streams of information, from many different domains, to understand the novel information in the broader context of a system. To compensate, the midwit turns inward, focusing with increasing resolution and detail into the confines of the information itself. To the midwit, this is nuance. To the genius, he is missing the forest for the trees. To the idiot, he is gullible."