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@agold: That incident with the 49yo guy was because of a traffic incident. It's horrible and those people need to go to jail but they didn't beat him because he was a Trump supporter (he is a Trump supporter). The victim did an interview with the Chicago Tribune and its in USA Today. The people in the video shouting about Trump were bystanders.
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@Mrs. Sketchbook: I think that the word "privileged" is pretty much always used negatively. It was entirely unnecessary in the post above. The entire sentence in which the word was used could be deleted and the poster could have expressed her thoughts the same way without it.
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@PurplePeony: that's so cool that WA has mail in voting too. The little I know about OR is that they have one of the highest voter turnout rates since it is so easy for everyone to vote.
And re: privileged. Every last one of us that hangs out at HB is privileged. You don't have to be a 1%er (and I'm certainly not!) to be in the privileged class. The majority of posters seem to be educated, thoughtful and have the means and resources to spend time on a parenting Internet forum. If that isn't privilege, I don't know what is.
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@mrsjazz: thanks. I saw that.
"I stopped and parked. And I asked if they had insurance, and the next thing that I knew they were beating the s--- out of me," Wilcox told the paper Thursday.
The video shows his attackers pummeling him as Wilcox falls to the ground and tries to cover his head. Bystanders can be heard shouting "Beat his ass," "You voted Trump" and "Don't vote Trump." One of the attackers gets into the driver seat of Wilcox's car. Wilcox tries to pull his attacker out of the car, but the man accelerates.
I guess it's not totally clear why they beat him up -because he asked for insurance, because he had a trump sticker on his car or because the bystanders were yelling what they were. Totally sucks either way. And I hate for anyone to be harassed because of how they voted - in person or otherwise.
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@agold: this has some differentiation between strict and not strict voting laws by state: http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/voter-id.aspx
for example, a strict voting law would require people to take extra steps after election day to ensure that their vote is counted if they did not have the appropriate ID at the time of their vote--this would understandably be difficult for some people, to take extra time off off work or fulfill the extra requirements.
Clearly incidents like the one you mention are awful, and I don't think any rational person would be in favor.
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@agold: I guess we can agree to disagree because I didn't mean it as an insult. I am also privileged. I meant it as a baseline - I'm assuming that you have an income, a car, a home, the free time to be online in the middle of the day, etc., and might not therefore be taking into account somebody who doesn't have the kind of ID that a lot of people assume is a given, or the kind of time and resources to acquire those things.
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I have been reading/skimming along here but not commenting because I have too much to say and need to get back to work, but I just wanted to throw out an excerpt from a longer academic work on recognizing privilege in daily life:
It's a short piece, a sort of laundry list of the ways in which so many of us take our privilege for granted.
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@agold: I think a knee jerk dismissal of the word "privilege" is as problematic as a knee jerk use of the word "nazi" or "racist." I think there needs to be a way to acknowledge that yes, while life is hard for all of us, and yes even the seemingly "privileged" must work for their success, some of us are gifted with more resources than others. I include myself in this assessment.
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@nana87: thank you for sharing that.
Right now, I feel too angry / bitter to properly organize my thoughts. I'm a female minority and this makes me realize that no matter how long I have lived here, how perfect my English - I will always be seen as an outsider and America will always belong to white people.
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@Mrs. Sketchbook: ha! if you are categorizing the word privileged with words like nazi and racist - even putting them in the same sentence - that's another reason to not apppreciate the term being directed at me here. Gees. I'm bowing out of this now.
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@agold: If people are voting by mail then all those ballots better damn well be counted!! It would DEFINITELY be voter suppression if they weren't.
In regards to your feeling that some people in the country are just too lazy or uneducated to figure out how to vote, because clearly it just takes "a little effort" to do so...well, that's discriminatory. Did you ever stop to think there may be people who don't have a car and their polling place isn't easily accessible by walking or public transit? Or what about people who work a job that doesn't allow them to get to the polls during the hours they're open? People who work 2 jobs? Single parents with very young kids they don't want to schlep to the polls and who don't have or can't afford childcare? There are states that don't have mail in voting unless you're an absentee voter and that don't have early voting. For these people, the feeling of oppression is real and it isn't because they don't feel like figuring out how to vote. For them, it would take way more than "a little effort."
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How will there ever be any unity between republicans and democrats if neither side trusts the other's sources of information? Really, I think that in the age of the 24 hour news cycle and social media becoming a news source, this is the most divisive issue, over and above differences of opinion on abortion, the death penalty, foreign policy, etc.
The way we consume media has a direct impact on how we vote and who we vote for. If we have no ability to see each other's side, how will anyone's opinion ever be swayed? The two sides will just drift further and further apart with no chance at a common ground.
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@agold: she meant that the dismissal of being called privileged is just as bad as flippantly calling someone a racist or a nazi (which I believe many Trump voters are upset about right now).
If we cannot even agree that it is a good thing to admit that we are privileged (which is essentially the same thing as saying you are thankful for your blessings in life) then I just don't even know how to proceed.
*edited to add I am NOT trying to say that it is a blessing to be white, eek I just was trying to unpack what is apparently a loaded word.
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@pinkcupcake:
I took this picture today of post its stuck to the door of a bathroom stall in the university where I work, and it perfectly encapsulates how I feel
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@petitenoisette: thank you for clarifying! This is exactly what I intended. I think that it would be much easier for liberals to lay off the "racist" or "nazi" labels if conservatives could have a honest conversation about privilege. It takes both moving toward each other.
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@ScarletBegonia: Yes to this! I completely agree. I have relatives on my FB feed who still think that Trump won the popular vote. And what can I do to convince them otherwise? Gather all 120+ million ballots and count them in front of them? They don't trust any information from the NYTimes, Politico, Wall Street Journal...
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@pinkcupcake: I'm truly sad that you and so many others feel that way. I'm biracial (white/Asian) born and raised in the USA and I couldn't comfortably check off all of the boxes on the sheet @nana87: linked to. There's still a long road ahead to make everyone feel included and welcome.
I took this picture today of post its stuck to the door of a bathroom stall in the university where I work, and it perfectly encapsulates how I feel
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