Daily Prompt: Giant

via Daily Prompt: Giant

I am not sure what to say about Giant, except perhaps that sometimes I let my giant ego get the better of me and stoop to commenting on political posts on Facebook. I know it is foolish to challenge others in this so divided and angry political conversation happening now. Yet, I did it anyway. But today I was told I must belong to a puny social group by a complete stranger on Facebook. With just a brief glimpse at her profile she looks like me, an older white woman and an unapologetic liberal. I had decided to respond to yet another liberal organization’s post on why poor whites (or Appalachian poor whites, or rural poor whites, etc.) lean to the right politically when conservatives seem to do so little for them. My first response was: “Worse yet, is what causes educated, wealthy, white people to vote for Trump? Almost everyone I know planning to vote for him is EWW,” no comments there. However, always the devil’s advocate, I had to add:

“Oh and as someone who grew up poor and white and dropped out of high school demonizing a group of people based on stereotypical characteristics reminds me of something…hmm…what is it? Oh yeah, racism and bigotry!
We need to understand political trends like this and this article lays out the history fairly clearly but most of the comments here are just useless blaming which “…signifies nothing…”

And my troll replied:

“So be an apologist. Tell us what we’re missing. Tell us how smart your cohort is, how educated, how knowledgeable.”
“Because unlike race, CLASS ISN’T LIKE SKIN COLOR.”
“You can CHOOSE to be educated, or you can decide that further education and knowledge will make you an “outsider” to whatever puny social group you owe allegiance to.”

The woman’s responses did make a point but were also…well…mean, and I must add, not very well written (hehe no giant ego here). She didn’t even remark on my literary reference (my giant ego is not happy) and so I had to reply…sigh:

“I’m not sure what you’re asking here, I’m obviously too puny, all I’m saying is that the comments here seem to be more about bashing a group of people, which is part of the problem. People feel alienated from the “liberal and intellectual elite” the cohort we have been relegated to by the Koch funded GOP. They have then used that alienation to drive a wedge between groups of people. Continuing the rhetoric of blaming the victim, (because aren’t the poor victims of economic realities that can be out of their control) does little to solve the problem. The article describes the history of the divide and all I did was state that most of the comments here are adding fuel to the problem. I was privileged to have the ability to educate myself, and to always seem to put myself in groups of people that were smarter than me. I’m not judging I’m just asking us (myself included for I couldn’t get away from my “white trash” background fast enough) to look more deeply at what we are saying and doing. Adding to this painful division does little to heal it.”

I usually don’t engage in comments on many political posts, I don’t want to uselessly antagonize my conservative friends (nothing my puny cohort can say will change their minds) and I don’t usually engage strangers but earlier this week, I was sharing a post about the liberal need to lump Appalachians into a single group of Trump supporting poor whites, so this had been on my mind.

There is a giant gulf between those of us that are of these United States; it is heartbreaking and frightening. As a liberal and as someone with lots of acquaintances that are all over the political map, I have tried for years to find a way to bridge the gap on my own. I stand by my words above, people do not choose to be born to poor and rural families that may not have the resources to learn about the larger realities that affect their lives and I must add that class is as important as race, although those that wish to divide us don’t want us to know this. Even with the miracles of modern technology that supposedly brings us closer together, issues that are related to types of class differences continue to contribute to the giant chasm between us.

Meanwhile my giant ego had giant fun at Fantasy Fest 2016 here in Key West and one of my favorite costumes in the Friday night local’s parade was this one. Wrong in so many ways but oh so cool!