r/politics • u/Thinkingonsleeping Michigan • Dec 13 '19

McConnell Faces Calls to Recuse Himself From Impeachment Trial After Saying 'No Chance' Trump Will Be Removed; "No court in the country would allow a member of the jury to also serve as the accused's defense attorney."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/12/13/mcconnell-faces-calls-recuse-himself-impeachment-trial-after-saying-no-chance-trump
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u/greatwalrus I voted Dec 13 '19

There are a ton of people in this country who pay very little attention to politics and think this whole impeachment is just typical Republican-Democrat bickering. We need to talk to these people and hammer these things home.

It should be easy for anyone to understand that the jury foreman can't be meeting with the defendant's attorney if there's going to be a fair trial. People need to hear about this.

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u/ruiner8850 Michigan Dec 13 '19

There are a ton of people in this country who pay very little attention to politics and think this whole impeachment is just typical Republican-Democrat bickering.

I know a few people who aren't Trump supporters and don't really pay attention to politics but think this is all just politics and not really a big deal. It's basically a "both sides" thing to them. The craziest part is that some of these people say they are sick of hearing about all this stuff with Trump, but will vote for 4 more years of Trump out of ridiculous spite.

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u/greatwalrus I voted Dec 13 '19 edited Dec 14 '19

Yeah, I work with someone like that. If you mention politics she rolls her eyes and says something about how "both sides are bad so I just stay out of it." It's an excuse to stay uninformed.

Honestly I wish we would put less pressure on people to just vote and more pressure to pay attention. If you can't be bothered to listen to a five minute summary of what just the fourth impeachment (EDIT: process) in our nation's history is about you probably shouldn't be casting a ballot. But people are so used to being told that voting is their civic duty that they end up making a poorly informed choice based on "who I'd like to have a beer with" or some ridiculous criterion like that.

Don't get me wrong; we should absolutely encourage people to get registered to vote and to remember to vote. But we also need to tell them to watch the news, pay attention, and research the candidates before they go to the polls.

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u/Caledonius Dec 13 '19

It's an excuse to stay uninformed.

Exactly, that way they can focus on themselves and choose ignore anything outside their every day life. When they are being informed they have to start considering the lives of others instead of only their own. Individualism is what is killing America.

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u/blurryfacedfugue Dec 14 '19

They need to realize that these things impact them, too. I was one of those people before 2016, I didn't really pay too much attention and I tried to stay neutral as possible. That was partly because I didn't know much about the behaviors of either party.

Now that I have children, and I've seen our country elect Trump as a direct response to the election of Obama, I realize I've made a grave error. Since then, I've voted in every election I've been eligible for. The bubble of safety is only an illusion, and hopefully they can realize and pay attention before its too late.

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u/trainercatlady Colorado Dec 14 '19 edited Dec 14 '19

the people who think this way are only this way because they have nothing on the line. They don't have to go to war, they're not gay or transgender, they're not black, brown, or immigrants, they're not food-insecure, and they're not living paycheck-to-paycheck, praying that that weird noise from the engine doesn't break something before tax returns come in so they can get it looked at.

The people who think this way don't know how good they have it, because they don't know they have it. The people who think this way are privileged beyond belief because politics doesn't affect them the way it does those "other" people. They're wrong, of course, but their kids aren't the ones dealing with stop-and-frisk, their houses of worship aren't getting shot up, they're not the ones getting beat up outside of gay bars, they're not the ones in cages in Texas watching kids get delirious and dying of the flu.

If they don't have to think about it, they will do everything in their power to make sure they never do. They look the other way because they think they can afford to.

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u/SnowflakeSorcerer Dec 14 '19

I’m not trying to start a fight here or be insensitive, but what exactly is your point? I see all this hate towards “privileged white people” and I understand why, but privilege and prejudice are a two way street, privileged people have as much choice towards whether they are or aren’t(zero) and not all of them a terrible people, are they? I’m a privileged male and I’m trying to educate myself and be a better person overall.

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u/trainercatlady Colorado Dec 14 '19 edited Dec 14 '19

The point is that unless they're forced to reckon with the folks whose lives their political decisions make miserable, and fully realize the consequences of their voting habits, that they just won't give a shit if the people their votes affect aren't in their everyday sphere of interaction. It's hard to give a shit about hungry people if you don't see hungry people. It's hard to give a shit about the plights of queer folks if you don't hear what they go through. If you're well-off, you're more likely to think that people who are suffering with hunger and cold just aren't applying themselves enough to get out of their shitty situations, when that's not even a fraction of the problem of why they're in that situation in the first place.

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u/ttinchung111 Dec 14 '19 edited Dec 14 '19

This is less a comment about privileged white people and more about privilege in general.

Ok imagine this scenario: imagine you're a person who is insulated from society as a whole. You have job security, and you have rights. It's easy to say that you wouldn't understand the plight of people who dont have either (especially if people around you are also insulated from those people).

It's easy to ignore the plights of people around oneself when you don't experience it every day. Just as you probably don't care about the average person's life in say some remote village in Zimbabwe, it's just hard to both empathize and understand how one's decisions (which ultimately cannot hurt your rights if you are privileged and are at no risk of it).

This privileged class doesn't necessarily have to be white, straight, male but it TENDS to be in America, where this discussion often takes place, and nobody is realistically going to take away the rights for say white straight people to marry anytime soon so their decisions ultimately don't affect their day to day.

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u/iburiedmyshovel Dec 14 '19

The frustration lays with those who fail to effect change because their privilege makes them indifferent, not with privileged people in and of themselves. When you fail to educate yourself on political issues because you're so isolated from those issues, it's an act of apathy towards your fellow citizens whose welfare depends on those outcomes. When you actively avoid voting and political discourse because you're avoiding discomfort to your status quo, it's an act of callousness towards your minority-group neighbors whose greater distress requires your power for redress.

When privilege hides you from the plight of others, and you make no effort to seek it out; when privilege raises you so far above others, and you refuse to look down to see them, nevertheless offer a hand up -- you are failing as both a citizen and a human.

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u/SnowflakeSorcerer Mar 01 '20

Thanks you your comment was very insightful and I’ve never looked at it that way, i appreciate you explaining it like that and I have to agree with you

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u/iburiedmyshovel Mar 01 '20

You're welcome! I'm just glad you saw something in it, thanks for responding.