Hamiltines

Hey Anonymous, J here. I feel ya!

I happen to be from one of the 3 counties tied for 6th Most Conservative County in Texas (yikeeeeees). I now live in Brooklyn, NY. People in my neighborhood are really different from the people back home, both demographically and ideologically.

I always leaned left and I have to thank my Texas Democrat parents for that. Some examples of embarrassment relating to this from a young age: I remember my 3rd grade teacher taking a poll for the 2000 election and the only people in my class who would have hypothetically voted for Gore were me and the Swedish girl who recently immigrated to the states. I always called out my schoolmates for using “gay” and “retarded” as adjectives, and it was massively uncool. I got harassed at school for wearing an Obama t shirt in 2010. Seriously. 2 years into his presidency.

So all that’s to say, I thought I was one woke bae until I moved to New York City for college and realized I had a TON to learn about privilege, discrimination, and my role in combatting these things.

The thing is, it’s really hard to go against the norm in your community and region. When most people around you look a certain way, or are raised in a homogenous pool of thought, it’s really hard to even be aware of it, much less fight it. It’s just “normal.” It surrounds you. You don’t know any different, and difference is scary. It feels awful to take responsibility for and have awareness of your own ignorance. And if your privilege allows you to live comfortably, why disturb that? And if you face backlash from every direction for challenging the ideologies surrounding you, it’s hard to keep fighting.

You, Anonymous, raise a good point about putting in so much effort to understand and support. It takes a lot of work and personal discomfort to unlearn prejudice! I like to consider myself an ally to others with less privilege than me, but the reality is that I’m always learning and everyone has room to learn.

Hi, I’m B.

Not only did trump not win a majority, Clinton actually beat him in the popular vote by about 200,000(according to google right now). Which is both a lot of people and very small percentage of the voting population. Elections like these are frustrating because the political system we use to choose the president (the electoral college) isn’t currently reflective of what the plurality of the country seems to want. 

Why do we even have an electoral college? It’s as old as the constitution and depressingly it’s mostly because of the conflict between the lower population slaveholding states, and the higher population non-slave states at the constitutional convention. Like the 3/5s compromise(3 out of 5 slaves counted as state population for congressional representation), and the split house congress (house and senate), the electoral college was put in place to prevent domination of the federal government by the more populous northern states.  As a result, the electoral college reflects the general population, but overrepresents the population of smaller states. 

This plays out now in our current political climate, where liberal politics are popular in metropolitan areas and conservative politics are popular in rural areas (in general, obviously there’s a lot more going on than just that). States that go blue have higher population and more metropolitan areas, and states that go red have lower populations and more electoral votes per citizen. 

Hi there. I’m J, the primary writer and late-night inebriated blogger of Hamiltines. Also on deck is B, aka Hamilboo, who has a B.A. in Politics from NYU and is extremely rational.

Hamilboo/B will be bringing us live updates about the state of our nation’s future throughout the day. Facts about the democratic process. Stuff you might not know, and stuff I definitely do not know. I wrote haikus about how much I didn’t know about politics on my AP Politics exam back in the day. Still got a 2. 

Anyway. 

Feel free to ask questions and drop us a line. We’d love to hear from you and wish you the best this dark morning.

Hey! Just saw this. Honestly, I applaud you for trying to convince this person. 

But I think the thing now is to realize two things: 1) Trump may be the embodiment and representation of misogyny, racism, white supremacy, homophobia, antisemitic, and many more regressive things that devalue humans, but the truly scary and horrifying thing is that 2) Over half the country agrees with him and voted for that. So half the country is those things too. Half the country thinks it’s ok to be openly racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, etc. That’s so, so scary.

So what comes next? We don’t run away. We don’t leave for Canada. We continue to work to make America great, and we fight, and we organize. We do this now, so that in 2020 we can have a chance to return to the path of progress. 

I’ll be posting links over the next few hours and days as I find resources for getting politically organized. In the meantime, continue to challenge others’ discriminatory behaviors and opinions. Start a dialogue. We can foster empathy. We can challenge hate and fear. We can stop this from happening again. It starts on the ground level with us, our friends, our families, and our communities. 

Don’t tolerate hate. Good luck today, everyone. 

Ok so the thing is

You matter

Your opinion matters

Your vote matters

You can change things

And on Wednesday, Clinton or Trump will be president

Which one more closely represents your interests?

VOTE FOR YOUR INTERESTS.

DO IT. 

I’m getting up early af to vote, and that’s not something I do anymore for ANYTHING. And you should, too, and we should all get breakfast. (Legit, any Bushwick homies out there wanna meet up?)

If you are a Hamilton fan, there is only one choice. It’s with Her. Hillary Clinton. If you love your freedom and liberty, it is most secure with her. Hers is the path forward. Do you remember how much the recession sucked? How expensive everything was? GAS PRICES? Let’s not do that again! And worse!

Please please please prioritize voting tomorrow. It is so important. DO NOT BE SILENT! DO NOT THROW AWAY YOUR SHOT! 

Thanks, Ham trash. Let’s fucking rock the vote tomorrow.

Your obedient servant,

Donald is orange

Gauntlets are white

I’m throwing mine down

Ham dreamed of a future

Where America’s great

Not ruled by a monster