About the Piece

This is what we mean, when we say you are speaking from a place of unearned privilege.

We mean this.

We mean the way you felt so entitled to do a thing like this.

Yes, we mean the way you knew you could just barge right in, and take what was not yours. But everything is yours, right?

We mean the way you felt entitled to wrap yourself up in the unearned trappings of someone else’s culture, and just rampage right up into the capitol, to demand that nobody else’s votes be counted but yours, nobody else’s voice be heard but yours. The way you could threaten the very lives of those who wouldn’t hand you everything to which you felt entitled. The way you thought you could show that “uppity Bitch” in Congress who was boss.

You expected the cops to just hand you the keys, right? Because you deserve them. And for the most part, they did. They just let you choads right in. No attack helicopters buzzing over your heads, no military phalanx firing weapons at you. You’re the Angry White Dudes, right? You get to just do shit like this. 

You felt so entitled. You just violently raged right past all those cops, trailing broken glass, and you chugged right into the face of the US government itself, with your zip ties and your guns and your loud, loud, mouths, knowing that the cops would not shoot you dead, because you have unearned privilege that the rest of us do not. (Indeed… the only one they shot to death, in that sea of angry men… was a woman.)

You didn’t do anything to earn that privilege. It’s just that you look like they do. You remind them of themselves. So you never had to worry about being gunned down by cops just for walking to the market on the corner. You’ve never been targeted after dark just for your gender. You never had to share. You knew you had nothing to worry about, even though 6 months back there were attack helicopters and projectiles, gas and clubs unleashed on unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters who were only there to demand that the cops stop killing them for no reason.

And you looked down on those protesters. Those “thugs.” Your anger is nothing like theirs, right? Theirs is dumb, because you’re too dumb to understand it. Their anger must be regulated, controlled. If they got attacked and assaulted by the police state, it’s because they deserved it, right? They got uppity. But your rage, yours is justified. It’s righteous.

You stood there with no doubt at all about your Right to be there, like it all belonged to you. Laughing, hollering, throwing your ragey little tantrum… you were so smug and self assured. The same as always. There you were, telling the world that you deserve more, and that when you don’t get it, you’ll get in everybody’s faces and do violent, destructive, shit like this.

And they let you.

This is what we mean.