Item — HN Reader

@ones_and_zeros is right, it's hyper partisan. The content (as thin as it is), is true ... but for the NYTimes to use a game produced by GOP Games, who only produce satire of Trump, is really less than ideal.

Secondly, it creates a real division between, white, Latina (which remember is an ethnic group, not a racial group ... many Latinos in the US self-identify as white in addition to their ethnicity), and of course black.

Thirdly, it doesn't really hammer home the right issues. The Latina woman's son gets dysentery a few minutes in and then there's a statement about paid time off. Those things have nothing to do with each other.

There's more to it but this game simply plays into the Trump camp thinking that the media is soft on rational thinking ... which unfortunately this game confirms.

I'm with her and will be voting in Brooklyn fwiw

1 comments

>@ones_and_zeros is right, it's hyper partisan

Again, calling something partisan is the intellectually lazy way of trying to dodge an argument. It imparts no new information, and tries to establish a false equivalency between two parties for no reason other than 'fairness'. Again, you can't dismiss the civil war as 'partisan' because one political party wanted slaves and the other did not.

>Secondly, it creates a real division between, white, Latina (which remember is an ethnic group, not a racial group ... many Latinos in the US self-identify as white in addition to their ethnicity), and of course black.

In a country where a state GOP party researched the ways that blacks voted specifically to find the ways to best disenfranchise them, it's pretty safe to say these battles have been fought over racial lines for a long time. Trying to pretend these fights aren't over racial lines is again trying to establish some sort of false equivalency.

>Thirdly, it doesn't really hammer home the right issues. The Latina woman's son gets dysentery a few minutes in and then there's a statement about paid time off. Those things have nothing to do with each other.

You're incorrect. Minority voters are disproportionately affected by curtailing early voting because of precisely the situations you just mentioned, which is presumably why the game raised those issues. People who work hourly jobs have a harder time taking time off in large numbers to vote, and especially if those voters can't afford to stand in a line for hours at a time. The game is showing precisely why those long lines are intended to hurt those voters.

> Again, you can't dismiss the civil war as 'partisan' because one political party wanted slaves and the other did not.

'partisan' is not a dismissive word and you can certainly call the civil war 'partisan' - that's the very definition.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/partisan

The video is partisan because it clearly reflects the viewpoint of one side and not the other, and the Civil War was fought by two partisan groups: the anti-slavery North and the pro-slavery South.

>In a country where a state GOP party researched the ways that blacks voted specifically to find the ways to best disenfranchise them, it's pretty safe to say these battles have been fought over racial lines for a long time. Trying to pretend these fights aren't over racial lines is again trying to establish some sort of false equivalency.

The fights are over racial lines - but they're also over socioeconomic lines and it's certainly not a unique problem to the US.

>You're incorrect. Minority voters are disproportionately affected by curtailing early voting because of precisely the situations you just mentioned, which is presumably why the game raised those issues. People who work hourly jobs have a harder time taking time off in large numbers to vote, and especially if those voters can't afford to stand in a line for hours at a time. The game is showing precisely why those long lines are intended to hurt those voters.

I didn't make that statement so I don't know what you're talking about. People who are already on the line aren't working. In this case she made the decision before finding out her child had dysentery. I agree with your point ... but the video game simply didn't address it.