Caitlyn, I agree with much of what you say about daring to talk with people who are not mirrors of ourselves, and finding common ground as Ralph Nader proposed in “Unstoppable. However I found this passage strange:
“That’s not something everyone can do, and I get that, and that’s fine. It’s a strength though, not a weakness, and going out there and doing the hard graft of listening and talking to the great unwashed proletariat which we are meant to champion should be respected, not shamed. This is my humble attempt at fortifying those who can and choose to do so.”
The great unwashed proletariat? Are you really so comfortable that the idea of struggling to make a living is that foreign to you? And where do you get the idea that people who work for wages, drive buses, drive for Uber or Lyft, make sandwiches, work cash registers, and assemble automobiles don’t bathe? What about adjunct faculty, the legions of Ph.Ds who are severely overworked on totally insecure, temporary teaching contracts? All the other insecure professional contract workers? The college graduates struggling with crushing student debt and bleak employment prospects? All those who went down in the 2008 recession and haven’t been able to climb back up? And who are the “we” who are “meant to champion them”? I just don’t feel that distanced from the vagaries and cruelties of capitalism myself.
Perhaps you meant that ironically—as though it were the conception of your critics, not your own—but that’s not at all clear, so it made me uncomfortable.
David and Caitlyn: The viciousness of the personal attacks on both of you, but especially on David, were disheartening. One can criticize someone else’s politics, writing, or Greenstream broadcasting far more effectively without stooping to that.
