The Invisible Counterpoint

Part of what Milo argues is what Chris Hedges argues. That we have a liberal professional class that covets its rulership more than anything else. With both of them, trolls didn't necessitate this class regrettably closing its doors. Rather, enjoying the idea of their foreclosed ownership of what is right opinion and correct manners -- enjoying being distinct and better than everyone else -- they sought out means to classify everyone outside of their class as predators, trolls, deplorables. To both Milo and Hedges, our situation is Versailles.  And the problem for the left is that there is truth in this. We just live outside those periods of unambiguous growth where the most progressive people out there -- which is always the left -- are absolutely uninterested in bourgeois/genteel pretensions. We've had that age -- the 60s. Now we are living in one where -- though they cannot acknowledge it -- they actually do enjoy the idea that they and their children will be part...

Milo is Salon's replacement. Salon isn't to be seen as empowering Milo, but rather as shuddering as they sense the limelight passing. Amanda Marcotte noticed that there were many who identified as strongly feminist... who were the sort of people who previously loudly applauded Salon when it went after sexist men, who suddenly revealed themselves as actually not so feminist at all -- and in fact as actually very, very angry at women -- when they became Bernie Bros. It was if they'd finally found a safe space where they could finally speak their minds without feeling like they would be obliterated for it, and they indulged as if previously prisoners humiliated into forced identification.  They had aligned with people like Marcotte, that is, defensively. By being with her, they couldn't give voice to their prejudices -- and in fact had to experience the constipated discomfort of staunching them -- but they could partake in her being bitchy, arbitrary and dismissive...