remember when the editor in chief of the alt-centrist rag mother jones mused out loud about how much she's grossed out by homeless people, and then got one her deranged alt-centrist bloggers to misrepresent data in a vile piece attacking the homeless?

these are instructive episodes as they relay the kinds of lives these assorted professional opinion-mongering alt-centrist trash live: in gentrified neighborhoods, carefully avoiding the rabble (notice her comparison to calcutta), manipulating data in line with their pathologies

and, above all, they share a visceral hatred of the poor and powerless, as they see them as rightful losers in the great meritocratic game wherein they are winners, because they got good grades in school and went to that elite private college (as clara did). bourgeois narcissism

for another instructive illustration see this thread on matt yglesias, the archetypal embodiment of this particular social being https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1254823179706646530