A few contradictions here. She’s never met Mike Cernovich, and yet, “ she personally doesn’t mind working with on some specific issues.” I guess you could say she was working from a virtual office, but it seems a distinction without a difference. I think the problem here is the verb “working” is being asked to mean a bit too much, and more appropriate verbiage could be chosen.

Racist as a derogatory epithet should also raise flags. To the degree one respects and wants to constructively engage racially informed prejudices, it would be avoided. The term virtue signaling seems to sum it up rather well — according oneself a virtuous mantle for having the probity to attack someone else for a lack of virtue. But while defending oneself might be viewed as necessary, attacking another is not virtuous. Name calling is bad form. Yet we do it these days, with this name, seemingly too frequently and too easily. He who lives by the sword . . . I almost imagine that in one of Hillary’s focus groups, they shopped the term, and found out you get an extra five points when you call the other guy “racist”. So they leap to label that one whenever there’s the slightest opening.

Criticism by some might be jealousy; by others, a gatekeeper function — trying to keep out a new competitor; and some of it comes from the opposition, the targets in the status quo who don’t appreciate being assailed and want to neutralize the attacker. The test of Caitlan’s writing will be in whether it spurs her readers to be more functional in opposition to the politics she abhors. Will it goad them on to lead more revolutionary lives? The fruit of this kind of discipline can take years to bear. In the meantime, it is either well written, interesting, informative, entertaining — or not.

I came to Caitlin at Newslogue during the primary, when deception after deception was being meted out by Mrs. Clinton’s coterie, working hand in glove with many of the major media outlets, with outlets like CTR (now Shareblue) using unaccountable PAC funds to dilute and disturb public discourse in a way that must have made the CCP envious. Calling foul, Caitlan emerged as a true superstar, documenting the abuse of Berners, and debasement of all the sordid DCCC. (The Republicans had long ago debased themselves with an uninterrupted run from Goldwater and Nixon down to Bush.)

I read every column, and cheered on her rise. Now, the playing field seems quite similar, with Russiagate taking the place of the election, and Russia (Syria, too) as valiant as Bernie, and just as beset by malignant untruths and a cabal of deviant sycophant malingerers. This can’t go on forever though, and the dynamic of Caitlan’s place in the sturm und drang of political epiphanies must evolve. So I expect there will be changes.

While I think it’s healthy to disparage those on the left like Robbie, please don’t feel obliged to do so simply because he disparaged Caity. Your remarks about his firewalled documentary opus were right on the fucking mark. He’s struggling, I imagine, like we all are, and he doesn’t get it right 100% of the time. And if he gets catty about Caity sometimes, well, perhaps that’s a sign of intimacy rather than a sign of division. Who we’re going to “work with” seems a rather abstruse criterion for judgement, especially when “work” brings with it an explicit avowal of having never met the other party.