The Commodification of Persons Continues Apace

I am reading (Simone Weil's) essays as a part of my Lenten reading...She says that we "...must experience every day, both in the spirit and the flesh, the pains and humiliations of poverty...and further we must do something which is harder than enduring in poverty, we must renounce all compensations: in our contacts with the people around us we must sincerely practice the humility of a naturalized citizen in the country which has received us."

I keep reminding the young people who come to work with us that they are not naturalized citizens...They are not really poor. We are always foreigners to the poor. So we have to make up for it by "renouncing all compensations..."

Dorothy Day, from The Dorothy Day Book, p. 11.

Susan Sarandon on why Hillary Clinton still should not be President:

“Well, I knew that New York was going to go [for Hillary]. It was probably the easiest place to vote for Stein. Bringing attention to working-class issues is not a luxury. People are really hurting; that’s how this guy got in. What we should be discussing is not the election, but how we got to the point where Trump was the answer.”

Susan Sarandon understands "working-class issues" as well as Donald Trump does.  And still being locked into the "economic anxiety" arguments for Trump voters is not a sign of political astuteness, either.

Yes, yes, it's easy to beat up on the "liberal Hollywood movie star who is out of touch with middle America," but do they have to make it so easy?

We need Sarandon the way we need Kirsten Powers, formerly of the Clinton Administration, who told NPR this morning that while she's the same age as Monica Lewinsky, Ms. Lewinsky is frozen in amber 25 years later and still too young to make adult decisions for herself "back then" because of the power differential between her and the President she set out to seduce (by her own admission).  Which is a patriarchal attitude, but apparently an acceptable one because she's not a patriarch, or something.  We do tie ourselves into knots insisting everyone else do as we say, not as we do.

ADDING:  It's piling on, but I knew there was more to that Sarandon interview than just concern for the working class:

Sarandon replied: “Not exactly, but I don’t mind that quote. I did think she was very, very dangerous. We would still be fracking, we would be at war [if she was president]. It wouldn’t be much smoother.”

The quote she references is about how Hillary would have us in a war by now.  But it's the comment on fracking that's obtuse.  If fracking has slowed, it's because the price of oil is down, not because Trump has implemented policies to limit it (as if!).  The free market, in other words, is in control.  I'm in touch (so to speak) with the oil business, and business is not good if only because Saudi Arabia hasn't turned off the taps, so exploration and drilling (and so fracking) is still down.

Hillary Clinton would have had no effect on that at all.  (And yeah, with 11,000 troops in Afghanistan, not to mention those aiding the battle against ISIS, we are still "at war").

You know, when the liberal icons are as clueless as Trump.....