I don’t see how I gave them sympathy. The point is that they aren’t all ghouls whose eyes you can look into and see pure evil or something. It’s much more mundane and systemic than that and if people don’t understand that, they will be unequipped to properly challenge power; instead chasing after threats in the same way that liberals view Trump as an embodiment of evil and miss the evil behind the decorum of somebody like Joe Biden.

Rich people will tend to act in their class and caste interests, yes, which can be very blatantly, sometimes cartoonishly evil (more so in the billionaire class than somebody with a few million). That doesn’t mean you can look them in the eye and be unable to find signs of a soul. It doesn’t even mean that if you spent the day with them, you’d necessarily think they’re a bad person. And if you go in expecting it to be obvious that they are evil, you will be confused during the times when they aren’t.

I don’t need to humanize them. They are human. That doesn’t make what they are part of any less horrific. If people want to call em ghouls sometimes or whatever, hell, I’ve done that myself. But I see that more as venting. What I was talking about was a preoccupied screed about how subhuman a couple of random people are.

Your emphasis on the plight of the downtrodden is valuable, both morally and strategically. It needs to be emphasized just how bad it is for the oppressed. But that doesn’t negate what I’ve said, which was directed at a specific context, not meant as some kind of sympathy for the rich.