It’s as much of a fantasy as believing you’ll be safe because your heart is pure. or that everyone who is on your side politically is a good and honest working person.

The problem is people acting/living in these fantasies with no reference to reality. I am perfectly willing to believe she “didn’t mean it” because it was a bit of talk at the old Bolshy club, to stir the blood (hard to do now, you know, they’re getting elderly) and bring a tear to the eye while convincing them they’re still revolutionaries (and therefore, according to their founding mythos still and always young.) So in the end, boiled down, this was a “We’re still young. We still got it” article.

Of course you’re absolutely right about the hypocrisy and the objective cravenness and outright idiocy of her pronouncements (as are various bloggers on the right.)

But if you look at her as what she is — a woman so lost in a fantasy she can’t see outside it, talking to other people equally bereft of … reason, you feel a little sorry for her.

In fact, if it weren’t for the fact they are still powerful in so many fields, I’d feel a little sorry for all of them, as for any devotees of a religion that’s passing away.