Hi Dana — Thanks for your response, and for picking some very fair holes in my argument. I’d take issue with your comparing my thesis with the rationale of white conservatives, but I also understand that your experience demonstrates why any justification of conservative thought can come across as glib and contemptible. There are millions of people suffering like yourself, yet half your compatriots seem not to care. I promise you I am not one of them, and perhaps, being British not American, I’m a bit more insulated from the consequences of their politics than you are (though trust me, we are catching up).

But — and it looks like I should have explained this better — this article is not about seeking common ground or compromise with the type of person who would instantly question whether your health problems were a product of your own lifestyle. Read some of my other stuff (like this: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/08/grenfell-was-no-ordinary-accident/536907/; or this: https://qz.com/931520/make-great-britain-great-again-how-brexit-reawakened-englands-dormant-imperialism/), and you’ll see that my politics have next to nothing in common with the Randian lunatics responsible for what you have endured.

The point I was endeavoring to make is that there is one small piece of the upsurge in right-wing tribalism in western democracies that I do get — that is the cultural dispossession wrought by decades of rapid social and economic change. It doesn’t make me want to hug it out with a bigot, but it is something that progressives need to reckon with if we are ever going to pull a critical mass of people back from the abyss. As I tried to clarify towards the end of the piece, that atmosphere of cultural dispossession is largely a right-wing construct, so I don’t know if there are any easy solutions. It just seemed like a worthwhile quandary to articulate.

I’m sorry for your hardship, and I wish that America was a place that used its vast wealth to look after its people.