Anand Giridharadas

in most people's lives in this country.

But for this power elite around Epstein, there are infinite second chances.

And the worse they fail and the more they hurt you, the better the job, the better the promotion, the better the prospects, the more money, the more power, the more clout they get.

They are friends who pretend to be enemies.

in order to keep us imagining our friends are our enemies.

Yes.

We're being had, right?

I am as guilty of what I'm about to say as anybody.

I don't want to make, this is not a holier than thou thing, but if you think about, it's been now 10 and a half years since Trump came down the escalator.

We think about that 10 and a half year period.

One of the things that has defined it culturally on all sides of the equation

is a rising dismissal by all of us of large swaths of us.

Those people will never change, those people are all racist, those people are all pedophiles, those people are, right?

Our society is full of these stories.

And we have been persuaded

that we are each other's biggest obstacles.

And again, I have succumbed to this story as much as anybody.

I have felt the rage about people who have voted for Donald Trump three times.

I feel more rage when they're people who, for whatever reason, have suffered because of him and should know better because they've felt the pain of living under someone who cares about them so little.

And still, I feel rage at them.