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Most of us are too enmeshed in communities to live our ideals. Outsiders have less to lose.
Anand Giridharadas -
To those portions of the electorate fed up with politics as usual, Mr. Trump's willingness to say just about anything and to improvise as he goes seems more refreshing and trustworthy than disqualifying.
Anand Giridharadas
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We know that enlightened capital didn't get rid of the slave trade.
Anand Giridharadas -
Wealth plays out in the political sphere in all kinds of ways, often personally. Can Hillary Clinton represent the interests of working people when she and her husband have taken so much money from Wall Street? Was Mitt Romney's private-equity business too ruthless with workers?
Anand Giridharadas -
Democracy doesn't automatically safeguard women and minorities.
Anand Giridharadas -
In Europe, more than in the United States, worldly people, faced with my Indian skin, reflexively laud my 'ancient,' 'beautiful' origins, which is heartier praise than Cleveland usually gets from Europeans.
Anand Giridharadas -
It requires some intelligent reframing to make people see commonalities that they don't otherwise see. To me, the Tea Party and the Occupy movement are, in many ways, saying the same thing, but it requires a bit of imagination to get people to see that.
Anand Giridharadas -
Taking offense is, in fact, one of the few things that brings us together.
Anand Giridharadas
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In an economy increasingly dominated by network effects, peer-to-peer transactions, self-regulation, and contract labor, the old frameworks are woefully irrelevant.
Anand Giridharadas -
One of my clearest impressions about India as a child was that my parents' stories would have been impossible had they stayed. Of course, such a vision was self-serving, for it made a virtue of our displacement.
Anand Giridharadas -
Birthright citizenship in America is part of something larger: The American longing to sever from history, to be a place of new beginnings.
Anand Giridharadas -
I'm a Cleveland Indian by birth.
Anand Giridharadas -
As a teenager growing up in the suburbs of Washington, I ritually watched the Sunday-morning political talk shows with my family. We parsed and argued and jeered at the screen as national figures delivered careful, poll-tested talking points.
Anand Giridharadas -
I have always found it jarring to encounter people born and raised in, say, Switzerland, who are denied its citizenship and still considered Algerians or Turks.
Anand Giridharadas
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Right after college, after growing up in the United States, I moved to India, broadly telling the story of how an old and stagnant country was suddenly waking up. And I came home, back to America, in 2009 after telling that story and writing a book about that.
Anand Giridharadas -
In my reporting, I've found that real change escapes many change-makers because powerful illusions guide their projects.
Anand Giridharadas -
I have a weakness for treating people's economic interests as their only interest, ignoring things like belonging and pride and the desire to send a message to those who ignore you.
Anand Giridharadas -
In America, where no one judged or supervised her, where my father was too busy eating her cooking to notice whether she was eating it, too, my mother found herself newly enchanted by the taste of food.
Anand Giridharadas -
Foundations are the new Birkin bags. Everyone who is anyone has one. Giving is now chic.
Anand Giridharadas -
Language is one of the only things that we truly share, and I sometimes used this joint inheritance to obfuscate and deflect and justify myself: to re-brand what was good for me as something appearing good for us both, when I threw around terms like 'the sharing economy' and 'disruption' and 'global resourcing.'
Anand Giridharadas
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When rooted, you observe how systems actually affect people.
Anand Giridharadas -
The burden of citizenship is accepting that what is neither your fault nor your responsibility may be your problem.
Anand Giridharadas -
If you think America is great, remember that every person telling you otherwise may carry a clue to making it greater.
Anand Giridharadas -
America, thankfully, is not an easy nation to commandeer.
Anand Giridharadas