Because we [the USA] are so powerful, our failures resonate more. In some ways, the worst victims of our institutional and elite failures, through the ripple effect of financial crisis and war, aren't Americans.

The degree to which I try to be honest that there's some Donald Trump in all of us. The seduction of the promise of order, the politics of white fear, it's not just some other group of uneducated white people who are susceptible to those appeals. It's everyone. And not just white people, frankly. All Americans have this susceptibility to a politics of fear and order that I think we have to be really honest about.

Maybe it`s a great blow for feminism that we now have men mocking one another about their makeup. I mean, let`s - can we enjoy that? That`s kind of great.

We were arguing about what was good to deal with making education fairer, diverse and more American. We were not arguing about where black scientists get a good education.

We have different expectations for different groups of people. We tend to modulate the degree with which we're forgiving or punitive depending on how well we know folks, or how much we consider them peers, or how much social capital we've invested in them. That has to do with race, class, gender, and socioeconomic status. We have a tendency to bend over backwards to forgive folks we think of as part of "the us." The question of who we define as "the us" is a lot of what constitutes how we punish who we punish.

The political disfunction that has brought about the shutdown and now threatens default, isn't so much gridlock. It is exposing the fatal flaw in our Constitution and highly distinct system of government. In other words, it's the Constitution's fault. Something truly catastrophic was bound to happen sooner or later.

Meritocracy is our social ideal, particularly among good liberals. Equality of opportunity, but not of outcome. Not evaluating people by their [outside] features, but by their innate talent and drive.