We will have a more just society as soon as we want one.

I'm reading a bunch of fiction by Afghan and Iraq War veterans for a New Yorker piece. There hasn't been that much, but it's starting to come out, and some of the fiction is really good.

In a sense, whites who were always sort of the unthinking majority who didn't think of themselves necessarily as one among many interest groups but is simply the dominant group, now as whites become - are close to becoming a minority of Americans, are becoming a political interest group. And that's what Donald Trump is playing to. And it's a really dangerous, volatile game.

This is what Newt Gingrich has wrought - is a politics in which it's very easy to destroy and very hard to build.

Globalization looked like it was going to answer all the economic questions of class. Turned out not to be the case.

The ranks of educated professional swelled as more Americans went to college and more Americans sort of adopted a more cosmopolitan lifestyle and worldview. And as the Democrats were looking for an alternative to the unions who no longer seemed like a large enough base for the party, they found the educated who veered more toward a progressive cultural outlook, who may have had - may have been working in the financial sector, in entertainment, in media, in universities. That became really the rank and file of the Democratic Party over a long period of time.

At the heart of the matter is a battle between wish and fear. Fear generally proves stronger than a wish, but it leaves a taste of disappointment on the tongue.