Anand Giridharadas, as his about page begins, is a writer.
He is the author most recently of Winners Take All which sadly, in spite of a valiant go last summer, I have not finished. (So many books, so little time.) Why I didn’t stick with it, is beyond me. His writing is a joy to read, and his message resonates with my soul.
This morning, I discovered that I had a long-unvisited browser tab open to an Time article by him (How America’s Elites Lost Their Grip) which is worth reading for his main thesis (that we are at the cusp of an Overton-window shift that is making possible an era of reforms challenging late stage hyper-capitalism) but also shows what a spectacular writer he is.
To my eye, his brilliance is his ability to weave stories into the substance of his points. But the language he uses to construct the stories is a marvel. Here are some snippets (emph added) from his Time article.
History is the story of conditions that long seem reasonable until they begin to seem ridiculous.
or
It seemed to come as a surprise to Bezos that … many weren’t excited by … giving his company a few billion dollars in tax breaks that wouldn’t be available to a regular Joe starting a business.
or
Many others … had bolder-faced names, but McGlashan was significant because…
or
… for you, that may be a big fine. For Facebook, it was such a feathery tickle …
or
… resulting in Sackler wings and institutes and centers … that allowed the grim machinery of drug peddling to grind on…
or
what Epstein revealed was … systemic rot in our culture—especially at our universities, which have become drive-through reputational laundromats.
or
Peak billionaire may be a billionaire deciding to … and then running against a maybe–billionaire…
Reputational laundromats. Yow, are we having fun, yet? Even my spell checker does a double-take on that. Oh my.