{"id":5581,"date":"2020-01-12T13:55:15","date_gmt":"2020-01-12T19:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=5581"},"modified":"2020-01-12T19:13:29","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T01:13:29","slug":"anand-giridharadas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2020\/01\/12\/anand-giridharadas\/","title":{"rendered":"Anand Giridharadas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anand Giridharadas<\/a>, as his about page begins, is a writer.<\/p>\n

He is the author most recently of Winners Take All<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>) 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/strong><\/em>) from his Time article.<\/p>\n

\n

History is the story of conditions that long seem reasonable until they begin to seem ridiculous.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

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<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

Many others … had bolder-faced names<\/strong>, but McGlashan was significant because…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

… for you, that may be a big fine. For Facebook, it was such a feathery tickle<\/strong> …<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

… resulting in Sackler wings and institutes and centers … that allowed the grim machinery of drug peddling to grind on<\/strong>…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

what Epstein revealed was … systemic rot in our culture<\/strong>—especially at our universities, which have become drive-through reputational laundromats<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

or<\/p>\n

\n

Peak billionaire<\/strong> may be a billionaire deciding to … and then running against a maybe–billionaire<\/strong>…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Reputational laundromats.<\/em> Yow, are we having fun, yet?<\/a> Even my spell checker does a double-take on that. Oh my.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5581"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5587,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions\/5587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}