They could tolerate (if not embrace) a liar, a thief, an idiot—as long as he was one of ours. But woe to the man who hears You must not be from around here. Maybe the whole world is broken up into two kinds of people: those who are outsiders and those who distrust them. I can’t tell you how much good it has done me to have been born into the latter camp, but one by-product is that my going-to was as simple as licking my forefinger and holding it up to see which way the wind of my people blew.
