I wanted to believe that as generations turned over, those coming into economic and political power would build a different, better, more expansive world, and not just for people like themselves. Later, I would mourn these conceits. Not only because this version of the future was constitutionally impossible—such arbitrary and unaccountable power was, after all, the problem—but also because I was repeating myself. I was looking for stories; I should have seen a system.
