David had talked about his desire to “humanize” his family, but one problem for the Sacklers was that, unlike a lot of human beings, they didn’t seem to learn from what they saw transpiring in the world around them. They could produce a rehearsed simulacrum of human empathy, but they seemed incapable of comprehending their own role in the story, and impervious to any genuine moral epiphany. They resented being cast as the villains in a drama, but it was their own stunted, stubborn blindness that made them so well suited to the role. They couldn’t change.
