and I have long understood that I had treated this poor man the way the bullies treated me, shamelessly, for the odious pleasure of demonstrating an illusory superiority. That is surely the immense advantage over the weak that those called strong possess: both are consumed with anxiety, fear, and doubt, but the weak know it and suffer because of it, while the strong do not perceive it and, to shore up the wall that protects them from the bottomless void, turn against the weak, whose all-too-visible fragility threatens their own fragile confidence. Thus the weak are a threat to the strong, and
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