“Biden said that the year's events had dismantled a myth deeply embedded in his consciousness. For years, he'd been telling a parable about the morning of Obama's Inauguration: 'I called my two sons and my daughter up, and I said, ”Guys, don't tell me things can't change.“' Hunching forward in his seat, he told me that Trump had made a mockery of that parable. 'I'm embarrassed to say, I thought you could defeat hate. You can't. It only hides. It crawls under the rocks, and, when given oxygen by any person in authority, it comes roaring back out. And what I realized is, the words of a President, even a lousy President, matter. They can take you to war, they can bring peace, they can make the market rise, they can make it fall. But they can also give hate oxygen.'”

--from Evan Osnos' piece, “Can Biden's Center Hold?,” in The New Yorker. Thanks to Adam for alerting me to it.