Those young and inexperienced are ripe for manipulation. Santa, E. Bunny, T. Fairy, etc. Little kids will believe anything, and they’re cute that way. But we forget that youth and inexperience don’t end after we slip out of puberty. No, that manipulation continues, only this time it’s not so cute.

Manipulations cut deeper now. Our realizations are no longer about night-riding, jelly bean-giving bunnies; they’re about how honesty and hard work don’t mean anything. They aren’t about where babies come from; they’re about how that presidential candidate we believed in so adamantly, for whom we campaigned so tirelessly, turned out to be a total fuckin’ fraud.