The meaning of this oxymoron refers to the hypocrisy of the government and its corporate governance by claiming that all citizens are created equal but continuously provide special privileges and power towards the elites, implying that true equality is a false ideology that doesn’t genuinely exist regardless of the fabricated lie that those in power claim is there.
The anecdote that introduces this topic, is the beginning sentence.
"When adolescence hit Frances Jensen's sons, she often found herself wondering, like all parents of teenagers, "What were you thinking?"
Eliminating sentence 3, because it doesn't go with the passage
