OPINION:
When elites in Western Europe and here at home wrested control of academia, government bureaucracies and centers of “enlightened” culture, they employed tactics of identity politics and intersectionality to divide and conquer the philistines among us — all the time preserving the perquisites of the new ruling order (“Why are the Western middle classes so angry?” Web, June 12). Instead of extolling guideposts of promotion at the gaming table of American life (academic study and a nose-to-the-grindstone ethic along with personal discipline, obeying the law and delaying instant gratification), virtue-signaling elites instruct hoi polloi that pale male croupiers load the dice and stack the deck to rig the process. In other words, the race starts at the finish line for the favored, notwithstanding the expense of trillions of dollars in a failed effort to eliminate poverty and elevate the disadvantaged with policies of busing and affirmative action.
While elite policies have failed our republic, they remain a Babel of instant gratification, a grab bag of feel-good solutions that attract those easily seduced by the anodynes that soothe angry liberals. If the elite continue to believe that old-fashioned standards of success are merely artifices of majority manipulation, the coming revolution of the philistines will be a delight to behold.
PAUL BLOUSTEIN
Cincinnati
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