America, America?

A few quotes from an essay.  The ellipses are meant to disguise something; we'll get around to that.

As...has become not just the richest city.... its residents have come to describe their politics as “on the Left”—a judgment that tomorrow’s historians might dispute. Most often, [that means] what we might call the “glass-ceiling Left,” preoccupied with redistribution among, not from, elites: we may have done nothing for the poor, but we did appoint the first disabled lesbian parking commissioner. 

(In that last clause, I envisioned Tom Barrett talking.)

...Political Correctness is more than a ridiculous set of opinions; it’s also—and primarily—a tool of government coercion … It determines the current polarity in... politics. Where you stand depends largely on whether you believe that antiracism is a sincere response to a genuine upsurge of public hatred or an opportunistic posture for elites seeking to justify their rule. 

The smell of MSM!

As the prospect of rising in the world is hampered or extinguished, the inducements to ideological conformism weaken. Dissent appears. Political Correctness grows more draconian. Finally the ruling class reaches a dangerous stage, in which it begins to lose not only its legitimacy but also a sense of what its legitimacy rested on in the first place. 

The essay is about France, folks.

HT:  UnzReview