Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.

Some of what he says right at the start actually makes sense, but this sort of stuff is so annoying. Bringing "cancel culture" into this, as if normal people are not getting crushed by capitalism, but instead by cancel culture. The people at Amazon care about your hourly quota, you don't even get a chance to use "latinx".

For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.

Oh fuck me.

Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that

They are less able to do that because they have less money and more debt.

The rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility in the country.

Yes, but there aren't more single parents because of "social norms", asshole.

No, most of us are earnest, kind and public spirited.

Brooks is an Iraq war supporter, by the way

Elite institutions have become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and reject.

Again showing how the word "progressive" doesn't mean anything, he is just describing basic US liberalism. But at least he said a true thing here.

Trump understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most threatening to workers; it’s the professional class.

How are entrepreneurs different than the professional classes?

Anyway, the title looks fine, the content is quite mediocre. I could see libs doing something with this as a starting point, or just ignore it and/or go in a new weird direction that still supports the status quo.

This could easily lead the libs to want to "build the wall", but now in the name of progressivism: "Open immigration makes our service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put downward pressure on our wages."