Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia, has offered his post-election reflections of what identity politics has wrought. In summation, they have undermined the country’s Utilitarian focus on progress for all, and have produced a searing divide between those building their identity around a type of “otherness” and those with default status who feel they have been left behind, with neither group having much empathy or interest in the other.

Though critical of bubbles, Lilla seems to be napping in his woolly one, as he presumes that academic diversity models are the starting and ending point for activism and socializing. What’s more, Lilla recommends following Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton’s approaches, the latter of whom “concentrated his energies on domestic programs that would benefit everyone,” which is not how history or conventional wisdom recalls it, what with NAFTA, TANF, DOMA, to name but a few.

After meandering through other topics like affirmative action (“an extraordinary achievement” that, he writes, has given us Megyn Kelly and Laura Ingraham), Lilla finds the “whitelash” theory “convenient because it absolves liberals of not recognizing how their own obsession with diversity has encouraged white, rural, religious Americans to think of themselves as a disadvantaged group whose identity is being threatened or ignored.” They are, he writes, reacting not to curtailed possibilities for their own lives, but rhetoric.

Lilla would be wise to read Thomas Frank’s Listen Liberal. Per Frank, the Left has systematically deserted the interests of its base of working class people during the last 35 years in pursuit of elites found in finance, academia, and—most recently and orgiastically—tech. This collusion of the powerful includes Carter and—more enthusiastically—Clinton and Obama.

People are not unaware of this shift. We are all wired to carefully monitor the opportunities and resources available to us—and to others. And you don’t have to look too closely to recognize that individuals, families, and communities are suffering more than they used to. Median household income still falls below pre-Great Recession levels, there is a raging heroin epidemic swallowing poor and middle-class people of all ethnic backgrounds, and the patronizing, painfully glib Aaron Sorkin is considered to be some kind of sassy, illuminating bard.

Lilla’s omission of the material aspect of this struggle is infuriating, but not surprising. The common thread that determines your ability to have a good life in this country is your wealth, which is predicated upon race, class, and gender. After all, your socioeconomic standing determines your access to nutritious food, quality education, safety, health care, ability to earn a decent living, and life expectancy. Any movement worth its salt would give voice to this fact—and its failure to do so speaks volumes. 

American women are endlessly, obsequiously intrigued by their French counterparts. It’s become a horrible cliché: How are they so dexterous with scarves, unfailingly stylish, unafraid of aging, and—most pressingly—bad-assed? They are the cool yin to the yippy yang of American women. They are our shadow selves, our perennially cool older sisters.

Whether it’s the product of a more personal, flexible culture or is mere mystique, French women seem to have an unshakeable sense of self. This certainty is much more elusive to the American of the species. It’s not surprising that it would be difficult to construct a narrative in a country that prides itself on its cowboys, generals, and flinty industrialists—three paths historically unavailable to women. So we examine this identity vacuum and try to mechanically create it through books ranging from Reviving Ophelia and In a Different Voice to Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office and Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man. Conversely, French women seem to know and relish their worth. She’s not trying to be everything to everyone; she’s trying to be something to herself.

It turns out that French and American women have quite a bit in common: a gross imbalance of contributions and power. According to the World Economic Forum, American women rank first in professional and technical representation in the workplace, yet are fifty-fourth out of 128 in political representation, a scary sixty-second in health and survival, and a grimace-inducing sixty-fifth in wage equality. The picture is different but similarly unjust for French women, who rank first globally in educational attainment and health and survival, yet are twentieth in political representation and an abysmal 126th in wage equality.

If the publishing industry can offer any clues, American women deal with this cognitive dissonance by doing more, leaning in, and shouldering ever more responsibilities and unattainable expectations, while their French counterparts seek balance through self-affirming forms of escapism—buying a chic bag, sneaking a cigarette, taking a lover—or at least that’s what they tell us poor simps to do.

Which leads me to How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are. It’s knowing, refreshing, and it made me laugh. The advice runs the gamut from taking care of your spirit and cultivating your mind to developing your lying skills and avoiding people. It’s like the perfect cappuccino, the right amount of froth and jolt. One is good, two are dangerous. No, no, that’s too safe and too annoyingly European. The book was like a two-hour conversation with an eccentric, outrageous, slightly deranged yet highly astute friend who has your best interests at heart, but whose own life involves making and withstanding questionable decisions. The essence is a wonder, the substance a separate compartment that is, thankfully, entirely her own.