The Name of the Malaise is Tribalism

Any social contract based on buying the populace off with little checks actually stands for very little.

Bariza Khiari, a Socialist senator from Paris, suggests the greatest impediment to purposeful collective action is the array of different fears that are pulling different sections of the population apart. “There are now Arabs who speak of Islamophobia, Jews who speak of anti-Semitism, indigenous French who speak of anti-white racism and blacks who speak of discrimination. Each group is fixed in their own fears. That prefigures a fragmented society,” she says. “We must have a common fear. The principles of the republic are not a given. There is not too much of the republic, there is not enough of it.”

For the moment, France has lost sight of its common destiny. It desperately needs to rediscover it.

But rediscover whose, exactly? The “too much” and “not enough” usually refers to the government redistributing income from some to others while losing a lot of it along the way, as well as creating a whole class civil ‘servants’ larget than any other known since the fall of Communism.

"When we look at the government, we can't help but think there is no future in France," said Axel Cohen, a 16-year-old school student, brandishing an irreverent placard, at a massive march in downtown Paris. That disillusionment, he said, pushed him to protest.

[…]

"France's real problem is a gap between the government and the young people," Cohen said.

In other words, just another tribe seeking undeserved retribution from the rest of society . The only thing that will solve this ‘disillusionment’ is making others responsible for your personal matters, if not your emotional state as well. That’s an awful lot to demand from a stranger.