Paris is burning. Again. Still. And we still don't want to acknowledge why.

Fascinating. Anne Applebaum is not stupid but it is hard to read this and not feel like the Mandarin class really don't understand that there is a world beyond the confines of the Ivy Leagues, les grandes écoles, Davos, exclusive zip codes, and the chattering class. From The democratic world could feel the heat from Paris by Anne Applebaum. The commenters are even more reflective of that precious world view.

Paris is burning owing to the Mandarin class making life more inefficient (lower highway speeds) and more expensive (carbon taxes). The ordinary Frenchman does not like life being made worse and more expensive by remote departmental Mandarins imposing rules and regulations on the hoi polloi (while usually exempting themselves from the costs and/or consequences).

This slow revolt of citizens in OECD countries has been going on since at least the emergence of the Tea Party in the US in 2009, though one could argue it has been flaring since Newt Gingrich's Contract with America in 1994 or even the Liberal Democrat Party in the UK in 1988. The middle class everywhere are looking for an alternative to isolated, insulated establishment parties who make a mess of things and expect to keep being voted into power (with perks and privileges) and with no regard to the struggles and tribulations of the middle class.

While the alternative vessels for middle class outrage might not be especially palatable, they do seem to me to be a systemic issue rather than a product of particular circumstances in particular places. Which is how Applebaum and the mainstream media want to treat it.

And the Mandarin class is treating the middle class the same as well. It can't have anything to do with the incompetence of the establishment parties, it must be the toxic anger of the uninformed middle class. Nothing the Mandarin class need to do except ride it out.

Applebaum's lens is decidedly that of the establishment parties and the Mandarin class.

Fire, flares and tear gas scorched Paris on Saturday night; on Sunday morning, the carcasses of burned cars littered the streets, and graffiti covered the Arc de Triomphe. Smaller, and mostly more peaceful, marches had also played out across the country, where for the past couple of weekends protesters have occupied French toll booths, blocked speed cameras on highways, stopped traffic and bricked up the entrances to regional tax offices.

The demonstrators were gilets jaunes — “yellow vests,” named after the reflective safety gear they wear — who are repeatedly, and incorrectly, described as having “emerged from nowhere.” It is true that their origins are untraditional: In the past, political parties in France, as in the rest of Europe, emerged from old-fashioned, real-life institutions — trade unions produced the Social Democrats, for example, and the church in many countries produced the Christian Democratic center-right. People identified with other people whom they met in clubs, at meetings, in cafes. By contrast, the members of this new social movement, if it can correctly be described as a movement, did not meet in real-life institutions. Instead, they found one another on the Internet, through social media and online petitions that can create new groups and identities from one day to the next.

With their origins firmly in cyberspace, the gilets jaunes aren’t connected to any existing political parties, although several are already trying to claim them. François Ruffin, a “far-left” politician with a vitriolic dislike of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has already appeared in gilets jaunes marches. Marine Le Pen, France's “far-right” leader, has also leaped to their defense, and some suspect her followers — or maybe people with even more extreme agendas — may have been responsible for turning what had been peaceful protests in Paris on Saturday morning into violent riots on Saturday night. But any claims of affiliation are opportunism, because the movement itself has named no leader. It has instead appointed eight spokespeople, who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and can’t be characterized as belonging to a single party, or even to a single social group.

Rather than an ideology or a clear philosophy, the gilets jaunes seem to share a set of attitudes, as well as what might be described as an aesthetic. They are angry about the green taxes that have raised gasoline prices, and they don’t like the speed limits on French roads. They are angry more generally, and this is part of why a movement that didn’t exist a month ago became consolidated so quickly: Anger is one of the things that travels quickly on social media, a form of communication that favors emotion; it’s also one of the things that brings people together in a world where trade unions, church organizations and political parties are fading in importance. One of the protestors has declared, “All of you” — meaning the political class in its entirety, far-left, far-right and centrist — “are no longer needed.”

She focuses on the phenomenon of the internet as a means of coordination and on the inexplicable anger of the unwashed middle class who are tired of paying the cost of the lazy indulgences and fads of the Mandarins. She uses the Mandarin language. They aren't green taxes, they are carbon taxes - a device for syphoning money from the middle class to the Mandarins with no benefit to any average citizen within a lifetime, if even then.

Applebaum's solution is to focus on how the establishment parties can co-opt the anger of the populace instead of focusing on how the establishment might serve the interests of the citizens rather than the whims and fancies of the Mandarins. As long as the establishment continues to believe that the problem is the low quality of the citizenry rather than the low quality of the establishment, riots will continue, cars will continue to burn, ink will still be spilled on tired old articles about the internet as a means of political coordination.