Maritocratic hubris. This is the tendency of winners to inhale too deeply of their success. To forget the luck and good fortune that helped them on their way. It's the smug conviction of those who land on top that they deserve their fate. And by implication that those on the bottom deserve theirs too. The lightly sense of the contingency of our lot conduces to a certain humility. The idea that there but for the grace of God or the accidents of fortune go I. But a perfect meritocracy banishes all sense of gift or grace or luck. It diminishes our capacity to see ourselves as sharing a common fate. And so it leaves little room for the solidarity that can arise when we reflect on the contingency of our talents and fortunes. This is what makes merit a kind of tyranny. Now seen from below the hubris of elites is galling. No one likes to be looked down upon. But the meritocratic faith adds insult to injury. The notion that your fate is in your hands, that you can make it if you try is a double-edged sword, inspiring in one way, but in videos in another. It congratulates the winners, but denigrates the losers even in their own eyes. For those who can't find work or make ends meet, it's hard to escape the demoralizing thought that their failure is their own doing. That they simply lack the talent and drive to succeed. This gives rise to a politics of humiliation. It combines resentment of the winners with nagging self-doubt. It's a potent ingredient in the volatile brew of anger and resentment that fuels populist protest. To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find our way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic striving on the social bonds that constitute our common life. Disentangling the intolerant aspects of populist protest from its legitimate grievances is no easy matter, but it is important to try. You're standing these grievances, and creating a politics that can respond to them is the most pressing political challenge of our time.