The most obvious and also the most pervasive mechanisms for protecting the power, privilege, and status of the new meritocrats, though, would be through the development of distinct linguistic innovations–ways of speaking (politically correct speech cods–words like Latinx, whiteness, lgbtqia2s, and uterus-bearer) and thinking (woke attitudes toward defunding the police and so on) that would distinguish “upper whites” from “lower whites,” who is “in” and who is “out.” These would be immediately recognizable status markers that would demonstrate what political faction one belonged to. And not just voters, but anyone who aspired to be upwardly mobile. In this respect, elite higher education–whatever else it might provide by way of specialized knowledge–had become a finishing school for those who aspired to advance within the leading institutions of the professional, managerial, and technocratic echelons of the social order. The young would not only have a credential or two at the end of their formal education, they would also know what to think, how to speak, and how to act in ways that were appropriate to membership in the class/cultural faction. It had become a central part of the process of admissions into the dominant class.
James Davison Hunter, Democracy and Solidarity, 243.