{"id":105746,"date":"2026-11-06T04:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T09:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=105746"},"modified":"2026-11-05T15:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T20:26:24","slug":"elections-are-the-inchoate-expression-of-collective-emotional-reactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/elections-are-the-inchoate-expression-of-collective-emotional-reactions\/","title":{"rendered":"“[E]lections are the inchoate expression of collective emotional reactions”"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Librarian of Celaeno<\/a> offers an analysis of the midterm results from a monarchist perspective (I didn’t think there were many monarchists left in the US, honestly):<\/p>\n

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Analysis shows the real reason the Republicans lost so badly in the 2026 midterm elections.<\/p><\/div>\n

As a reactionary monarchist, my approach to electoral politics is generally hands off. I find individual races and aspects of the system interesting, but only in terms of what they reveal about human psychology. I’ve written about this in the past, explorations of Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy (for some reason, my most popular post ever) with the goal of understanding what they and others mean<\/em>. And having examined the fortunes of various candidates and factions over the years, as a matter of academic study and personal interest, I continually come to the same conclusion: liberal democracy is insane. <\/p>\n

This to me seems the parsimonious conclusion for any theories of this (last) night’s election, with Democrats sweeping into power in former Republican bastions like Texas and Georgia. People online, people I respect, have advanced a number of theories as to why they were able to do so, generally based on something to with President Trump. But while there is something to that line of reasoning, I think the answer is more basic. I believe the evidence shows that “the people” however conceptualized, have no coherent sense of ideology or even self-interest. I wouldn’t even say they’re guided by residual inertia of inherited beliefs. Rather, elections are the inchoate expression of collective emotional reactions to an ever shifting and polarized mediated reality. In other words, madness.<\/p>\n

I have heard, for example, that people are angry about high gas prices and so turned on Donald Trump and his Iran War in favor of the Democrats. But does anyone seriously think that the latter even intend to make fuel costs cheaper? Whose gas prices would you rather have- those of California, or Georgia? Well, if you live in Georgia, the answer seems to be California. Democrats are not shy about their aversion to fossil fuels and eagerness to tax their way to a German-style Green regulatory utopia. Voting for Democrats because gas prices are high is like giving yourself malaria in order to sicken the mosquitos who keep biting you. That’ll show ’em.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the fact that the youth vote swung heavily to the Democrats. Many are suggesting that this is driven by young white men frustrated at being shut out of the economy, unable to get the jobs they want or afford a house. But again, in what universe is voting for Democrats the viable solution to that problem? These are the people who have flooded the country with foreigners meant to undercut those same native-born white men (and everyone else) and this election enables them to cement control over far more space to do that. The young people of Georgia, to return to my example, just voted for California’s taxes, regulatory environment, housing policies, and most importantly, its demographics. Everyone upset at his current situation pulled the lever to make it worse.<\/p>\n

The rejoinder to this is, “well, Trump didn’t reach out enough! The young men were angry!” Of course they were. But then, everyone was angry. The blue hairs were angry. Black people were angry. Boomers were angry. At the heart of the anger is a continuously changing but relentlessly prolific barrage of propaganda, a kind of anti-myth, for while myth is timeless and transcendent and unifying, the words and images that comprise anti-myth are ephemeral and tendentious and discordant — inciteful rather than insightful. This propaganda comes from everywhere and nowhere all at once, subtle and overwhelming, but ever omnipresent. It keeps the masses running through cycles of elation and dooming, smug triumphalism and black rage. It is the context through which the people view politics, whether from the shallows or the depths, they all swim in it<\/p>\n

And the whole of the mad masses, broken down into sub-mobs of conflicting interest groups, are all driven to the polls to vote against whatever happens to be there at the moment. They were all mad for different reasons, but the results were all the same, the empowerment of the sort of people who can only be elevated by an irrational horde.<\/p>\n

Few seem to grasp that this wipeout is but the latest iteration of a now perfectly normal phenomenon, something that’s been going on since the 1930s. The president’s party nearly always sees losses in the midterms, sometimes enormous. It happened to Bill Clinton; it happened to George W. Bush. Barack Obama referred to his midterm losses as a “shellacking”. Every time it happens it’s declared the end of whoever is in power and birth of a new order for the ages, only for the script to flip some time in the next 2-4 years. Obama was the repudiation of Bush-Era Republicanism. Trump was the end of technocratic liberalism. Biden was the doom of Trump and Trump was the doom of Biden. And at the halfway point of each administration the other party was was given control of Congress in order to thwart the will of the man the electorate had just put in office. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Steyn<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is two days after the election and they still cannot tell us who won Mississippi.<\/p>\n

Mississippi! A state Trump won by twenty-three points just two years ago.<\/p>\n

So why can’t they call it for the Republican? Er, because it’s the Democrat who’s ahead, but only by a hundred votes<\/a>. That’s how thoroughly Mark Levin and Lindsey Graham have bollocksed the Republican Party. If Mississippi is suddenly a purple state, New Hampshire is now bluer than, er, South Carolina: the Granite State legislature flipped from a 43-seat GOP majority to a 200-seat Dem supermajority<\/a>. On Tuesday, nationwide, men went +11 for Democrats, and so did rural voters. There are no takers for what the Lindsey-Levin crowd are selling. The President displayed appalling judgment in ever listening to them. Me channelling Megyn Kelly back in March<\/a>:<\/p>\n