Several articles I read this rainy morning touched on similar themes.

Robert Zaretsky, The Atlantic (“The French Are Very Worried, and That’s Making Things Worse“):

[T]he French are nearly unanimous in their belief that their country is still on a downward slope. In a recent Ipsos-BVA poll, 85 percent of French respondents said that France was in decline, and 98 percent were dissatisfied with the present state of the country.

One might have seen such numbers in the spring of 1789, if opinion polls had existed then. In that prerevolutionary time, France was burdened with staggering debt, skyrocketing prices, and in a sclerotic state overseen by a clueless and corrupt elite. Today similar factors, together with the memory of past glory, are driving the public’s belief that France’s Fifth Republic is faltering. And declinism, in turn, seems to be fueling the rise of extremist radicals intent on remaking the republic itself.

[…]

Following Robert Frank’s fine historical account La hantise du déclin (The Obsession With Decline), published in 1994, came works such as Nicolas Baverez’s wildly polemical 2003 tract, La France qui tombe (Falling France). And then the public appetite for books proclaiming the End Times for France grew fiercer. Pundits furiously supplied the grim prognoses—most notoriously Éric Zemmour, who a little more than a decade ago published his best-selling Le suicide français, which married xenophobic rage to potted history. The book boosted the “Great Replacement” theory, which claims that Western elites are enabling great waves of Muslim immigrants to replace les français de souche—the loaded term for those of “purely French heritage.”

[…]

The current justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, recently proposed a three-year moratorium on legal immigration, declaring that France has reached “the limit of our capacities for integration and assimilation” of immigrants. This view, and the moratorium idea, have the approval of 63 percent of the public, judging from a CSA Institute opinion poll conducted in May.

Those numbers partly explain Marine Le Pen’s remarkable lead in polling for next spring’s presidential election. The movement she inherited from her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, then called the National Front, once gathered neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and die-hard supporters of the French colonial administration of Algeria. Now called National Rally, the party mainly demonizes Muslims in place of Jews as the source of all of France’s ills. But just last week, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, was revealed to have spent his late teens marinating in the writings of the Holocaust denialist Alain Soral. In line with her party’s ethno-nationalist ideals, Le Pen promises a policy that she calls a “national priority,” which would give French citizens preferential treatment over noncitizens for an array of social benefits, and she has said she’d be willing to change the constitution by referendum.

The most recent Ifop-Fudicial poll, published on September 30, put Le Pen in the lead with 31 to 36 percent support. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the founder of the extreme-left party France Unbowed, is fighting for second place, at 14 to 17 percent. Like Le Pen, Mélenchon has pledged to disobey certain European Union regulations that infringe on French sovereignty; also like her, he seems to trust Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky less than Russian President Vladimir Putin; and, along with some members of Le Pen’s party, he enjoys flirting with anti-Semitic tropes. Both candidates exercise full control of the parties they either created or re-created and seem to satisfy the public’s broad desire, according to a 2019 Ipsos poll, for a “strong leader who will break the rules.”

Stanley Pignal (“Charlemagne”), The Economist (“Europe’s lame-duck year could hardly come at a worse time“):

Every organisation has an idle period when getting things done becomes all but impossible: universities feel eerily quiet over summer, most offices are dormant over Christmas. Europe may be entering such a period, but one that will last the best part of a year. On October 5th Pedro Sánchez, the embattled Spanish prime minister, called early elections that will be held in late November. The starting gun has thus been fired unexpectedly early on a marathon of voting, from France to Finland by way of Greece, Poland and Italy, that will see over half of all citizens of the European Union elect new national leaders between now and the end of 2027. Until the ballots are counted, almost every awkward decision at EU level will come with an irresistible alternative: wait until after the election. A continent confronted by war, weak growth and geopolitical upheaval is headed into enduring political paralysis at a painfully inopportune moment.

The gap between what Europe knows it ought to do and its willingness to do it is, to put it kindly, never narrow. Reports arguing that it urgently needs to reform its economy, bolster its defence capabilities and reform the union itself ahead of its potential enlargement have resulted in more felled forests than an IKEA superstore. Alas, all their lofty recommendations will now have to wait. One election-bound politician after another will plead with fellow leaders that they cannot possibly make contentious compromises, for example on the much-needed deepening of the EU’s single market, in the run-up to voting. The end result will be a sort of relay race of political mañana-ism as one campaign ends and the next begins. Even after the ballots are counted, more uncertainty will follow: in many places right-wing populists with little love for the EU will either win elections or become power brokers.

Thus the gap between Europe’s need to act and its ability to do so is becoming a veritable chasm. In part that is because the in-tray looks ever more daunting. Many of the old continent’s old problems remain unresolved even as new ones pile up. The EU is heading for winter with its lowest gas reserves since 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine triggered an energy crisis that never quite receded—and has been exacerbated by the war in Iran. High fuel prices have put the pinch on consumers. Europe’s solution to its economic woes has long been to import cut-rate wares from China while governments borrowed to fund generous welfare states without unduly taxing citizens.

That strategy is falling apart. Cheap Chinese imports are now seen as predatory in ways that threaten Europe’s industrial base. On October 15th EU leaders will meet to discuss whether to erect trade defences against China. The cheap credit some countries used to fund their deficits is a thing of the past, too.

[…]

The paralysis that overcomes the European project when its politicians are out campaigning is one risk. Another is that the winners of the elections may rip up the blueprints. Spain’s election will not change Europe much, though it will probably oust the only socialist politician to lead one of its big countries. Few will notice which parties win in Finland in April. But Poland and particularly France could vote in populist-right leaders who so loathe the EU that it is hard to see how the bloc could remain effective. Marine Le Pen, the front-runner in French polls, wants to defund the union and cut back support to Ukraine.

Duncan Robinson (“Bagehot”), The Economist (“The coming fall of pensioner communism“):

Vladimir Lenin distilled all politics to two questions: “Who? Whom?” Who will dominate, and whom will they dominate? Since 2010 the British state has offered simple answers. Who? Pensioners. Whom? Everyone else.

With the Conservative Party as its vanguard, pensioners bent the state to their will. The bits of it serving the working-age were squeezed, while those of concern to the elderly were protected. Pensioner preoccupations like leaving the European Union were pursued no matter the damage. Bungs such as free TV licences rained down. An old Marxist mantra was given a new twist: from each according to his ability; to each according to his age.

[…]

Britain faces fiscal consolidation, whether via tax rises or spending cuts. A generation ago, pensioners were among the poorest in society. When Margaret Thatcher left office in 1990, 40% were in poverty. Now, pensioner households often have higher incomes than working-age ones. “From each according to his ability; to each according to his age” cannot survive against this backdrop. Those of all ages must share the pain.

When age trumps class, demography determines election results. Big generations, such as the boomers, bullied governments at the ballot box. When they retired, Britain became a dictatorship of the pensionariat. Then, in 2020, millennials became the biggest cohort. And so the general election of 2024 was the first one someone born in the 1950s would have lost if they had voted with the bulk of their cohort. Actuarial tables can be as useful as any poll.

Systems die when people no longer truly believe in them. Late-stage pensioner communism is riddled with hypocrisy. After Mr Burnham’s speech, Conservative politicians who privately slate the triple lock ardently defended it. But like Soviet functionaries going home to listen to The Beatles on an illicit Sony Walkman, they know that the system is doomed.

It’s rather distressing that, at a time when the United States has abandoned the leadership of the global order it helped build over the last eight decades, our older cousins across the Atlantic may be in even worse shape.

Publics across most major Western democracies have lost faith in their institutions and, especially, in their elites. As it has throughout history, this has enabled demagogues to find an Other to blame for the problems. Which, naturally, only exacerbates them.

I wish I were more hopeful that we’ll find our way out of this morass.