Who Rules the Ruling Class?
5th November 2026
The results of the midterm elections are clear; their meaning is not. The blue tsunami apparently has not budged either of the dominant intellectual factions on the Right. The so-called “doomers” see fresh support for their conviction that the republic is sliding more or less inexorably into ruin. The more conventional Old Guard, who find such talk alarming, continue to insist that “you win some, you lose some,” and that Republicans will live to fight another day.
What makes the current political scene so perplexing is that both sides can point to certain undeniable facts to support their position. The United States is, for now, neither all one thing nor all the other. James Madison’s Constitution, though beaten and bruised, is still functioning, according to the conventionalists. American politics remains fundamentally “normal.” In reply, the pessimistic wing accuses the “normie-cons” of naivete and complacency. The original Constitution, they argue, has by now been almost entirely pushed aside by a new, second Constitution, based on a new understanding of justice and human nature, and fanatically devoted to implementing the ideological Left’s agenda.
It is hard to deny that virtually all aspects of our public life have become distorted and dysfunctional in a way the founders would hardly recognize. Yet the Old Guard does seem to be correct to insist that elections—the most important safeguard of popular consent—are still respected by both sides, however tenuously.