When Russian literature becomes necessary to explain democratic elections in the West, something has gone very, very wrong. As John Adams said, the American republic was designed for moral and religious people. So, when unambiguous machinations at the highest level and inverted psychology of the masses emerge as the dominant themes of public life, we should be afraid.

The central issue of this election is not Donald Trump having survived an assassination attempt, Kamala’s tenure as the border czar, Tim Walz’s ties to the ChiComs, or a caustic comment by J. D. Vance. Important matters they might be, but they don’t get to the crux of the matter: the fact that the Democratic operatives put a demented man on the top of their presidential ticket in 2020.

During the four years that followed, despite spiraling deeper into senility, Joe Biden continued performing ceremonial presidential duties. The spectacle was enabled by the White House inner circle, the self-admitted conspiracy of silence of the progressive media, and a staunchly partisan voting block willing to gulp up any lie.

Contrary to the narrative of the now-retired Biden campaign that this man was “protecting our democracy,” it’s unlikely that the winner of the 2020 presidential race has ever been the acting president. After losing all plausible deniability of Biden’s mental deficiency in the wake of the disastrous debate, Democrats panicked and the polls showed it. So Biden is out and Harris is in, and voters who went to the polls for Biden will just have to eat it.

According to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Obama and his people are running the Harris campaign. Obama, having conspicuously retired in D.C. (the only former president to have ever done so), is presumed to be running the country from behind the scenes and should be expected to continue doing so if Harris wins in November.

Last year, I wrote about envying the Russians, who at least have the language to talk about this kind of intrigue, not to mention the creative spirit to guide them through the process. I specifically cited one lyrically superb track called Mnogokhodovochka by the singer songwriter Vasya Oblomov. The title describes the shady dealings of President Vladimir Putin who, once he termed out in 2008, traded places with his prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. Putin remained in the public eye and was universally believed to be the real head of state. In 2012, after being elected president once again, he amended the constitution. Russians called this maneuver mnogokhodovochka, or the little multi-step chess combo and Oblomov wrote a song “decr[ying] pervasive corruption and servility, predicting war and destruction using precise, recognizable detail”.

America today has a similar problem of lawless leadership and passionately compliant constituents. The situation is far more alarming here, however, because while Russia is almost hard-wired for autocracy, our elites are destroying centuries-old traditions of self-rule. What do we call that Biden-to-Harris switcheroo? We stand tongue-tied at the most important crossroad in our history. We don’t have the words.

Another question is why so many Americans feel so disenchanted with their lives that they find it necessary to pretend the game being played at their expense has  is about freedom and democracy. The New York Post interviewed several elderly women who flocked to a recent Harris rally. They talked not of Harris’s accomplishments as a public servant—which they admit are of no interest to them—but of the “joy” she brought into their lives. One of them said that she finally feels excitement watching the news. It’s as if they are filling some personal spiritual void with a power they derive from their collective misery.  

Female power is neither a new topic nor something invented by feminists. Aleksandr Pushkin explored this theme in his 1833 mystical short story “The Queen of Spades.” The story’s protagonist, Hermann, is vying for the gambling secret held by an elderly Countess Anna Fedotovna. The once beautiful octogenarian lives alone—if one discounts the help whom she abuses at will—a kind of cat lady with servants subbing in for cats. On his way to a date, Hermann becomes a witness to the horrible site of her undressing:

The Countess began to undress before her looking-glass. Her rose-bedecked cap was taken off, and her powdered wig was removed from her white and closely cut hair. Hairpins fell in showers around her. Her yellow satin dress brocaded with silver, fell down at her swollen feet. Hermann was a witness to the repugnant mysteries of her toilette; at last the Countess was in her night-cap and her dressing-gown, and in this costume, more suitable to her age, she appeared less hideous and deformed.

Like old people in general, the Countess suffered from sleeplessness. Having undressed, she seated herself at the window in a Voltaire armchair and dismissed her maids. The candles were taken away, and once more the room was left with only one lamp burning in it. The Countess sat there looking quite yellow, mumbling with her flaccid lips and swaying to and fro. Her dull eyes expressed complete vacancy of mind, and, looking at her, one would have thought that the rocking of her body was not a voluntary action of her own, but was produced by the action of some concealed galvanic mechanism.

The character of the countess is based on Princess Golitsyna, a distinguished courtier of Catherine the Great and several emperors who followed her. Golitsyna died at ninety-six, having outlived the era of her “enlightened despot” tzarina. 

Russians didn’t develop the sociological theory of generational change, but the idea of a generation gap was already apparent in Pushkin’s writing. Pushkin’s Lyceum buddies were the cohorts involved in the 1925 Decembrist revolt against autocracy. In “The Queen of Spades” the young male romantic capitalist Germann confronts the decrepit femininity of an absolute ruler hoarding resources.

Kamala Harris is not going to be our enlightened despot—there is nothing enlightened about her; no Voltaire chairs. In fact, the French philosophe, were he here today, would direct his wit against her substance-free campaign of “joy.” Nor, if she wins, she might aspire to bean autocrat; but while the checks and balances designed by the founders are steadily being disassembled, they still exist. Nor would she likely personally  rule this country. But then again, the countess was at her most powerful while running an errand. And as Pushkin reminds us, women like her never give up whatever power they obtain.

This brings me back to “joy,” the supposed theme of Harris’s campaign. Having said very little of substance after being graced with endorsements from Biden’s Twitter/X account and Obama himself, Harris is back to producing skits about food and music.

Joy is just an emotion; it doesn’t stand for anything concrete. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s underground man, in a very trendy bodied way, finds enjoyment in a toothache:

[Y]ou are in complete slavery to your teeth; that if someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching, and if he does not, they will go on aching another three months; and that finally if you are still contumacious and still protest, all that is left you for your own gratification is to thrash yourself or beat your wall with your fist as hard as you can, and absolutely nothing more. [And to others such person] would say: “I am worrying you, I am lacerating your hearts, I am keeping everyone in the house awake. Well, stay awake then, you, too, feel every minute that I have toothache. I am not a hero to you now, as I tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person, an impostor. Well, so be it, then! I am very glad that you see through me.”

Notes from the Underground explains the conduct of the most reliable subset of the Democrat base—the childless post-menopausal women. They didn’t necessarily choose to be childless—some were unlucky in love; others were promised that delaying childbearing would no way result in infertility. They are well past the point of no return and have little choice but to redefine their condition as a happy one. They escape from the personal by making it into the political and calling it “joy.” They might be powerless before biology, but together they can submit to the will of the stealth president who many years ago promised hope and change. And, like the narrator of Dostoevsky’s ode to irrationality, they will make sure you’ll suffer with them.

It should be no surprise that Obama’s mentor, Bill Ayers, once led the Weather Underground, a domestic terrorist organization named for the Dostoevsky novella. Since 2008, the mainstream politics of the American left have been openly and decidedly opposed to reason. As our quality of life and security are in a free fall, American voters happily defer to the candidates who offer exuberant vibes but plot to disempower and pauperize them. That’s a very Russian twist.