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I understand the bitterness of those remonstrating after the first round of the elections, particularly those left disappointed by Mélenchonism. That said, whatever they do, or say, there was no particular aberration, no swindle, in this vote.
In fact, there were but two anomalies of parties, which have sadly (for the actually-existing powers) decomposed the central parliamentary bloc. This bloc is composed of the classic Left and Right. For forty years — or even two centuries — this bloc has backed the roll-out of the local capitalism. Yet the outgoing local representative of the so-called Left, Hollande, did not stand again, and this broke up his party. On the other hand, there is the classical Right. Thanks to its rather ill-fated primaries it did not choose its best old horse, Alain Juppé, but a provincial bourgeois of sorry countenance, too remote from the "societal" delights of modern capitalism.
The "normal" second round would have been Hollande vs. Juppé, or at worst Le Pen vs. Juppé, with Juppé easily winning in either case. In the absence of the two decomposed parties of government, our true masters for two centuries — the owners and managers of capital — were struggling a little. Fortunately (for them), together with their usual political personnel, the old veterans of reaction and of course the aid of the residues of social democracy (Valls, Le Drian, Ségolène Royal and company) they cobbled together a presentable substitute for a central parliamentary bloc that was dying without heirs. And that substitute was Emmanuel Macron. Very usefully, and very importantly for the future, they also rallied François Bayrou to their cause — that experienced old centrist sage, the man of all electoral wars, including the most difficult. All this was done with some panache, and in record time. Ultimate success was practically guaranteed.
In these conditions — which are entirely possible to explain — the vote confirmed more clearly than usual that the pro-capitalist and rightist subjectivity, including in its rather fascistoid forms, has an absolute majority in the country.
Part of the intellectuals and part of the youth refuse to see this, or bitterly regret it. But what is this? Do these lovers of democratic elections want someone to change who the people voting are, like you change a dirty shirt? Those who vote must consent to the majority wish, all the same! In truth, these two groups measure the world by the yardstick of their own situation and their own dreams, without drawing the necessary conclusion: that there is absolutely nothing to expect from the word "democratic."
Already in 1850 Napoleon III saw that universal suffrage was not the horror that the bien-pensant bourgeoisie had imagined it to be, but a true blessing, an unexpected and precious legitimation of reactionary powers. That is still true today, everywhere around the world. Napoleon’s heir had understood that in more or less normal and stable historical conditions, the bulk of numbers is always fundamentally conservative.