[susan_hall]

I'm not sure if "overwhelmingly mindless" is the right characterization. In my opinion, the most interesting story playing out among the Western nations is what is happening in Poland right now. In the USA, people fought for independence from Britain starting in 1775, so obviously those people are not alive in 2016. But in Poland, many of the people alive now are the same people who overthrew tyranny in 1989. That's an interesting story. Among the Polish public there are many who were willing to risk their lives to fight for a more open, democratic and liberal political system, in 1989. And now, in 2016, Poland is suffering the same shift towards authoritarianism that we see in other Western countries.

Just so I'm clear, I'm saying I find this interesting because in many cases we are talking about the same people who were alive in 1989. In the USA you can say "Oh, that generation believed in those things, but those currently alive don't believe in these things." (I don't agree with that statement, but you could make that argument.) Whereas in Poland, it's in many cases the same people who fought for a more open system who are now tolerating the drift towards a more authoritarian system.

To me, the story isn't about "overwhelmingly mindless" voters, its about voters who are angry with the failure of the system. That is, they are mindful of how the system has failed. They may not know what the answer is, but they are angry, and they are willing to elect politicians who seem to mirror their anger. It might be a bad strategy to vote for someone simply because they appear to reflect your anger, but I think I can understand the motivation, and it is not quite the same as being mindless.

[angry_octet]

In counterpoint to this, witness the mass protests (by women) against the proposed ban in abortion. A religious right wing pressure group pushed it along, the govt backed it, mass protests, humiliating back down. Goes to show how out if touch ruling parties are about what people think, and their belief that people actually do support their hard line policies.

In actuality, maybe people are just voting based in whether their economic circumstances improved over the last term, regardless of whether the change was due to national or global factors. Maybe they just don't like the Russians and voted for the nationalist rhetoric.

[usrusr]

Both events can be equally connected to nationalistic conservatism: the national identity of Poland is as much defined by slavic resistance to anything non-slavic coming from the west (e.g. the Teutonic Knights of old) as it is by catholic resistance to anything non-catholic coming from the east (e.g. eastern churches, anti-church ideologies like forced communism and most famously, Turks sieging Vienna).

[M_Grey]

If a voter's reaction to anger with a failed system is to shoot themselves in the foot with a pistol they've had laying around since '89, I'm going to stick with the "mindless" appellation.