The election of Nicolas Sarkozy seems to have plunged France into a state of weightlessness: fiscal gifts for the richest, socialists slipped to the right, Atlantism, presidential exhibitionism, designation of immigrant or Muslim scapegoats, and so on. But denouncing Nicolas Sarkozy's policy is not enough, since his victory is due, in part, to his defects. The diversity of symptoms hides a true crisis of democracy. To understand it, it is necessary to identify, both in the present and in a long-term historical perspective, important factors such as religious emptiness, educational stagnation, the new social stratification, the destructive impact of free trade, the impoverishment of the middle classes and the disorientation of the upper classes. Emmanuel Todd leaves no one safe, in any field. His approach allows us to understand why French society doubts between ethnicization and the return of the class struggle. It leads to wondering if, unable to manipulate our "democracy of opinion" any longer, politicians will not be forced to suppress, purely and simply, universal suffrage. Unless, yielding to social pressure, they agreed to consider a new protectionist economic policy at European level.