Gut politics. "Mr. Polly's system, like a confused and ill-governed democracy, had been brought to a state of perpetual clamour and disorder, demanding now evil and unsuitable internal satisfactions such as pickles and vinegar and the crackling on pork, and now vindictive external expression, such as war and bloodshed throughout the world." - H.G. Wells, The History of Mr. Polly.
This restates an earlier, purpler passage in which Mr. Polly's stomach is "like a badly managed industrial city during a period of depression; agitators, acts of violence, strikes, the forces of law and order doing their best, rushings to and fro, upheavals, the Marseillaise, tumbrils, the rumble and thunder of the tumbrils"; but the substitution of 'democracy' for 'city', and the closeness of bad food to world war, probably brings you nearer what Wells wanted you to think.
[The History of Mr. Polly, by H. G. Wells, 1910. Will never be fashionable again. Read it anyway.]
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