I seem to spend dozens of hours each week reading, watching and listening to chatter about the 2022 midterm elections.

Whether it’s reports and analysis about the Democrats’ problems with Latino voters, the GOP’s problems with women and suburbanites, the Republican advantage on crime, or Democratic efforts to turn 2022 into a referendum on former President Donald Trump, I have heard or read it again and again and again.

My wife, being even more of a glutton for punishment (which must come from her 40 years teaching Russian literature), has gone even further, reading almost all the political books written during Trump’s presidency and those released over the past couple of years.

Now, with the “crucial” midterm elections fast approaching, it’s time to step back and take a big-picture look at the voters, the candidates, the parties and future. What happens if Republicans take the House but not the Senate? What happens if Democrats lose both chambers? What happens if a GOP red wave occurs — or a red wave doesn’t occur?

You know the answer: Nothing will change.

Oh, there are plenty of reasons to prefer a Democratic or a Republican Congress, depending on your personal preferences.

A Democratic Senate majority would guarantee the confirmation of more progressive judges for another two years, while a GOP Senate majority might mean an end to all confirmations, judicial and otherwise.

And if the Democrats hold both the House and the Senate — a real long shot — congressional Democrats would get another shot at pushing through legislative priorities using the budget reconciliation process, which dispenses with supermajority procedural hurdles that the minority party can erect in the Senate.

A Republican-controlled House would guarantee a long list of investigations and, probably, impeachments. We will see more of Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs.

Around the country, the success of some election deniers next month will produce more of those candidates in 2024, a year when Democrats will be forced to defend a huge number of Senate seats.

I first mentioned this problem in a column in May 2021, writing that “those Democrats who won competitive contests during the 2018 midterms did so with a controversial Republican in the White House. Can they hold their seats during a recession or with an unpopular Democratic president seeking (or not seeking) reelection?”

But, no matter who “wins” in November, you can probably be sure that there will be more name-calling, more lying, more partisanship, more division, more finger-pointing and more insults. There will be more nastiness and vulgarity.

Trump’s supporters believe that Democrats are socialists who want to change the country’s culture and have contempt for law enforcement, religion (by which they mean evangelical Christianity) and capitalism.

The kookiest among Trump loyalists, in the QAnon world, are even convinced that some Democrats are satanic pedophiles. The results of the 2022 elections are not likely to change their views.

Opponents of the former president can’t understand why so many Americans have applauded Trump’s name-calling; his authoritarian style; his repeated untruths about the 2020 election; and his mean-spirited attacks on diversity, crucial American institutions (including an independent press and the intelligence community) and anyone who disagrees with him.

Do you really think any of this is going to change if the Senate has 51 Democrats or 51 Republicans? Will Fox News personalities Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham change what they do and how they do it? Will MSNBC change its prime-time messaging?

Republicans won’t want to give Biden any successes in 2023 or 2024, figuring that’s the best way to elect a Republican to the White House in the next presidential election. So, you probably should expect deadlock and delay, more outrage and mind-numbing nonsense.

And Trump, who just complained that American Jews should behave more like Israeli Jews? Oh, you can bet your life savings that he won’t change. He’ll continue to believe that he knows more than the generals, more than the intelligence community, more than Anthony Fauci and, now, more than American Jews.

So, unless one party wins an overwhelming victory next month, you should expect more confrontation, more partisanship and more deadlock.

Brace yourself.