Looking exclusively at the upcoming confrontation between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, next November, we come to forget the deep tensions which cross the United States, and condemn them, I will be pardoned for the easy play on words, to become, in the years to come, states will become more and more disunited.
In other words, the country is not only divided between Republicans and Democrats, but between states that have less and less to do with each other – the contrast between California and Florida is striking in this regard.
Texas
This country is no longer really one, and behind the claimed American pride, we find a dynamic which is reminiscent of what the Civil War once was (without the horrible question of slavery gets involved this time, obviously).
The current clash between Texas and the federal government over the migration crisis hitting the American South is a compelling example.
Let me first point out that this crisis is not new. Since the 1990s, there has been concern in the border states about a form of Mexicanization of the south, its Hispanicization.
Basically, the southern states changed their culture and identity because they changed their population. This is why a movement has been set up to ensure the status of English as an official language in certain states.
Yes, as strange as it may seem, we have to imagine Americans worried about the future of their identity and that of English in their country. Samuel Huntington, the great political scientist, even wrote a work that has become classic in the early 2000s: Who are we?
All that said, we know that hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed the border in December, and the crisis is worsening. The situation has become untenable.
The governor of Texas has decided to install barbed wire to protect the border, which is opposed by federal institutions.
But Texas decided to override their permission – here, the federal government and the various courts are lumped in.
25 states have declared solidarity with Texas.
It is the question of legitimacy that now arises. Who embodies true legitimacy, many Americans ask: the power of Washington or the constituent states of the union?
- Listen to the meeting Mathieu Bock-Côté and Richard Martineau via QUB :
Empire
Through this, we wonder what is becoming of the United States. It’s no longer really a nation. Rather, we will see an empire, destabilized today in its claim to global hegemony – an empire that has become indifferent, moreover, to the internal tensions that run through it, and which could tomorrow give rise to real armed clashes within its borders.
We feel that the present century will not be American.
Quebecers should, from this point of view, seek less to imitate all their debates than to protect themselves mentally against the coming dereliction of the empire.