A country stuck in Trumpism | The Press

While in China, President Xi received his “eternal” Russian friend Vladimir, the United States exposed its pitiful political dysfunction to the world.

For two weeks, the House of Representatives has been without speaker. She is, so to speak, mute. This character has nothing to do with the good-natured President of our House of Commons: he is second in the order of succession to the President, according to the Constitution of the United States. In the event – ​​God protect them – of the simultaneous deaths of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, it is the Speaker of the House who would occupy these functions.

Above all, without a president, the House cannot sit.

Never in history has the function been deserted. However, it should not be infinitely complicated: the Republican Party has the majority. But the crazy extremists of this party infected with Trumpism will only support the one ready to deliver their political merchandise. Jim Jordan could have done the trick: in addition to wanting to criminalize abortion throughout the country, he also says that the democratic system that got him elected in Ohio, this system before which every American politician until recently kneeled, the oldest in the West, that this system, therefore, produced massive electoral fraud by allowing the election of Joe Biden in 2020.

He is a genuine Trumpist.

But there are still 25 Republican elected officials who do not want an extremist – well, not of that kind.

There is a slightly unhealthy element of delight in seeing the Republican Party turned against itself, unable to distance itself from Donald Trump, but unable to live completely with him.

There is also no doubt that Joe Biden, by solemnly calling on the House to vote on appropriations for the war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, also wants to expose the chaos among Republicans.

At the end of the day, the credits will not arrive anymore, because the House is not sitting. Whatever the reasons, and even if we are told that it will be temporary, this impotence is the somewhat grotesque expression of the constant loss of credibility of the United States.

I hear some who say: so much the better.

The problem is that when the United States goes down, it’s not really replaced by Finland or the Netherlands.

In the intimate and very enlightening book that he has just published on China¹Jean-François Lépine writes this which seems particularly relevant to me this week:

“China and Russia are propagating the same message around the world that the United States and its allies are seeking to isolate them at all costs to curb their expansion. They describe them as decaying powers whose political system, based on democratic consensus, no longer works. China itself boasts abroad of its own authoritarian governance which is attracting more and more world leaders. »

Faced with a turbulent and unstable world, these authoritarian regimes offer themselves as a clear response, an expression of power and order.

We may want to be optimistic, believing that reason will triumph in the United States. It may be said that this country survived a civil war. We are forced to note this decrepitude of the institutions themselves.

The Republican Party’s inability to get rid of Trump may suit the Democrats. The fact remains that this man accused in four criminal cases crushes all competition in his party. In the polls, he also dominates Biden, an amiable old man, but an old man all the same. Is he the counterpoison?

Since 2015, the Trump phenomenon is supposed to be temporary. A sort of strange defect in American political life, a bacteria soon swallowed up by the good old constitutional antibodies.

Oh no.

It’s not just his party that’s infected. The whole country is mired in Trumpism, in one way or another.

In this country which, so to speak, invented the separation of powers, or let’s say which experimented with it, this former president, this candidate, was sentenced Friday to $5,000 for having once again insulted one of the many courts to which he is summoned. .

“In today’s already overheated climate, incendiary untruths can result, and in some cases have already resulted, in serious physical harm or worse,” the New York judge said in this civil case of real estate fraud. It is obvious that the Trump style will soon result in a charge of contempt of court somewhere – with the risk of a much steeper fine, and possibly imprisonment.

Yes, some of his co-defendants in the criminal case of attempting to overturn the election result have begun to confess guilty.

It’s true, the mythical wheels of justice will end up rolling over him.

But what will that mean if at the end of the day a third of Americans emerge as political nihilists, constitutional disenfranchised?

An even weaker, even less influential country.

1. Jean-François Lépine, The anxieties of my Chinese teacherFree Expression, 336 pages.