It’s the end of a world, accelerated.
It only took six years, since the end of Obama’s presidency, to tip the (visible) American landscape into a reality that has become unrecognizable. A new standard where the critical spirit will have yielded to all the excesses and a number of implausibilities, because, let’s face it, here is this American people projected to the limits of reasonable thought, landed on a continent which is now stirring up disorder , its Supreme Court weighed down for a long time, its moral compass thrown to the sharks.
But how to explain the components of this seemingly sudden change in social climate and moral and political orders? But above all, where to find the triggering motives in these overflowing radicalizations which are spreading and becoming commonplace, too often becoming de facto new aspirational norms?
A few facts and circumstances gleaned from the American news of the past few years tell us about the feverishness that has taken hold of some 40% of its electorate, making it resolutely hostile to distinguishing truth from falsehood, encouraging it to swallow contempt and cynicism, enjoining him to endorse a contagion that makes this mass of voters now resolutely impervious to common sense…
As proof, in an undisguised burst of patriotic pride, nearly half of Americans agree to believe that the assault on the Capitol was just a simple walk. We celebrate the proliferation of combat firearms, claiming that it is the people who kill and not the weapons (sic!). The death and trauma of many young school children does not seem to be a valid reason to consider a package of urgent corrective measures. We swallow the idea that Democrats and some Hollywood stars indulge in satanic rituals, where the blood of kidnapped children is mixed. We accept the project of erecting a wall to the tune of 15 billion dollars while studies globally doubt its effectiveness – which is true.
We also oppose science, thus encouraging the acceleration of climate change and, thus, that of the rising threat of natural disasters from which many of the proponents of these refutations nevertheless suffer on a daily basis.
A small army of taxpayers happily accept that their support for an emergency fund to finance lawsuits related to the alleged theft of the elections turns out to be a deception aimed at enriching the ex-president himself.
On the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, less than two months before the 2020 election, the elected Republicans ransacked all the arguments they had forcefully invoked four years earlier and had a new judge appointed, in record time. to the Supreme Court which will contribute in this month of June 2022 to several major social setbacks: the invalidation of the decree Roe v. wade, the expansion of certain rules governing the carrying of weapons without a license, then an undisguised obstruction of state environmental regulations on the impacts of fossil fuels…
Death of children, violation of principles, open subversion, robbery of the truth, electoral racketeering, swindles and fraudulent maneuvers, all of this paradoxically steeped in a vigorous religious fervor based on a profound moral justice, allegedly respectful of life, of truth and the oaths of the laws and of the faith!
These contrasts are just as striking as their differences. It is as if we were walking in the middle of an episode of collective schizophrenia or even in the wake of a hostage-taking of the human spirit by a charismatic leader.
This Faustian pact, from the bottom up of civil society, what is it based on?
It is simple and based on something that is all the more dangerous for being elementary: fear of the other.
“The other”, the one who is different, the one who threatens the homogeneity of the group.
The systemic racism of the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers against the Afro-American peoples is a thorn in the side of this immense country which has never been able to resolve to integrate nor to foresee a lasting peace with this part of its slavery history.
More broadly, the declining birth rate and the demographic contraction of the white presence on American territory now maintain, just as elsewhere in the West, a visceral fear of the inexorable miscegenation that is underway, whether we like it or not.
The West is undergoing rapid change. The conflicts in the Middle East have caused exoduses with floods of different cultures on Europe. The war of drug traffickers, coupled with the endemic corruption of many South American governments, causes waves of migratory trains to the United States. And climate change will only further amplify these great transhumances.
The far right is fertile ground for white supremacists and many lobbyists and members of the Republican Party who have now developed this “spectacular” racist theory called the Great Replacement, which stylizes this aversion to others, which is not not foreign either to that of eugenics which, not so long ago, made Europe tremble. But this fringe of the Republican Party sees itself as the last last stand before the onslaught of a changing world.
But no one can do anything against the march of time, chance and necessity — read Darwin again! While waiting for a large reissue of The origin of species and its convinced (!) readership, we are preparing to witness a dirty mess among our neighbors to the South, armed to the teeth.
We can only wish for a sharp and final blow for this still relatively young American civilization, but in which fear and its corollary, hatred, are there, too well rooted. What is appalling is that this hatred now threatens the same democracy that allows it its harmful ways of flourishing.
North of 49e parallel, we hold a fragile position, permeable as we could be to the power of this bend. We must be aware of this and remain extremely vigilant with regard to what nourishes our intimate thoughts towards the world, towards our world. The effort will surely require more moral courage and determination to ensure that we remain a welcoming and benevolent nation towards these “others” who arrive at our borders and who inevitably modify, while enriching it, our own landscape.