Less than a year before the presidential election, America is dazed, stressed and on guard, helplessly anticipating the 2024 deadline like preparing for the arrival of a hurricane. . For this America, historically so confident in itself, in its virtues, in its universal vocation, nothing seems certain anymore. The time has come for doubts.
Doubt about the American nation and its vocation. America rereads its history with a scrupulous eye. The daring initiative of the 16th century and its cruelty bordering on genocide, the patriotic history of the pioneers carried by the conquest, the American Frontier mixture of democracy and violence. All this clashes with the memory of the shame of slavery and a long-predatory capitalism. Emerges the story of a ““woke America”, “the awakening”, faced with that of the right of conquest of the Whites on the earth, it is the formula of the “manifest destiny of the American people to spread on the continent” which will endow America with a vocation universal authorizing all barbarities, thus building the myth of a chosen people. This country united by this mission seems to belong to the past, there are now several nations (A popular history of the United States, by Howard Zinn) Americans who no longer have much to say to each other.
The American election, an archaic DIY
Doubt about the State because never has the Constitution of the United States, reputed to be unshakeable, seemed so fragile. January 6 remains a political trauma and the verdict of the presidential election has no longer been unassailable since 2000 with its endless recounts (recounts) in Florida. The election of the president of the American empire resembles an archaic tinkering: we do not elect the president, but electors and following different rules from one state to another, because historically they had to have time to ride to Washington on horseback to deliver their vote. This is a presidency that dates back to Pony Express [NDLR : le Pony express est un service de distribution du courrier qui date du milieu du XIXe siècle] but equipped with atomic weapons. As a result, you can be elected president by direct universal suffrage having received fewer votes than your opponent. As was the case for Donald Trump in 2016.
Doubt is finally creeping in in a glaring way about American leadership in the world. Do Americans want to, can they still carry the torch of freedom to the four corners of the planet? Rarely have the fundamental interests of the United States been so contested. Isolationism or interventionism, protectionism or free trade, balance of power or international law? The United States is hesitant. The Ukrainian conflict, like that in Israel and Palestine, is tearing it apart, between historical commitment and campus activism. Fear of China continues to grow and this is perhaps the only point of American consensus.
Trump’s fury, Biden’s languor
It is in this context that the most important election in a century, perhaps even two – including Lincoln – must take place. America no longer speaks to itself, it is prisoner of two convictions, two representations, two ambitions held by two candidates.
America has the choice between the fury of Donald Trump and the languor of what a second term for Joe Biden would be. America is a prisoner of ghosts. Her own, the myths she created for herself. That of a American Way of Life in contradiction with globalization and global warming. That of an idolatry of money and success in the face of rampant impoverishment. That of a melting pot transformed into a giant Fort Alamo behind the Mexican border wall, against immigration. That of his unconditional faith in freedom, distorted in the grimacing mirror of hate speech on the Internet, opioid overdoses and gun massacres.
To free itself from its ghosts, America needs a future and, for that, it needs a past. The warning that Tocqueville addressed to revolutionary France also speaks to America: “the past no longer illuminates the future, the mind walks in darkness.”
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