At the dawn of the 2024 American presidential election, a new duel between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is certain. This says a lot about this American society which, while feigning enthusiasm, inflicts this tragicomic match on itself while there is a “1938” atmosphere throughout the Western world. A deeply polarized and radicalized America where politics is now reduced to caricatured debates on major subjects that are oversimplified and distorted.
This unsurprising duel features Joe Biden, the incarnation of the establishment, facing Donald Trump, symbol of anti-system America. More than membership, it is the opposition which will motivate voters’ votes. Polls indicate that more than half of Americans who say they are ready to vote for Biden will do so to counter Trump. Conversely, nearly 40% of Trump voters actually hope to expel Biden from the White House. This shows how little importance is given to the debate of ideas.
With the added bonus of a nagging question: what makes a democracy, the world’s leading economic power, the incarnation for more than two hundred years of freedom and hope for a better world, incapable of proposing anything else? thing than the confrontation between two octogenarians who we can reasonably consider from a biological point of view that they will perhaps not be, in the exercise of their functions, at the maximum of their intellectual and physical capacities. Moreover, it is more on the health checks of the two patriarchs of American politics that voters are focusing their attention. 60% of respondents believe that one or the other does not have the mental acuity necessary for the presidential office!
An election which takes place, as usual, in a context of media spectacle financed with billions of dollars, starting with the primaries. But if this selection process has always been a real machine for polarizing opinions, it must now be combined over the past ten years, and this in an exponential way, with the rise of social networks whose mechanisms of recommendation, advertising targeted to capture the user’s attention leaves no room for contradiction, amplifies certainties and radicalizes opinions. There are now two Americas facing each other, irreconcilable.
Isolationism soon to return across the Atlantic
Our European eyes, moreover, focused on Ukraine and the Middle East, are not looking in the right direction. In the United States, the current electoral debate leaves very little room for these perils that obsess us. The challenge there, we understand, is to concentrate priorities on immigration, insecurity, the social model, the place of minorities, the rise of wokism… Suffice to say that across the Atlantic , isolationism will be back in a short time to the delight of the dictators on the opposite side.
At a time when authoritarian regimes are increasing their attempts to overturn the global balance, the temptation will be great to play on the fractures and weariness of voters. Russia, China and even Iran have the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: undermine Western confidence in their model and reduce the influence of democracies on the international scene by supporting the candidate whose program is most in line with their interests.
Advances in artificial intelligence which now make it possible to falsify videos or perfectly imitate the voices of candidates offer a new range of tools to influence the ballots. New special effects which will not fail to accentuate divisions and further undermine the democratic system at a critical moment.
This is what should concern us because it foreshadows what awaits us in Europe: a major, structural and probably lasting challenge to the very reason for democracy. A trial of ineffectiveness. That is to say the only one to which it is difficult to provide convincing answers, unfortunately.
Jean-François Copé, former minister, mayor (LR) of Meaux.
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