America is a story of bodies. Conquering body, Hollywood body, model body, world body. Jérôme Fourquet in France before our eyes taught us that the passion for country music and dance brought together 4 million followers in France, or 9% of the French population. The cowboy’s body is indestructible. Kevin Costner, who, while the death of the western has been announced many times, and Clint Eastwood and his Unforgiven in 1992 would have put a (grandiose) end to the genre, returns with a long-running western, in three feature films, financed with his own money. Not even afraid. As if America was resisting with force the agony of its power by glorifying its DNA, by rediscovering the unsinkable body of the cowboy, who even wounded, even dying, even dead, keeps the attraction of strength and struggle.
Joe Biden’s unstable body, which has become a source of concern for the world, this body that is slipping, that can no longer hold up, this body that is the image of the failing, tired mind of the American president, keeps us in suspense a few weeks before the American presidential election that could see the return of a vengeful Donald Trump. And now Trump’s body reverses the situation, imposing itself on the retinas of the world as the recovered body of America. Victim of an assassination attempt, filmed, recorded for History, the ex-president throws himself to the ground before the secret services pounce on him, forming a pile of protective bodies. Quickly, Trump must be exfiltrated, potentially still in danger, he must be lifted up, he demands his shoes that he lost in the fall, he gets up, he has blood on his face, the hands and bodies of the security agents try to form a paltry wall of flesh around the body in the line of fire. Trump resists, Trump’s body extracts itself from this protection, an arm, a fist, a word repeated three times: “Fight!” And he is dragged this living body, dragged with difficulty off the stage, but the fist is still high, the Trump body explodes in all its power.
There is also the sound that goes with the image – the blood on the face, the men in black girdling the body that refuses to disappear, the fist raised high and the American flag flying opportunely above the scene – immortalized for eternity. The screams, inevitable, the relative silence that follows, the murmurs crossed by cries telling of the imminence of danger then the nervous lull of survival. And suddenly, after the political animal Trump raised his fist and repeated “Fight!”the crowd, still bent, still hesitant, their bodies half-slumped, not entirely reassured, straighten up, invigorated by the dazzling body of their candidate, and shout back at the top of their lungs: “USA! USA! USA!” It is at this precise moment that Trump’s probable victory crystallizes.
Biden’s body is no longer a hope for appeasement
Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s body tries to reassure, to calm fears, the trauma born of an assassination attempt that recalls the violence never quite tamed in the country born from conquest to conquest, from passion to polarization. It tempts Joe Biden’s tired body to regain the hand of peace, serenity, harmony. But from his first appearance, from the Oval Office, what is obvious is that the grandfather’s body is no longer protective, that it makes us fear the worst more than it represents a hope of appeasement. This body would be incapable of defending anyone against any perils whatsoever. “To have a body is the great threat to the mind,” wrote Marcel Proust in Recovered timeWhat is becoming obvious is the Democrats’ wasted time, the time of blindness, the time of refusal of the obvious, of Joe’s body too fragile to stand up to Donald.
Maybe nothing is decided, maybe the democratic body will pull itself together, look itself in the face, project itself into the future. But what Joe Biden’s vulnerable body tells us is the evil that is eating away at liberal democracies. Democratic fatigue, speeches that each time embroider around universal values that no longer resonate, the laziness of the West that thinks it can renew itself in a body that says nothing but the inevitable death to come.
Abnousse Shalmani, committed to fighting against identity obsession, is a writer and journalist
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