How do civilizations end? Or say: How do regimes die?
Posted at 5:00 a.m
Russian and Chinese dictators must love the spectacle of American democracy these days.
On the other hand, an elderly president steps forward with a precarious stride, falters in his speeches and is likely to be banned politically for the rest of his term.
Burdened with criminal investigations of all kinds, on the other hand, was Donald Trump, the unofficial leader of the opposition, who convinced two-thirds of Republican voters that their country’s electoral system was a massive fraud — and justice, too. This allegedly morally superior system, which the United States has claimed to export around the world: free and secure elections, with proven and verifiable results.
Well, next Tuesday’s elections do not decide the fate of civilization. They are not even presidential. It’s still a revenge match. More importantly, Tuesday’s result will set the stage for the 2024 elections. In several states, the candidates for various key positions are Trumpists who believe in the “big lie”: the 2020 elections are “stolen.” It is not their opinion that really matters, but the fact that they will be in a position to control the organization of voting and even the counting system.
So the idea that we have about the system is at stake.
The most interesting poll of the past few weeks showed: Voters from both parties overwhelmingly believe the country will be in grave danger if the opposition party takes power.
“Divisions,” even extreme divisions, are nothing new in the history of American democracy or democracy itself.
The American media is filled with historical analyzes to remind us: The United States has known critical periods of the most obvious. What today is called “the split” is a farce compared to the civil war, this civil war is still fresh in the memories. Elon Musk’s last century, Henry Ford, was an anti-Semitic campaigner. He did not have Twitter, but he owned the newspaper in second circulation in the United States, filled with conspiratorial anti-Jewish propaganda. The country witnessed riots, political assassinations, semi-impeachment of President (Nixon), apartheid, Ku Klux Klan, delirious struggle against communism, etc.
So there has never been a perfect democratic moment. A time when the people, united, moderate and reasonable, choose enlightened representatives who quietly organize the affairs of the nation and the world.
Democratic history is a constant struggle, a battle of opposing interests and viewpoints.
We may have simply had the illusion for some time that electoral matters were obtained for good, or would never be called into question.
Perhaps “Democracy in America” was in a kind of pretentious sedation and complacency. The ‘System’ seems to be advancing everywhere. China was opening up, Russia was exhausted from the Soviet Union, and Latin American dictatorships seemed to be on the wane. History’s relentless movement was moving…
Suddenly, Americans realized that while they weren’t going to vote, the religious right organized an election to elect representatives and a president who would appoint enough conservative judges to overturn the ruling on the right to abortion. Among other things.
So there are the optimists, who have taken a historic step back, who have seen much worse, and for whom US institutions are strong enough to weather the current volatility. They always have.
It is true that the Supreme Court has ideologically skewed more to the right than the skewed American society. But that which Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced to implement his social policies was no less hostile.
Meanwhile, it did not become the personal court of Donald Trump. When it came time to decide on matters of integrity, Trump consistently lost (apart from highly questionable judge Clarence Thomas, who was not named).
Many of the country’s core institutions remain strong. The FBI, the military, and even former Attorney General William Barr have not followed Trump in his attempts to subvert the rule of law. The turnout rate in recent history has not been higher than in the 2020 elections (two thirds of those registered) …
However, I’m not sure the optimists are right. This time, a former president, and a potential future candidate, is taking the lead. I naively believed that after the defeat in 2020, the Republican Party would get rid of Donald Trump immediately, as if waking up from some kind of temporary frenzy. The opposite happened. I have given birth to children. His surly descendant repeats his speech, now firmly rooted in the current republican.
How will this party tide react when Trump is brought to justice? How will Wisconsinans react, when Republicans, who receive less than half the vote, take two-thirds of the seats, and thus have the power to confront the governor elected by universal suffrage?
These are the basic rules of the system that are at stake here. Ridiculously basic things like “one person, one vote” and majority rule.
In the face of the scale of the Holocaust denial movement, I have the impression that this country, on the contrary, is disintegrating and rotting from within. What makes it its strength is questionable. I wonder how he will survive.
So sometimes, I admit, I think back to the pages hidden memories André Malraux, the great explorer of lost civilizations. At this moment when he was flying over the desert of Yemen in a jungle plane in search of the ancient city of the Queen of Sheba buried in sand and oblivion…
How does it all end?
It seems to me that elections are more existential these days…
