In two weeks, the presidential election in the United States will be played out in a handful of pivotal states, including Nevada and Arizona, where the Republican and Democratic candidates remain neck and neck. This series offered to cross these zones of fierce struggles. The notes taken during the meetings of the Duty serve in conclusion to take stock of the great divide that runs through American society.
Mike, a broad, old man, packed his big suitcase into the Las Vegas airport shuttle and sat down cursing his bad leg. After a few days of dead losses in the casinos, he was returning home to North Carolina when the hurricane Helene was announced there.
The journalistic journey of Dutyhe was just getting started, on an airlift to Phoenix. The announcement of reports being prepared on the current election campaign was enough for Mike to deliver his disturbing verdict. “You will discover a country on the verge of catastrophe,” he said, speaking loudly like all Americans. The neighbors of the crowded bus did not flinch. “We haven’t been this divided since the Civil War. »
This dark perspective presents itself as a tragic warning in recent fiction Civil War imagining the disunited States of America once again entering into fratricidal conflict without us ever knowing around which casus belli. The aptly named media Divided We Falladvocating bipartisan dialogue, recently asked the question of the real possibility for this tense and hyper-armed nation to sink into this violent extreme.
Poverty in democracy
The journey that began before and ended after Mike’s meeting provided further evidence of the country’s deep division on fundamental issues, including abortion, homelessness and immigration. A little over a week of interviewing citizens while crossing Nevada and Arizona was enough to concretely take stock of the worrying discord and especially of what it signals: a deep crisis of legitimacy of the democratic regime in this country that practically invented it.
A democracy, once decanted with pure sugar, unites in disagreement, strengthens itself through contradictory exchanges and accepts alternation at the helm. This “least bad of all systems” (Churchill) knows how to be one with several: One of manysays the currency of the American passport and dollar.
The system of the parliamentary republic still holds in the United States. It still seems the unsurpassable horizon of this country adulating its constitution as a divinely inspired text.
Only, the institutions which organize the res publica find themselves under a heavy fire of criticism which ends up calling into question the institutions and the very foundations of the system. Nothing seems more accepted and shared to allow debate and the transfer of power, nor the legitimacy of elections, nor majority rule, nor court decisions, even less the usefulness of political parties, respect for commitment or elected officials.
Donald Trump focuses this radical criticism of inherited institutions and the widespread lack of respect for the democratic game. The New York Times just took stock : No major party presidential candidate in U.S. history has been accused of wrongdoing so many times.
The Republican leader also spent the last months of the campaign renewing attacks against government departments, judges and the FBI. He constantly lies and insults his opponents. Impeachment proceedings were launched against the ex-president for inciting insurrection after the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He now promises to become dictator for a day if he regains power. The crisis In democracy could therefore well turn into a crisis of democracy.
Also read in our series Once Upon a Time in the West
“All these corrupt people”
Eric, met on a sidewalk in Phoenix, immediately recognized the stranger betrayed by the accent after a short greeting and two or three other courtesies. He thought he was dealing with “a Frenchman or a German”. The Montreal origin of his interlocutor was enough to launch him into a long monologue on Paris and the Champs-Élysées, where he celebrated the Blues’ World Cup victory in 1998.
He traveled a lot. Born in San Francisco “in the 1960s”, he still earns his living by reselling tickets for sporting or cultural events. Business isn’t going very well, judging by his disheveled appearance and his toothless mouth. He is registered as a voter. “If I vote, it will be for Harris,” he said. Trump’s entire entourage is either in jail, has been, or is on trial and probably will be. He himself has already been found guilty. If I were the Democratic strategists, I would plaster the country with the faces of all these corrupt people. »
For Brent, encountered at the same car wash as Sandy, the choice is simple, clear, clear and definitive: he will not vote. “The system is rotten and my vote will change nothing,” he sums up. He is 48 years old, voted as a young adult and hasn’t done so for a long time. “Let others decide,” he said. I don’t care. »
The abandonment of institutions
The United States never ceases to amaze with its power in several areas. The 20th century could have been German or Russian: it was American. And supremacy continues, despite the rise of Chinese rivalry. The Economist, reference bible for the global business world, spoke last week of the “envy of the world”recalling, with countless supporting evidence, that “the American economy is bigger and better than ever”.
The distribution of the Nobel Prizes has once again confirmed the unequaled value of the universities of this country which also dominates the world technologically, militarily and even culturally since the shift towards screens swept the planet.
This success hides significant gaps in income and resources. The GINI coefficient on the distribution of wealth in societies ranks the United States with China, Argentina or Mexico, in any case far from Scandinavia.
All this noted and re-noted, according to keen observers (including Christopher Lasch), the greatest danger weighing on this society comes less from economic inequalities than from the decline, decay and abandonment of its public institutions in which citizens, poor or rich, can meet and confront each other as (quasi-) equals.
From this perspective, reducing wealth gaps or taking care of the most deprived proves less crucial for the survival of the republic than finding common sense. The suspicion of illegitimacy developed over decades now seems omnipresent: it targets all public bodies and all state representatives. The fierce criticisms focus on the elections, the Congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court. Name it…
The same evils plague other democracies. France is also struggling with structural blockages. Across Europe, the same refrains accuse political elites of being “corrupt, cut off from the people, incapable of hearing the needs of the people and of passing effective laws”. A poll carried out in the European Union showed last year that a strong majority (92%) find that democracy is “a good system”, but that barely a third of Europeans (34%) think that their countries are governed democratically.
Do we really need to remember that the Trumpian way of denigrating political adversaries is starting to infiltrate here too?
This report was financed thanks to the support of Transat-Le Devoir international journalism fund.
