Tomdispatch.com<\/em>, en faisait l’argument central de sa chronique.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00abConsider the debate among four Democratic presidential candidates on ABC News last Saturday night. In the previous week, the price of a barrel of oil briefly touched $100, unemployment hit 5%, the stock market had the worst three-day start since the Great Depression, and the word recession was in the headlines and in the air. So when ABC debate moderator Charlie Gibson announced that the first fifteen-minute segment would be taken up with what is generally agreed to be the greatest threat to the United States today, what did you expect?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAs it happened, he was referring to nuclear terrorism, specifically a nuclear attack on an American city by al-Qaeda (as well as how the future president would retaliate). In other words, Gibson launched his version of a national debate by focusing on a fictional, futuristic scenario, at this point farfetched, in which a Pakistani loose nuke would fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, be transported to the United States, perhaps picked up by well-trained al-Qaedan minions off the docks of Newark, and set off in the Big Apple. In this, though he was surely channeling Rudy Giuliani, he managed to catch the essence of what may be George W. Bush’s major legacy to this country.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t()<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\t\u00bbOpinion polls indicate that, in this electoral season, terrorism is no longer at, or even near, the top of the American agenda of worries. Right now, it tends to fall far down lists of the most important issue to face this country (though significantly higher among Republicans than Democrats or independents). Nonetheless, don’t for a second think that the subject isn’t lodged deep in national consciousness. When asked recently by the pollsters of CNN\/Opinion Research Corporation: How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism, a striking 39% of Americans were either very worried or somewhat worried; another 33% registered as not too worried. These figures might seem reasonable in New York City, but nationally? As the Democratic debate Saturday indicated, the politics of security and fear have been deeply implanted in our midst, as well as in media and political consciousness. Even candidates who proclaim themselves against the politics of fear (and many don’t) are repeatedly forced to take care of fear’s rhetorical business.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbImagining how a new president and a new administration might begin to make their way out of this mindset, out of a preoccupation guaranteed to solve no problems and exacerbate many, is almost as hard as imagining a world without al-Qaeda. After all, this particular obsession has been built into our institutions, from Guantanamo to the Department of Homeland Security. It’s had the time to sink its roots into fertile soil; it now has its own industries, lobbying groups, profit centers. Unbuilding it will be a formidable task indeed. Here, then a year early is a Bush legacy that no new president is likely to reverse soon.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbAsk yourself honestly: Can you imagine a future America without a Department of Homeland Security? Can you imagine a new administration ending the global lockdown that has become synonymous with Americanism?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n\t\u00bbThe Bush administration will go, but the job it’s done on us won’t. That is the sad truth of our presidential campaign moment.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\tTriste v\u00e9rit\u00e9, sans aucun doute, mais \u00e9galement situation \u00e9trange, qui fait s’affronter deux conceptions de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9, o\u00f9 la virtuelle, qui semblait en retraite, semble finalement avoir gard\u00e9 autant de force que la r\u00e9elle dans la psychologie am\u00e9ricaniste. Ces deux pr\u00e9occupations mises sur un m\u00eame plan d’intensit\u00e9 sont \u00e9galement notablement contradictoires ou divergentes dans les pr\u00e9occupations et les projets qu’elles impliquent. Cela signifie que s’est ouverte une campagne o\u00f9 pourraient se traiter des th\u00e8mes absolument diff\u00e9rents, o\u00f9 tel ou tel candidat, selon ses int\u00e9r\u00eats et sa situation, pourrait juger qu’il peut passer d’un th\u00e8me g\u00e9n\u00e9ral \u00e0 l’autre, introduisant ainsi une inconnue de taille dans la bataille en cours et \u00e9ventuellement for\u00e7ant les autres candidats \u00e0 en faire autant. Cet \u00e9l\u00e9ment d’incertitude, qui semble pour l’instant n’avoir aucune raison de dispara\u00eetre \u00e0 moins d’un \u00e9v\u00e9nement ext\u00e9rieur important (un \u00e9v\u00e9nement terroriste d’un c\u00f4t\u00e9, \u00e9ventuellement manipul\u00e9, une aggravation de la situation \u00e9conomique de l’autre), apporte un facteur suppl\u00e9mentaire de d\u00e9sordre dans une campagne pr\u00e9sidentielle d\u00e9j\u00e0 fournie \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\tMis en ligne le 12 janvier 2008 \u00e0 22H58<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
La campagne \u00e9lectorale US est, au niveau des th\u00e8mes g\u00e9n\u00e9raux que suivent ou imposent les candidats et le public, c’est selon, une \u00e9trange bataille. Au premier constat, apr\u00e8s le d\u00e9roulement des premi\u00e8res campagnes des primaires, on pouvait juger qu’il y avait eu un affrontement entre les th\u00e8mes choisis, entre la r\u00e9alit\u00e9 (les questions \u00e9conomiques et… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6120,3795,1381,3340,3744,7371],"class_list":["post-69599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-campagne","tag-economie","tag-engelhardt","tag-presidentielles","tag-terreur","tag-themes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69599\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}