{"id":70392,"date":"2008-12-09T16:31:25","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T16:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/12\/09\/too-big-or-not-too-big\/"},"modified":"2008-12-09T16:31:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T16:31:25","slug":"too-big-or-not-too-big","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2008\/12\/09\/too-big-or-not-too-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Too Big or not Too Big<\/em>?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Il semble que la recette am\u00e9ricaniste soit universelle, et elle se nommerait l’option Moby Dick<\/em> en reconnaissance \u00e0 l’initiateur de la formule, le Pentagone tel que vu par le secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense William Cohen en 1998. Plus vous avez des probl\u00e8mes autour de vous, plus vous perdez le contr\u00f4le de la situation, plus vous avez de difficult\u00e9s \u00e0 comprendre ce qui se passe, plus vous vous faites grossir, plus vous vous faites \u00e9largir, plus vous vous faites couvrir de $milliards, plus vous vous bardez de services, d’\u00e9quipes, de conseillers, de services, d’analystes, de relations publiques Ainsi Tom Engelhardt d\u00e9crit-il, dans un texte \u00e0 la fois remplis d’informations et de descriptions saisissantes, \u00e0 la fois empreint de finesse pour la compr\u00e9hension du ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne, ce qu’il nomme The Imperial Transition<\/em> (aujourd’hui<\/a> sur TomDispatch.com<\/em> et sur<\/a> Antiwar.com<\/em>).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tQuelques mots de pr\u00e9sentation d’une administration de transition qu’Engelhardt d\u00e9crit joyeusement comme une sorte de Schwarzenegger en train de consciencieusement faire gonfler ses \u00e9normes muscles (\u00abEverything in these last weeks, like the preceding two years, has been bulked up, like Schwarzenegger’s Conanesque pecs. In other words, since Nov. 5, what we’ve been experiencing in the midst of one of the true crisis periods in our history has essentially been an unending celebration of super-sized government. Consider it an introduction to what will surely be the next Imperial Presidency<\/em>\u00bb) Curieux, \u00e9trange, fascinant spectacle alors que la crise s’\u00e9tend comme une train\u00e9e de flammes d\u00e9vorantes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00abBelieve me, no one’s sparing the adjectives right now. This transition is the earliest, biggest, fastest, best organized, most efficient on record, even as Obama himself has maintained one of the most public images of any president-elect. It’s cause for congratulations all around, a powerful antidote, we’re told, to Bill Clinton’s notoriously chaotic transition back in 1992. In fact, we can’t, it seems, get enough of a transition that began to gather steam many months before Nov. 4 and has been plowing ahead for more than a post-election month now.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbIt’s kind of exhausting, really, just thinking about that awesomely humongous transition lineup. Check out the list of transition review teams and advisers at Change.gov and you’ll find that it goes over the horizon. According to the Washington Post, 135 transition team members, organized into 10 groups, all wearing yellow badges, backed by countless transition advisers, have swarmed into dozens of government offices, from the Pentagon to the National Council on Disability preparing the way for the new administration. This, like so much else, has been unprecedented.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbAnd don’t get anyone started on the veritable army of volunteer lawyers giving unprecedented scrutiny to possible administration appointees in a vetting process that began at the moment of Obama’s nomination, not election. As the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker described it:<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbEmbarrassing e-mails, text messages, diary entries, and Facebook profiles? Gifts worth more than $50? Relatives linked to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, or another company getting a federal bailout? Obama is conducting the vetting much as he managed his campaign: methodically, thoroughly, and on a prodigious scale.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbThat process includes a distinctly unprecedented invasion of privacy via a seven-page, 63-question form that all potential appointees have had to fill out. Imagine, for instance, that after 62 penetrating questions on every aspect of your life, you faced this catchall 63rd question: Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect. (For anyone worried about privacy issues, what this means practically as Barton Gellman explained in his book Angler on the vice-presidential 200-question vetting process by which Dick Cheney chose himself as candidate and then used private information sent in by the other candidates for his own purposes is major dossiers on about 800 people.)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbEverything in this transition is, in fact, more prodigious and more invasive than in any previous transition, including, of course, the ongoing media fascination with all those positions Obama is filling with the best and the brightest. We’re not just talking about his vast economic team or his national security team, but the presidential liaison to Capitol Hill, the White House press secretary, the president’s speechwriter, his communications director, and his White House staff secretary, not to speak of the First Lady’s deputy chief of staff and, of course, that White House social secretary. And then there’s always that bout of fantasy football for foodies, the speculation over who will be the new White House chef.<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tConclusion d’un Engelhardt d\u00e9pit\u00e9 et amer: une super-pr\u00e9sidence imp\u00e9riale se pr\u00e9pare, plus grosse, plus lourde, plus vaste, plus tout ce que vous voulez \u00abOn Jan. 20, Barack Obama will be more prepared than any president in recent history to move in and, as everyone now likes to write, hit the ground running. But that ground the bloated executive and the vast national security apparatus that goes with it (as well as the U.S. military garrisons that dot the planet), all further engorged by George W., Dick, and pals is anything but fertile when it comes to change. Maybe if the imperial presidency and the national security state worked, none of this would matter. But how can they, given the superlatives that apply to them? They’re oversized, over-muscled, overweight, overly expensive, overly powerful, and overly intrusive.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00bbBottom line: they are problem creators, not problem solvers. To expect one genuine decider, moving in at the top, to put them on a diet-and-exercise regimen is asking a lot. After all, at the end of the George Bush era, what we have is the GM of governments, and when things start to go wrong, who’s going to bail it out?<\/em>\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCette impressionnante mont\u00e9e en puissance, comme disent les strat\u00e8ges de toutes les \u00e9coles de guerre du monde lorsqu’ils vous parlent bien loin des montagnes afghanes, ressemble irr\u00e9sistiblement \u00e0 la montagne de $milliards, de programmes, d’analystes, d’enqu\u00eates et de rapports qui pr\u00e9side \u00e0 l’incontestable paralysie galopante et \u00e0 l’impuissance d\u00e9sormais chronique du Pentagone. C’est, plus g\u00e9n\u00e9ralement, la marque de toutes les situations d’enflure syst\u00e9matique qui caract\u00e9rise la lutte de la modernit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaniste contre sa propre impuissance et sa propre paralysie, en ayant trouv\u00e9 l’\u00e9trange formule d’en rajouter toujours plus pour cimenter et verrouiller paralysie et impuissance. Il y a fort \u00e0 parier que l’inauguration du 44\u00e8me POTUS, et premier Africain-Am\u00e9ricain de la s\u00e9rie, vaudra le plus extraordinaire de tous les spectacles c\u00e9l\u00e9brant l’id\u00e9al de puissance (cf. Ferrero<\/a>) de notre \u00e9poque mont\u00e9 en soufflet jusqu’\u00e0 sa propre caricature surr\u00e9aliste.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCela dit, c’est effectivement une mesure parfaite de la maladie Too Big to Fail<\/em> (ou Too Big to Fall<\/em>, il nous arrive de confondre), un sympt\u00f4me indubitable du mal chronique du syst\u00e8me de l’am\u00e9ricanisme et de la modernit\u00e9 en g\u00e9n\u00e9ral. Au plus la crise devient \u00e9norme et incontr\u00f4lable, au plus le syst\u00e8me renforce ce qui r\u00e9pond aux impulsions qui ont enfant\u00e9 la crise, au plus il s’isole des mauvaises nouvelles de la crise. Mais quoi faire d’autre?, s’interroge le syst\u00e8me. Il y a sans aucun doute une corr\u00e9lation \u00e9vidente entre la mont\u00e9e de l’angoisse post-bushiste de l’establishment<\/em>, on voudrait tant que cela soit une r\u00e9ussite, \u00e0 l’image de ce jeune President-elect<\/em> aux qualit\u00e9s et au charisme \u00e9vidents, et la mont\u00e9e parall\u00e8le de l’enflure des moyens, finalement d\u00e9marche absolument contre-productive. Le syst\u00e8me se demande aujourd’hui si la catastrophe bushiste \u00e9tait un accident ou si c’\u00e9tait une \u00e9tape de plus dans sa d\u00e9gringolade. Pour se pr\u00e9munir des al\u00e9as de la r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 cette question existentielle, voire pour l’influencer, pour se rassurer enfin comme l’on se regarde dans un miroir (\u00d4 miroir, dis-moi si je suis le plus gros gouvernement du monde?), il ne cesse d’outrer la puissance de son apparence, <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tQuoi qu’il en soit, voil\u00e0 un gros boulet attach\u00e9 au pied du sympathique BHO. Son calme, son sang-froid, son sens de l’organisation, s’ils sont trop sollicit\u00e9s pour le d\u00e9veloppement monstrueux de son administration, vont lui faire perdre son \u00e9ventuel bon sens (hypoth\u00e8se compatissante de notre part), c’est-\u00e0-dire l’obligation o\u00f9 il devrait se forcer \u00e0 \u00eatre de tenter \u00e0 tous prix de rester en contact avec le monde r\u00e9el et les habitants qui continuent \u00e0 encombrer ce monde-l\u00e0, notamment les ch\u00f4meurs, les nouveaux SDF qui viennent de perdre leur maison, les retrait\u00e9s qui ne touchent plus de retraite et ainsi de suite. A ce train-l\u00e0, BHO se retrouvera vite comme enferm\u00e9 dans une forteresse, \u00e0 l’abri de toutes les mauvaises nouvelles du monde. Ainsi le syst\u00e8me nourrit-il irr\u00e9sistiblement et avec p\u00e9tulance sa tendance \u00e0 se barricader avec une puissance inimaginable et avec tous les moyens du bord, pour se prot\u00e9ger des agressions scandaleuses de la r\u00e9alit\u00e9.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tMis en ligne le 9 d\u00e9cembre 2008 \u00e0 16H38<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Il semble que la recette am\u00e9ricaniste soit universelle, et elle se nommerait l’option Moby Dick en reconnaissance \u00e0 l’initiateur de la formule, le Pentagone tel que vu par le secr\u00e9taire \u00e0 la d\u00e9fense William Cohen en 1998. Plus vous avez des probl\u00e8mes autour de vous, plus vous perdez le contr\u00f4le de la situation, plus vous… <\/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":[1381,4618,6208,7871],"class_list":["post-70392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bloc-notes","tag-engelhardt","tag-imperiale","tag-obama","tag-transition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70392","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=70392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}