{"id":76493,"date":"2016-03-29T11:05:40","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T11:05:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2016\/03\/29\/la-terra-incognita-de-tom-engelhardt-1\/"},"modified":"2016-03-29T11:05:40","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T11:05:40","slug":"la-terra-incognita-de-tom-engelhardt-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2016\/03\/29\/la-terra-incognita-de-tom-engelhardt-1\/","title":{"rendered":"La terra incognita<\/em> de Tom Engelhardt"},"content":{"rendered":"

La terra incognita<\/em> de Tom Engelhardt<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

Nous avons toujours eu une grande estime pour Tom Engelhardt et son site Tomgram<\/em>. Il est l’un des rares commentateurs dissidents, sur l’internet, que nous avons toujours suivi sans jamais voir d\u00e9croître notre int\u00e9r\u00eat pour ses \u00e9crits depuis que nous l’avons d\u00e9couvert, sans doute autour de 2001 et de 9\/11. Son approche des actuelle s\u00e9lections pr\u00e9sidentielles, avec son cort\u00e8ge de surprise, et bien entendu Donald Trump en t\u00eate, – approche qu’on peut appr\u00e9cier au travers des commentateurs ext\u00e9rieurs qui figurent r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement sur son site mais qu’il pr\u00e9sente lui-m\u00eame d’une introduction, – ne nous a pas, par contre, enthousiasm\u00e9. Ainsi de l’article d’Andrew Bacevich<\/a> du 1er<\/sup> mars, que nous avions mentionn\u00e9 le 3 mars<\/a> plus pour les commentaires n\u00e9gatifs qu’il avait suscit\u00e9s que pour ses arguments anti-Trump. Il arrive que les plus proches connaissent des divergences d’analyse.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Par cons\u00e9quent et en toute logique, c’est avec d’autant plus d’int\u00e9r\u00eat, sinon de satisfaction (on verra) que nous accueillons l’article d’Engelhardt lui-m\u00eame, ce 28 mars pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment<\/a>, où d\u00e9j\u00e0 les deux titres (celui de son introduction et celui de l’article lui-m\u00eame) nous disent tout de l’argument central, qui rejoint par certains aspects notre analyse et nous d\u00e9barrasse de l’attaque critique du seul Trump qu’on lisait, par exemple, chez Bacevich : « Engelhardt, Donald Trump n’est pas le seul responsable <\/em>», et « L’entr\u00e9e sur un territoire inconnu \u00e0 Washington – S’agit-il d’un Nouveau-Monde am\u00e9ricain ?<\/em> » il s’agit d’un article complexe par rapport \u00e0 ce que nous savons et aux th\u00e8ses que nous suivons : Engelhardt reste anti-Trump pour des raisons id\u00e9ologiques, parce qu’il y voit un pr\u00e9tendant-dictateur, et pourtant cette conviction ne le satisfait plus alors qu’il constate que le syst\u00e8me de l’am\u00e9ricanisme (le pouvoir, ses acteurs, ses composants, ses actes) est d’ores et d\u00e9j\u00e0 \u00ab\u00a0trumpien\u00a0\u00bb selon ce que lui-m\u00eame entend par l\u00e0<\/strong>… D’où, on le con\u00e7oit ais\u00e9ment, la complexit\u00e9 du propos et la perplexit\u00e9 de l’auteur.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Tout le texte de Engelhardt est parcouru du m\u00eame constat : ce qui se passe est sans pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent<\/strong>. A cela, nous n’avons rien \u00e0 redire, sauf \u00e0 susurrer que l’apparition d’un canidat que la gauche d\u00e9signe comme un \u00ab\u00a0faciste\u00a0\u00bb n’est certanement pas suffisant, loin de l\u00e0, pour justifier l’argument que la situation est \u00ab\u00a0sans pr\u00e9c\u00e9dent\u00a0\u00bb « Prenez cette affirmation de la part d’un vieux type de 71 ans qui a pass\u00e9 des d\u00e9cennies \u00e0 observer attentivement le fonctionnement de notre vie politique<\/em>, \u00e9crit Engelhardt : il ne s’agit en aucune fa\u00e7on d’une \u00e9lection de la sorte que tous nos livres d’histoire nous ont appris qu’elle forme un processus absolument crucial de la d\u00e9mocratie am\u00e9ricaine…<\/em> »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Prenons le cas le plus extr\u00eame selon Engelhardt, qui est bien entendu celui de Donald Trump, le cas le plus cauchemardesque selon lui et la plupart des lib\u00e9raux (progressistes) dont il est lui-m\u00eame (dissident plut\u00f4t de gauche), – Donald Trump comme un nouvel Adolf Hitler, un nouveau Benito Mussolini ou une sorte de ces d\u00e9magogues extr\u00eames \u00e0-la-Juan-Peron. Il semble qu’on puisse justifier ces comparaisons par le fait que ce qui arrive dans notre monde est si extr\u00eame qu’il est n\u00e9cessaire d’aller aux r\u00e9f\u00e9rences les plus extr\u00eames ; puis Engelhardt pr\u00e9cise aussit\u00f4t : « mais il s’agit encore<\/em> [cette r\u00e9d\u00e9rence] de quelque chose que nous connaissons. Il s’agit de quelque chose que nous avons d\u00e9j\u00e0 rencontr\u00e9, quelque chose qui a un sens gr\u00e2ce au pass\u00e9<\/em>… » Ce qu’Engelhardt veut dire, c’est qu’au fond, comparer Trump \u00e0 Hitler c’est, d’une fa\u00e7on paradoxale se rassurer parce que la r\u00e9f\u00e9rence existe, qu’elle a exist\u00e9, tout horrible et \u00e9pouvantable qu’elle soit pour ces braves consciences d\u00e9mocratiques et progressistes. Et puis vient la question qui tue : \u00ab\u00a0Mais si [cette r\u00e9f\u00e9rence] n’\u00e9tait pas justifi\u00e9e ?\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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« Mais si ce n’\u00e9tait pas justifi\u00e9 ? D’une certaine fa\u00e7on, la chose la plus effrayante, la plus \u00e9vidente \u00e0 de notre monde am\u00e9ricain aujourd’hui, c’est que, – m\u00eame si pr\u00e9sence \u00e9crasante de Donald Trump nous retient le plus souvent de le dire, – que nous sommes entr\u00e9s sur un territoire inconnu et que, dans de telles circonstances, les analogies<\/em> [avec le pass\u00e9] n’ont surtout comme effet que de nous emp\u00eacher d’avoir une v\u00e9ritable appr\u00e9ciation de la nouvelle r\u00e9alit\u00e9. Mon impression, finalement, est que Donald Trump est seulement le signe le plus \u00e9vident de la chose<\/em> [que nous sommes entr\u00e9s sur un territoire inconnu], l’illustration qu’on ne peut pas manquer<\/em>… »<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

L\u00e0-dessus, Engelhardt \u00e9num\u00e8re les diff\u00e9rents faits, les actions, les d\u00e9cisions, les paralysies, les situations abracadabrantesques, les violations sans nombre de la Constitution, les \u00ab\u00a0guerres\u00a0\u00bb men\u00e9es \u00e0 distance contre des adversaires dont nul ne sait rien, l’espionnage \u00e9lectronique sans fin et comme sans but de tous les citoyens, les paralysies innombrables de ce gouvernement dont on vient d’\u00e9num\u00e9rer tous les actes \u00ab\u00a0normalement\u00a0\u00bb ill\u00e9gaux ou \u00ab\u00a0l\u00e9galement ill\u00e9gaux\u00a0\u00bb si l’on veut pousser jusqu’\u00e0 l’oxymore absurde, et qualifi\u00e9s de \u00ab\u00a0d\u00e9cisifs\u00a0\u00bb, et qui ne parvient \u00e0 rien de d\u00e9cisif, et s’enferre, et s’embourbe dans de multiples impasses, et ainsi de suite.. Engelhardt d\u00e9veloppe l’exemple du Congr\u00e8s, \u00ab\u00a0paralys\u00e9\u00a0\u00bb depuis des ann\u00e9es dans ses luttes contre les pr\u00e9sidents et enferm\u00e9s dans une \u00ab\u00a0polarisation\u00a0\u00bb dont nul ne comprend le sens, sinon de l’expliquer par les complications opposant les partis : « Mais<\/em> [peut-\u00eatre] que si les R\u00e9publicains perdaient le contr\u00f4le \u00e0 la fois de la Chambre et du S\u00e9nat, nous serions tout de m\u00eame dans une situation similaire \u00e0 celle où nous sommes, que nous qualifions de \u00ab\u00a0paralysie\u00a0\u00bb<\/em>. Peut-\u00eatre que dans la nouvelle r\u00e9alit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine, le Congr\u00e8s est devenu une sorte de mus\u00e9e de n’importe-quoi, glorifi\u00e9, bouff\u00e9 par les lobbies, couverts d’argent et sans la moindre utilit\u00e9<\/em>…»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Engelhardt termine donc son analyse sur les m\u00eames incertitudes, multipli\u00e9es par le fruit inf\u00e9cond de la r\u00e9flexion : « Est-ce que j’y comprends quelque chose ? Pas une seconde…<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

» […N]ombreux restant choqu\u00e9s qu’un candidat en t\u00eate pour la pr\u00e9sidence est un d\u00e9magogue avec un c\u00f4t\u00e9 autoritaire tr\u00e8s visible… Toutes ces \u00e9tiquettes sont coll\u00e9es sur Donald Trump mais le nouveau syst\u00e8me am\u00e9ricain qui est sorti de sa chrysalide ces derni\u00e8res ann\u00e9es a justement toutes ces tendances. Aussi faut-il se garder de bl\u00e2mer enti\u00e8rement Donald Trump. Il serait moins un choc pour ce pays qu’une continuation de ce <\/em>[que ce pays est devenu]. Apr\u00e8s tout, le monde-triompien-en-formation lui a ouvert la voie.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

» Qui sait ? Peut-\u00eatre sommes-nous en train d’assister \u00e0 l’it\u00e9ration d’une tr\u00e8s vieille histoire : une version du XXI\u00e8me si\u00e8cle du destin \u00e9ternel des grandes puissances imp\u00e9riales, peut-\u00eatre la plus grande de toutes, – la seule superpuissance\u00a0\u00bb, – emport\u00e9e dans la naufrage de son d\u00e9clin. C’est un destin que l’humanit\u00e9 a rencontr\u00e9 souvent dans le cours de sa longue histoire. Mais m\u00eame si nous pensons qu’il n’y a rien de nouveau sous le soleil, le contexte de tout ceci, avec tout ce qui arrive dans le monde, est si nouveau qu’on peut croire que c’est absolument \u00e9tranger \u00e0 tout ce qui est arriv\u00e9 pendant les milliers d’ann\u00e9es de l’exp\u00e9rience humaine. Comme l’indiquent les derniers indices de temp\u00e9rature, nous sommes, pour la premi\u00e8re fois, sur une plan\u00e8te en d\u00e9clin. Il s’agit bien d’une terra incognoita, n’est-ce pas ? <\/em>»<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

On comprend l’extr\u00eame perplexit\u00e9 angoiss\u00e9e de Engelhardt mais on lui fera le reproche de baser sa r\u00e9flexion essentielle et compl\u00e8tement justifi\u00e9e (terra incognita<\/em>) sur un axiome de d\u00e9part qui est effectivement compl\u00e8tement arbitraire : pr\u00e9tendre savoir qui est Trump au point de dire que le syst\u00e8me de l’am\u00e9ricanisme en place est enti\u00e8rement trumpiste et, en quelque sorte, l’a pr\u00e9c\u00e9d\u00e9. Car l’on en revient \u00e0 la question d\u00e9j\u00e0 pos\u00e9e, comme dans un cercle vicieux : pourquoi cet acharnement du Syst\u00e8me contre Trump si Trump va comme un gant au Syst\u00e8me ? On pourrait certes \u00e9voquer des manœuvres tordues et d’une habilet\u00e9 qui laisseraient Machiavel coi et sans plume, et nous-m\u00eame nous reposant sur l’\u00e9puisant jugement du \u00ab\u00a0pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqu\u00e9 ?\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Tout de m\u00eame, si une Clinton convient si bien au Syst\u00e8me, – ce qui est le cas, sans qu’il soit n\u00e9cessaire de voir chez elle la moindre tendance \u00ab\u00a0fasciste\u00a0\u00bb, – ce serait de l’ordre du blasph\u00e8me ! – et alors qu’elle est impitoyablement oppos\u00e9e \u00e0 Trump, c’est peut-\u00eatre qu’il faut songer, au moins, \u00e0 ne porter aucun jugement d\u00e9cisif sur Trump, sinon le constat simple (simplicit\u00e9 contre complication) que le Syst\u00e8me le hait absolument et que son irruption (avec celle de Sanders, sans aucun doute m\u00eame si Sanders condamne Trump) a mis le feu aux poudres de quelque chose qui renvoie aux vieilleries us\u00e9es les classements id\u00e9ologiques qui avaient une certaine signification dans les ann\u00e9es 1930. Quelqu’un que le Syst\u00e8me hait \u00e0 ce point ne peut \u00eatre absolument mauvais, et surtout il est d\u00e9cisivement utile parce qu’il est, selon la loi des contraires, absolument antiSyst\u00e8me dans la circonstance actuelle.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Autrement dit, la partie se joue au-del\u00e0 des candidats et de leurs possibles\/pr\u00e9tendus\/incompr\u00e9hensibles programmes, et au-dessus. La terra incognita<\/em> ne se trouve pas dans leurs diverses agitations \u00e9lectorales ni dans leurs personnalit\u00e9s, mais bien dans l’\u00e9branlement du Syst\u00e8me que tout cela provoque<\/strong>… Voici donc l’article de Engelhardt du 28 mars, que l’on lira \u00e9galement pour le luxe de d\u00e9tails qu’il donne sur la situation pr\u00e9sente autant que sur la situation du \u00ab\u00a0r\u00e9gime\u00a0\u00bb en place \u00e0 Washington.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

dedefensa.org<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Entering Uncharted Territory in Washington<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

The other week, feeling sick, I spent a day on my couch with the TV on and was reminded of an odd fact of American life. More than seven months before Election Day, you can watch the 2016 campaign for the presidency at any moment of your choosing, and that’s been true since at least late last year. There is essentially never a time when some network or news channel isn’t reporting on, discussing, debating, analyzing, speculating about, or simply drooling over some aspect of the primary campaign, of Hillary, Bernie, Ted, and above all — a million times above all — The Donald (from the violence<\/a> at his rallies to the size<\/a> of his hands<\/a>). In case you’re young and think this is more or less the American norm, it isn’t. Or wasn’t.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Truly, there is<\/em> something new under the sun. Of course, in 1994 with O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco chase (95 million<\/a> viewers!), the 24\/7 media event arrived full blown in American life and something changed when it came to the way we focused on our world and the media focused on us. But you can be sure of one thing: never in the history of television, or any other form of media, has a single figure garnered the amount of attention — hour after hour, day after day, week after week — as Donald Trump. If he’s the O.J. Simpson of twenty-first-century American politics and his run for the presidency is the eternal white Ford Bronco chase of our moment, then we’re in a truly strange world.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Or let me put it another way: this is not an election. I know the word \u00ab\u00a0election\u00a0\u00bb is being used every five seconds and somewhere along the line significant numbers of Americans (particularly, this season, Republicans<\/a>) continue to enter voting booths or in the case of primary caucuses, school gyms and the like, to choose among various candidates, so it’s all still election-like. But take my word for it as a 71-year-old guy who’s been watching our politics for decades: this is not an election of the kind the textbooks once taught us was so crucial to American democracy. If, however, you’re sitting there waiting for me to tell you what it is, take a breath and don’t be too disappointed. I have no idea, though it’s certainly part bread-and-circuses spectacle, part celebrity obsession, and part media money machine<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Actually, before we go further, let me hedge my bets on the idea that Donald Trump is a twenty-first-century O.J. Simpson. It’s certainly a reasonable enough comparison, but I’ve begun to wonder about the usefulness of just about any comparison in our present situation. Even the most nightmarish of them — Donald Trump is Adolf Hitler<\/a>, Benito Mussolini<\/a>, or any past extreme demagogue<\/a> of your choice — may actually prove to be covert gestures of consolation, reassurance, and comfort. Yes, what’s happening in our world is increasngly extreme and could hardly be weirder, we seem to have the urge to say, but it’s still recognizable. It’s something we’ve encountered before, something we’ve made sense of in the past and, in the process, overcome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Round Up the Usual Suspects<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

But what if that’s not true? In some ways, the most frightening, least acceptable thing to say about our American world right now — even if Donald Trump’s overwhelming presence all but begs us to say it — is that we’ve entered uncharted territory and, under the circumstances, comparisons might actually impair our ability to come to grips with our new reality. My own suspicion: Donald Trump is only the most obvious instance of this, the example no one can miss.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In these first years of the twenty-first century, we may be witnessing a new world being born inside the hollowed-out shell of the American system. As yet, though we live with this reality every day, we evidently just can’t bear to recognize it for what it might be. When we survey the landscape, what we tend to focus on is that shell — the usual elections (in somewhat heightened form), the usual governmental bodies (a little tarnished) with the usual governmental powers (a little diminished or redistributed), including the usual checks and balances (a little out of whack), and the same old Constitution (much praised in its absence), and yes, we know that none of this is working particularly well, or sometimes at all, but it still feels comfortable to view what we have as a reduced, shabbier, and more dysfunctional version of the known.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps, however, it’s increasingly a version of the unknown. We say, for instance, that Congress is \u00ab\u00a0paralyzed,\u00a0\u00bb and that little can be done in a country where politics has become so \u00ab\u00a0polarized,\u00a0\u00bb and we wait for something to shake us loose from that \u00ab\u00a0paralysis,\u00a0\u00bb to return us to a Washington closer to what we remember and recognize. But maybe this is it. Maybe even if the Republicans somehow lost control<\/a> of the House of Representatives and the Senate, we would still be in a situation something like what we’re now labeling paralysis. Maybe in our new American reality, Congress is actually some kind of glorified, well-lobbied, and well-financed version of a peanut gallery.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Of course, I don’t want to deny that much of what is \u00ab\u00a0new\u00a0\u00bb in our world has a long history. The present yawning inequality gap<\/a> between the 1% and ordinary Americans first began to widen in the 1970s and — as Thomas Frank explains so brilliantly in his new book, Listen, Liberal<\/em><\/a> — was already a powerful and much-discussed reality in the early 1990s, when Bill Clinton ran for president. Yes, that gap is now more like an abyss and looks ever more permanently embedded in the American system, but it has a genuine history, as for instance do 1% elections<\/a> and the rise and self-organization of the \u00ab\u00a0billionaire class<\/a>,\u00a0\u00bb even if no one, until this second, imagined that government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires might devolve into government of the billionaire, by the billionaire, and for the billionaire — that is, just one of them.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Indeed, much of our shape-shifting world can be written about as a set of comparisons and in terms of historical reference points. Inequality has a history. The military-industrial complex and the all-volunteer military<\/a>, like the warrior corporation<\/a>, weren’t born yesterday; neither was our state of perpetual war<\/a>, nor the national security state that now looms over Washington, nor its surveilling urge<\/a>, the desire to know far too much about the private lives of Americans. (A little bow of remembrance to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover<\/a> is in order here.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And yet, true as all that may be, Washington increasingly seems like a new land, sporting something like a new system<\/a> in the midst of our much-described polarized and paralyzed politics. The national security state doesn’t seem faintly paralyzed or polarized to me. Nor does the Pentagon. On certain days when I catch the news, I can’t believe how strange and yet humdrum this uncharted new territory is. Remind me, for instance, where in the Constitution the Founding Fathers wrote about that national security state? And yet there it is in all its glory, all its powers, an ever more independent force in our nation’s capital. In what way, for instance, did those men of the revolutionary era prepare the ground for the Pentagon to loose its spy drones from our distant war zones over the United States? And yet, so it has<\/a>. And no one even seems disturbed by the development. The news, barely noticed or noted, was instantly absorbed into what’s becoming the new normal.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Graduation Ceremonies in the Imperium<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

Let me mention here the almost random piece of news that recently made me wonder just what planet I was actually on. And I know you won’t believe it, but it had absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Given the carnage of America’s wars and conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa, which I’ve been following closely<\/a> these last years, I’m unsure why this particular moment even got to me. Best guess? Maybe that, of all the once-obscure places — from Afghanistan<\/a> to Yemen<\/a> to Libya<\/a> — in which the U.S. has been fighting recently, Somalia, where this particular little slaughter took place, seems to me like the most obscure of all. Yes, I’ve been half-attending to events there from the 1993 Blackhawk Down moment to the disastrous U.S.-backed Ethiopian invasion<\/a> of 2006 to the hardly less disastrous invasion of that country by Kenyan<\/a> and other African forces. Still, Somalia?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Recently, U.S. Reaper drones and manned aircraft launched a set of strikes against what the Pentagon claimed was a graduation ceremony<\/a> for "low-level" foot soldiers in the Somali terror group al-Shabab. It was proudly announced that more than 150 Somalis had died in this attack. In a country where, in recent years, U.S. drones and special ops forces had carried out a modest number of strikes<\/a> against individual al-Shabab leaders, this might be thought of as a distinct escalation of Washington’s endless low-level conflict there (with a raid<\/a> involving U.S. special ops forces following soon after).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Now, let me try to put this in some personal context. Since I was a kid, I’ve always liked globes and maps. I have a reasonable sense of where most countries on this planet are. Still, Somalia? I have to stop and give that one some thought to truly locate it on a mental map of eastern Africa. Most Americans? Honestly, I doubt they’d have a clue. So the other day, when this news came out, I stopped a moment to take it in. If accurate, we killed 150 more or less nobodies (except to those who knew them) and maybe even a top leader or two<\/a> in a country most Americans couldn’t locate on a map.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

I mean, don’t you find that just a little odd, no matter how horrible the organization they were preparing to fight for? 150 Somalis? Blam!<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Remind me: On just what basis was this modest massacre carried out? After all, the U.S. isn’t at war with Somalia or with al-Shabab. Of course, Congress no longer plays any real role in decisions about American war making. It no longer declares war on any group or country we fight. (Paralysis!) War is now purely a matter of executive power or, in reality, the collective power of the national security state and the White House. The essential explanation<\/a> offered for the Somali strike, for instance, is that the U.S. had a small set of advisers stationed with African Union forces in that country and it was just faintly possible that those guerrilla graduates might soon prepare to attack some of those forces (and hence U.S. military personnel). It seems that if the U.S. puts advisers in place anywhere on the planet — and any day of any year they are now in scores of countries<\/a> — that’s excuse enough to validate acts of war based on the \u00ab\u00a0imminent\u00a0\u00bb threat of their attack.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Or just think of it this way: a new, informal constitution is being written in these years in Washington. No need for a convention or a new bill of rights. It’s a constitution focused on the use of power, especially military power, and it’s being written in blood.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

These days, our government (the unparalyzed one) acts regularly on the basis of that informal constitution-in-the-making, committing Somalia-like acts<\/a> across significant swathes<\/a> of the planet. In these years, we’ve been marrying the latest in wonder technology<\/a>, our Hellfire-missile-armed drones, to executive power and slaughtering people we don’t much like in majority Muslim countries with a certain alacrity. By now, it’s simply accepted that any commander-in-chief is also our assassin-in-chief<\/a>, and that all of this is part of a wartime-that-isn’t-wartime system, spreading the principle of chaos and dissolution<\/a> to whole areas of the planet, leaving failed states and terror movements in its wake.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

When was it, by the way, that \u00ab\u00a0the people\u00a0\u00bb agreed that the president could appoint himself assassin-in-chief, muster his legal beagles to write new \u00ab\u00a0law<\/a>\u00a0\u00bb that covered any future acts of his (including the killing<\/a> of American citizens), and year after year dispatch what essentially is his own private fleet of killer drones to knock off<\/a> thousands<\/a> of people<\/a> across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa? Weirdly enough, after almost 14 years of this sort of behavior, with ample evidence<\/a> that such strikes don’t suppress<\/a> the movements Washington loathes (and often only fan the flames of resentment and revenge that help them spread<\/a>), neither the current president and his top officials, nor any of the candidates for his office have the slightest intention of ever grounding those drones.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

And when exactly did the people say that, within the country’s vast standing military, which now garrisons<\/a> much of the planet, a force <\/a>of nearly 70,000 Special Operations personnel should be birthed, or that it should conduct<\/a> covert missions globally, essentially accountable only to the president (if him)? And what I find strangest of all is that few in our world find such developments strange at all.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

A Planet in Decline?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

In some way, all of this could be said to work. At the very least, it is a functioning new system-in-the-making that we have yet to truly come to grips with, just as we haven’t come to grips with a national security state that surveils the world in a way that even science fiction writers (no less totalitarian rulers) of a previous era could never have imagined, or the strange version of media overkill that we still call an election. All of this is by now both old news and mind-bogglingly new.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Do I understand it? Not for a second.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This is not war as we knew it, nor government as we once understood it, nor are these elections as we once imagined them, nor is this democracy as it used to be conceived of, nor is this journalism of a kind ever taught in a journalism school. This is the definition of uncharted territory. It’s a genuine American terra incognita<\/em> and yet in some fashion that unknown landscape is already part of our sense of ourselves and our world. In this \u00ab\u00a0election\u00a0\u00bb season, many remain shocked that a leading candidate for the presidency is a demagogue with a visible authoritarian side and what looks like an autocratic bent. All such labels are pinned on Donald Trump, but the new American system that’s been emerging from its chrysalis in these years already has just those tendencies. So don’t blame it all on Donald Trump. He should be far less of a shock to this country than he continues to be. After all, a Trumpian world-in-formation has paved the way for him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Who knows? Perhaps what we’re watching is the new iteration of a very old story: a twenty-first-century version of an ancient tale of a great imperial power, perhaps the greatest ever — the \u00ab\u00a0lone superpower\u00a0\u00bb — sinking into decline. It’s a tale humanity has experienced often enough in the course of our long history. But lest you think once again that there’s nothing new under the sun, the context for all of this, for everything now happening in our world, is so new as to be quite literally outside of thousands of years of human experience. As the latest heat records<\/a> indicate, we are, for the first time, on a planet in decline. And if that isn’t uncharted territory, what is?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Tom Engelhardt<\/h4><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La terra incognita de Tom Engelhardt Nous avons toujours eu une grande estime pour Tom Engelhardt et son site Tomgram. Il est l’un des rares commentateurs dissidents, sur l’internet, que nous avons toujours suivi sans jamais voir d\u00e9croître notre int\u00e9r\u00eat pour ses \u00e9crits depuis que nous l’avons d\u00e9couvert, sans doute autour de 2001 et de… <\/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":[14],"tags":[5438,934,2727,3186,17406,7348,2900,6842,2639],"class_list":["post-76493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-bacevich","tag-clinton","tag-fasciste","tag-gauche","tag-precedent","tag-progressiste","tag-sans","tag-tomgram","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76493","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=76493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76493\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

Ainsi Engelhardt \u00e9volue-t-il insensiblement vers une contradiction totale, qu’il rel\u00e8ve lui-m\u00eame pour s’interroger. Il continue \u00e0 assumer que Trump pr\u00e9sente effectivement les caract\u00e8res d’un dirigeant de type \u00ab\u00a0autoritaire\u00a0\u00bb sinon \u00ab\u00a0fasciste\u00a0\u00bb mais en m\u00eame temps reconnaît que la structure actuelle du syst\u00e8me de l’am\u00e9ricanisme est quasiment autoritaire et fasciste, ou \u00ab\u00a0trumpiste\u00a0\u00bb si l’on veut aller symboliquement au bout de la contradiction. D\u00e8s lors, pourquoi l’establishment<\/em> s’oppose-t-il comme il le fait \u00e0 Trump ? Et pourquoi l’opposition \u00ab\u00a0d\u00e9mocratique\u00a0\u00bb, ou se disant telle, s’attache-elle au seul Trump alors que la candidate favorite de l’establishment<\/em> est manifestement Clinton, ce qui signifierait que c’est Clinton qui est la mieux adapt\u00e9e \u00e0 la structure fasciste\/trumpiste d\u00e9j\u00e0 en place, non ? Engelhardt n’a pas de r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 toutes ces questions pos\u00e9es ou implicites. (Notre r\u00e9ponse \u00e0 nous est beaucoup plus simple, y compris que le silence de certains ; elle est que l’identification de Trump comme \u00ab\u00a0fasciste\u00a0\u00bb est pr\u00e9matur\u00e9e au mieux, et de toutes les fa\u00e7ons compl\u00e8tement arbitraire et hors de propos puisque le vrai probl\u00e8me est le Syst\u00e8me, avec ses structures qui ridiculisent toutes les diabolisations type-trumpiste. Trump, on ne sait pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment ni ce qu’il est ni ce qu’il veut, ni qu’il entend faire s’il \u00e9tait \u00e9lu comme lui-m\u00eame le laisse entendre parfois [disant \u00e0 partir de l’axe populiste qu’il suit, – qui n’a rien de \u00ab\u00a0fasciste\u00a0\u00bb aux USA : \u00ab\u00a0je verrais bien ce que je ferais en fonction de la situation que je trouverais \u00e0 la Maison-Blanche] ; pour certains, il le montre notamment en mati\u00e8re de politique \u00e9trang\u00e8re [voir McCain<\/a> : « Je n’y comprend rien, aussi il m’est difficile d’en penser quelque chose. Il semble changer d’orientation jour apr\u00e8s jour.<\/em> »].)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n