Fureur “post-Katrina” de Thomas Friedman, qui plaide pour l’État responsable, régalien et interventionniste

L’article de Thomas Friedman du 15 septembre donne une bonne mesure du mécontentement anti-Bush après Katrina. Friedman est traditionnellement le libéral de service pour assurer aux entreprises diverses de l’administration le vernis d’un soutien soi-disant “bipartisan”. Il est belliciste, souvent sans la moindre vergogne et avec une argumentation stalinienne de la chose.

Pourtant, voici qu’il en a assez. Dans cet article du 15 septembre, Friedman, qui se trouve à Singapour, exalte la responsabilité des autorités de cette ville-État, l’importance du rôle (de l’intervention) du gouvernement, sa vertu interventionniste, etc. C’est une orgie d’argumentation en faveur d’une “bonne gouvernance”, tout ce dont manque radicalement aujourd’hui l’Amérique et dont Singapour a fait son credo. A l’heure où tous les Européens qui développèrent l’art du gouvernement responsable ânonnent les vertus de la fin de l’interventionnisme et de l’autorité régalienne, cette leçon du moustachu Friedman, américaniste à 100% quelque peu déstabilisé, est paradoxale et ironique.

« There is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today — something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them — like watching a parent melt down.

» That is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a world away here in Singapore — a city-state that, if it believes in anything, believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here, and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be Singapore. Trust me, the head of civil defense here is not simply someone's college roommate.

(...)

» The discipline that the Cold War imposed on the United States, by contrast, seems to have faded. Last year, we Americans cut the National Science Foundation budget, while indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.

» We let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence organizations, and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the health care of one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health crisis of 40 million uninsured.

» Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either suing each other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in Iraq without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the middle of that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill.

» Speaking of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: “We were shocked at what we saw. Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions — these were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. If America becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it fulfill its role as leader of the world?” »

Mis en ligne le 16 septembre 2005 à 08H55