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70422 septembre 2004 — Il reste très difficile, malgré les tendances qu’on croit déceler ici ou là, de donner une indication précise de ce que pourrait être le résultat de l’élection présidentielle du 2 novembre aux USA. Les méthodes de sondages sont actuellement fortement contestées, ce qui accroît cette incertitude comme on s’en doute. Reste la psychologie des électeurs, dans la mesure où l’on peut penser, — c’est notre conviction, — que la société américaine, très stéréotypée et psychologiquement “formatée”, peut avoir des comportements psychologiques collectifs.
La question de la réélection peut alors s’énoncer de cette façon, plus indirecte mais conduisant tout de même à des hypothèses sur l’élection : comment est-il possible qu’un président dont l’action a été si erratique, si catastrophique, si marquée par le mensonge systématique, etc, et qui poursuit en appuyant sa campagne sur le mensonge général que la situation s’améliore en Irak, puisse encore apparaître comme plutôt favori à sa réélection ? Des ébauches de réponse, souvent faites sans que la condamnation de la politique Bush soit sévèrement posée, apparaissent ici et là. Elles conduisent à des hypothèses intéressantes.
• Une analyse “sérieuse” du phénomène que constitue GW (un candidat assez populaire qui est aussi le président d’une calamiteuse administration) est donnée par Ehsan Ahrari, ce 18 septembre sur le site atimes.com, sous le titre « The Teflon presidency of George W Bush ». L’analyse est rationnelle, un peu trop nous semble-t-il. Mises à part des considérations stratégiques diverses, nous garderons l’observation ci-dessous parce qu’elle se rapproche de l’aspect psychologique où se trouve, à notre sens, l’explication de la position de GW Bush. (En un sens, les thèses de Ehsan Ahrari seraient plutôt de la sorte, secondaire, que nous aurions tendance à ne pas privilégier dans cette analyse.)
« [D]espite deteriorating security conditions in Iraq, the American people appear to be at a point when they would rather stay with Bush, unless Kerry can point to a better option for the United States in that country. He has thus far failed to do so, maybe because there aren't any better options for the US but to stay put. And as long as the United States stays in Iraq, the voters seem to be leaning toward the known quantity (Bush), as opposed to giving an untested one (Kerry) a chance. »
• Beaucoup plus intéressant pour notre propos est le texte de “Spengler”, commentateur anonyme du site atimes.com qui en rajoute constamment dans l’affirmation “anglo-saxoniste” darwinienne et provocatrice. Le 14 septembre, “Spengler” signait un texte de commentaire sur la popularité paradoxale de GW. Le titre (« Why Americans love George W Bush ») nous dit l’essentiel : nous sommes dans le domaine psychologique. Pour “Spengler”, c’est simple : les Américains sont communs, médiocres, peu cultivés, assez primaires, bref tout le portrait de GW ; pour cette raison, ils aiment GW et ils voteront pour lui.
« Bush supporters are the sort of American one never meets. Through the media as well as through personal contact, Asians and Europeans meet the United States in the person of its coastal elite: academics, journalists, clerics, entertainers, and the technological avant garde. The sort of American traveler one meets in Hong Kong, Singapore or Bangkok probably will vote for John Kerry in November. Fewer than one in six Americans owns a passport, and those are found disproportionately on the US coasts, colored Democratic blue on the electoral maps. The elite enjoys the frisson of cultural difference and will travel thousands of miles to patronize quaint foreign cultures. By contrast, provincials from the inland states (colored Republican red on the electoral maps) take their holidays in Las Vegas or Disney World. For them the gambling-casino replicas of the Eiffel Tower or the Venetian canals are just like the real thing but without the inconvenience of strange tongues and customs.
» Bush voters really do look worse (obesity is an inland disease in the US), dress worse, and are less likely to have attended a university than Kerry voters. But Bush voters are the sort of people who believe in their heart of hearts that America was founded to protect the likes of them — unlikely the clever and attractive people who can fend quite well for themselves. That is the source of their patriotism. […]
» After the end of the Cold War America's strategic interest in Europe withered away. As Muslim immigrants replace the infertile Europeans over time, European and US interests will diverge. It is meaningless to speak of America's “European allies” at this juncture. It is much more likely that the Europeans will become America's enemies a generation from now as Muslims emerge as a new majority.
» Once attacked, Americans want to fight back. George W Bush may have attacked the wrong country (which I do not believe), and he may have mistaken the US mission after the initial fighting was over (which I do believe), but Americans are quite willing to forgive him. They understand that it is hard to track down and destroy a shadowy enemy, and do not mind much if the United States has to trounce a few countries before finding the right ones. »
• Un autre auteur, l’Américain John Carroll, du Boston Globe développe l’analyse, dans ce même domaine, d’une certaine proximité, voire une “complicité” entre le peuple américain et la politique GW Bush. Il y a dans cette analyse qui emprunte une forte référence historique une tentative réelle de placer la question des rapports de la population (une partie de la population) avec ce président dans le domaine de la psychologie inconsciente.
« …Polls show that most Americans maintain faith in the Bush administration's handling of the war, while others greet reports of the disasters more with resignation than passionate opposition. To the mounting horror of the world, the United States of America is relentlessly bringing about the systematic destruction of a small, unthreatening nation for no good reason. Why has this not gripped the conscience of this country?
» The answer goes beyond Bush to the 60-year history of an accidental readiness to destroy the earth, a legacy with which we Americans have yet to reckon. The punitive terror bombing that marked the end of World War II hardly registered with us. Then we passively accepted our government's mad embrace of thermonuclear weapons. While we demonized our Soviet enemy, we hardly noticed that almost every major escalation of the arms race was initiated by our side — a race that would still be running if Mikhail Gorbachev had not dropped out of it.
» In 1968, we elected Richard Nixon to end the war in Vietnam, then blithely acquiesced when he kept it going for years more. When Ronald Reagan made a joke of wiping out Moscow, we gathered a million strong to demand a nuclear “freeze,” but then accepted the promise of “reduction,” and took no offense when the promise was broken.
» We did not think it odd that America's immediate response to the nonviolent fall of the Berlin Wall was an invasion of Panama. We celebrated the first Gulf War uncritically, even though that display of unchecked American power made Iran and North Korea redouble efforts to build a nuclear weapon, while prompting Osama bin Laden's jihad. The Clinton administration affirmed the permanence of American nukes as a “hedge” against unnamed fears, and we accepted it. We shrugged when the US Senate refused to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, with predictable results in India and Pakistan. We bought the expansion of NATO, the abrogation of the ABM Treaty, the embrace of National Missile Defense -- all measures that inevitably pushed other nations toward defensive escalation.
» The war policy of George W. Bush — “preventive war,” unilateralism, contempt for Geneva — breaks with tradition, but there is nothing new about the American population's refusal to face what is being done in our name. This is a sad, old story. It leaves us ill-equipped to deal with a pointless, illegal war. The Bush war in Iraq, in fact, is only the latest in a chain of irresponsible acts of a warrior government, going back to the firebombing of Tokyo. In comparison to that, the fire from our helicopter gunships above the cities of Iraq this week is benign. Is that why we take no offense?
» Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others — even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm? »
• Tout cela nous amène à l’hypothèse la plus intéressante, purement psychologique celle-là. Elle développe sans restrictions l’idée de la “complicité” entre le peuple américain et GW ; en quelque sorte, les deux sont responsables de la guerre en Irak, les Américains pour l’avoir approuvée après avoir élu GW, GW pour l’avoir lancée. Tous les deux, ils ont une tendance très forte à se dissimuler cette réalité, lorsqu’on voit les effets catastrophiques sur le terrain, en Irak. C’est une version virtualiste et postmoderne du Discours de la servitude volontaire de La Boétie : il y a objectivement un intérêt commun à partager le même mensonge général, qui permet d’éviter toute interférence désagréable sur la bonne conscience confortable. C’est le commentateur Juan Cole, le 21 septembre sur son site Informed Comment, qui mentionne cette hypothèse, — laquelle explique la persistance de la position de GW dans les sondages et expliquerait sa réélection, si elle a lieu.
« I have a sinking feeling that the American public may like Bush's cynical misuse of Wilsonian idealism precisely because it covers the embarrassment of their having gone to war, killed perhaps 25,000 people, and made a perfect mess of the Persian Gulf region, all out of a kind of paranoia fed by dirty tricks and bad intelligence. And, maybe they have to vote for Bush to cover the embarrassment of having elected him in the first place.
» How deep a hole are they going to dig themselves in order to get out of the bright sunlight of so much embarrassment? »
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