Le monstre est au cœur de nous-même

Plus la crise du système de l’américanisme progresse, plus les réflexions sur cette crise et sur ce système acquièrent de la profondeur. Un sujet de prédilection de cette réflexion est le complexe militaro-industriel (CMI), ou le “Warfare State” (jeu de mots attristé sur “Welfare State”, — intraduisible en français malgré tous nos efforts puisqu’il devrait donner “l’Etat-guerrier” pour “l’Etat-providence”). C’est ce sujet qu’aborde Norman Solomon dans une réflexion, ce jour, pour Antiwar.com.

Solomon est un spécialiste du problème fondamental de “la militarisation de l’Amérique”, application évidente de la situation du complexe militaro-industriel. Ses réflexions rencontrent celles de James Carroll, également cité dans notre F&C de ce jour. L’ignorance européenne, et particulièrement française, de l’ampleur et de la profondeur de ce monstrueux phénomène américaniste nous fait un devoir de nous pencher sur les spécialistes dissidents américains du domaine.

Solomon développe la thèse désormais très répandue de l’omniprésence du Complexe, voire de sa confusion radicale avec le système, avec le gouvernement, voire avec la population. Pour Solomon, la responsabilité des citoyens US est grande, parce qu’ils ont laissé se développer ce phénomène. D’ailleurs, eux-mêmes n’en sont-ils pas pénétrés ? — «Let's Face It: The Warfare State Is Part of Us». Effectivement, Solomon développe l’argument de la responsabilité collective, implicitement celui d’une psychologie collective infectée par un phénomène systémique qui, aujourd’hui, conduit la civilisation vers l’abîme.

«Political and personal histories are usually kept separate – in how we're taught, how we speak and even how we think. But I've become very skeptical of the categories. They may not be much more than illusions we've been conned into going through the motions of believing.

»We actually live in concentric spheres, and “politics” suffuses households as well as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “The World House.” Under that heading, he wrote in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

»While trying to understand the essence of what so many Americans have witnessed over the last half century, I worked on a book (titled Made Love, Got War) that sifts through the last 50 years of the warfare state... and, in the process, through my own life. I haven't learned as much as I would have liked, but some patterns emerged – persistent and pervasive since the middle of the 20th century.

»The warfare state doesn't come and go. It can't be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it's at the core of the United States – and it has infiltrated our very being.

»What we've tolerated has become part of us. What we accept, however reluctantly, seeps inward. In the long run, passivity can easily ratify even what we may condemn. And meanwhile, in the words of Thomas Merton, “It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.”

»The triumph of the warfare state degrades and suppresses us all. Even before the weapons perform as guaranteed.»

Mis en ligne le 23 août 2007 à 10H17