Le sentiment de l’irrémédiable, le sentiment de l’irréalité et le discours de GW

Autre exercice d’appréciation du discours de GW Bush : quelle perception générale en avoir? Quel sentiment fondamental en retirer? Nous avons fait un choix de deux médias, complètement différents dans la forme, l’esprit, l’orientation, la tradition, — pourtant, surprise, si vous allez au fond des choses, vous vous apercevez que leurs réactions, sous des formes très différentes, ne sont pas très différentes. Y triomphent le scepticisme, le jugement abrupt, l’ironie, une certaine forme de mépris dissimulé. Nous dirions que le charme que dispense l’américanisme est bien mal en point.

• Le site WSWS.org ne fait pas dans la tendresse. Ses analyses sont bonnes, même si elles sont parfois encombrées de restes de slogans de la IVème Internationale. Dans ce cas, qui est celui du discours de Bush, l’analyse, — ce passage particulièrement — fixe la profondeur de la crise de l’américanisme.

«The media made much of Bush having for the first time to address a Democratic-led Congress, but the prevailing mood was not so much political confrontation as general bewilderment and apprehension, with the two parties confronting a military and political debacle in Iraq in which they are both fully implicated.

»A president who, as multiple polls released this week have underscored, is the most despised occupant of the White House since Richard Nixon at the height of the Watergate crisis, was treated to repeated standing ovations led by the new “Madam Speaker” of the House of Representatives, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

»However, the applause, backslapping and bathos that have become the norm for this annual political ritual could not mask the fact that the US political establishment is torn by deep divisions and bitter recriminations, with some of the sharpest opposition to Bush’s policies coming not from the newly empowered Democrats, but from members of his own party.

»There is a general recognition not only that the American colonial war in Iraq has failed, but that the six years of the Bush administration have produced a colossal decline in the world position of US imperialism.

»The “new way forward” spelled out by Bush in his speech less than two weeks ago has provoked mounting fears that the military escalation in Iraq, combined with threats against Iran and Syria, will only deepen the disaster. Yet the reaction of Congress resembles the paralysis of passengers facing an impending train wreck: They know what is coming but can do nothing to avert it.

• Si l’on prend le Times de Londres, on se dit que tout va être différent. Dans cette occasion solennelle, le vieux journal conservateur va retrouver son sens stratégique et son sentimentalisme churchillien, pour célébrer ce moment de gloire de la démocratie américaniste. A lire les premières lignes, on se dit que c’est le cas. Puis le sentiment change. On conclut rapidement : réellement, il s’agit d’un texte impitoyable, où l’ironie flegmatique le dispute à l’ironie méprisante.

«Even in less turbulent times, there is an endearing unreality to the State of the Union address delivered early each year by the US president to the congress.

»Every January or occasionally February, politicians who have spent the last twelve months accusing each other of just about everything from treason to pederasty (literally in the current case), nod solemnly and applaud loudly when the president speaks movingly of the power of bipartisanship to get the nation’s business done.

»Whatever traumas may be going on outside — war, pestilence, Depression, the wounded, angry complaints of insulted American Idol contestants — the president stands before the congress and the nation and says the state of the union has never been better.

»Then, with even more commendable chutzpah, he goes on to adumbrate a list of demands for legislation that congress must enact if the country is not to collapse — a list, that in all but the most favourable of political circumstances, stands only the slimmest chance of success.

»That feeling of unreality was heightened last night when Mr Bush delivered his sixth State of the Union. Of course the president was trying harder than ever to play his constitutional role as head of state, of uniter, not divider. With his approval ratings near all time-lows, Mr Bush’s was keen to reach out as far as possible into the centre-ground of politics. But still it was hard to escape the sense that the Capitol Building last night had entered a sort of parallel universe.»

Mis en ligne le 24 janvier 2007 à 13H34