The Old Regime

To better understand what is taking place in the crazed politics of the United States, we must return to Nov. 3, late at night, when Fox News, usually a fierce Trump supporter, had the nerve to declare Joe Biden victorious in Arizona, where Trump had previously taken the win against Hillary Clinton in 2016 with a margin of more than 90,000 votes. This is some extraordinary irony considering that Fox and its owner, Rupert Murdoch, had profited enormously from the Trump phenomenon, and such a reversal in the Republican kingdom swiftly swept away the remaining hope that the president had — against all indications of the polls — of emerging as the winner.

Apparently furious, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, called Rupert Murdoch to protest against the new announcement made by his seeming allies. We do not know Murdoch’s response, but we do know that he did not back down; after midnight, despite Trumpists on Twitter claiming that Fox had made an error, the election analyst Arnon Mishkin appeared on set and drove it home: “Sorry, but the president will not be able to take the lead and win enough votes. We are not making an error in this particular case.”*

That is how celebrities crumble inside of the high-profile and degraded culture of America. A creature of television, Twitter, and previously, the gossip columns of New York, Trump was taken down by the most influential CEO in the Western world, as if it were straight out of a reality TV show. Trump even yelled, “The media is me!”* but capitalist reality has proven otherwise. Like the old movie star Gloria Swanson in the film “Sunset Boulevard,” Trump continued to admire himself in the mirror without realizing his makeup was hiding a withered face and a decreasing audience. The night of the election, Murdoch incarnated director Cecil B. DeMille, who, in the film, allows actress Norma Desmond to pay him a visit on set without the least intention of accepting her script or offering her a role.

I do admit that politics is not just a spectacle and that Trump was beaten by an opposition that is as fierce as his own supporters. It was right to detest certain individuals in the band of criminals who surrounded our lowlife in chief. Murdoch, for instance, is an arrogant publisher who never let himself get intimidated by the son-in-law of a mere president. I imagine that he laughed when he listened to Kushner’s desperate complaints, while he, the last baron of authentic journalism, celebrated his new scoop. In reality, it’s Murdoch and News Corporation who function as members of a “permanent government” more powerful than the “Deep State” threats incessantly brandished by the president.

It remains to be seen whether the more than 74 million Americans who voted for Trump represent a movement or an impulse. A great performer, cult leader or new head of the Republican Party, Trump has certainly ruined the political spirit of America. On the other hand, the popular rejection of the president for his gross behavior (in Arizona, it seems, for his repugnant insults against John McCain) could be seen as the dawn of a democratic rebirth. But I doubt it.

The dissolute egoism that deforms the public sphere of the U.S. did not begin with Trump in the White House; it is a symptom, not the cause, which dates back to the simplistic and anticivic attitude of Ronald Reagan (also an actor and big admirer of the extreme individualist Margaret Thatcher), as well as the extreme narcissism of Bill Clinton, who chased after women and campaign donations with the same enthusiasm. We are far from Jimmy Carter, the last president to have made a real effort to place the interests of the country before money, political parties and the American ideology of “manifest destiny” granted by God for our “exceptional” country. With all of his declarations about the America First! theme, Trump especially gave priority to his friends and family. His assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was in the Bush-Obama-Biden tradition and shows how little he cared about ordinary soldiers who suffered (with serious brain injuries) the consequences of Tehran’s response. The American military forces remain scattered all over the world, and Biden will not find a big change in the world order since his departure from power in 2017. Trumpist voters, seduced by the false populism of their hero, are still governed by the oligarchy that preceded him — Wall Street, the Pentagon, mainstream media, party leaders and now the second coming of the Obama administration.

Interviewed by Le Monde last year, the French leftist and nationalist Jean-Pierre Chevènement noted the challenge for a France subjected to Brussels bureaucracy; it is the same for America: “That which comes before everything else is the restoration of civicism; we must remake a population of citizens.” To do that, we must recognize that “popular defiance in regard to politics also comes from the fact that we refused to see the giant transfer of skills towards non-elected authorities who don’t owe anything to anyone.” It is not a restoration of the Old Regime that will bring back the long-lost self-determination.

Editor’s Note: This quote, though accurately translated, could not be verified.