“Trump was elected because he spoke to Americans about America. Kamala Harris spoke to black people about black people, gay people about gay people, women about abortionto Latinos of Latinos. Where was the country? In France it will be the same result. We need to talk to the French about France. » This diagnosis and this prophecy are signed Nicolas Sarkozy (at Rencontres de l'avenir). But what exactly does it mean “talk to Americans about America» et “from France to the French » ?
For Donald Trump, this means a very simple thing: pointing the finger at everyone who are not America and threaten it. Whether they are the enemies from above (the cosmopolitan elites), from below (the unproductive parasites), from the sea (migrants, potential thieves, rapists or eaters of cats and dogs), from within (the deep state) or even external powers (economic competitors or military adversaries).
A version of politics
Of punchlines (“shock phrases”) in images, from tweets to viral anecdotes, the candidate has methodically gridded the coordinates of space and drawn the substance of America from everything it opposes. This immune concept of the nation, inherited from biological life, is not new; it even has an intellectual genealogy. It is found in particular in the German jurist and philosopher Carl Schmitt (The Notion of Politics, 1932), which defines political life by the distinction between friend and enemy. No « soi » without the fight against a « you don't know » with which “I have to explain myself in order to conquer my own measure, my limit and my own form”. Polarization is therefore not a side effect of social networks or a symptom of the mediocrity of public debate, it is the very heart of this version of politics.
Whatever we think, this story will always find strong complicity in us. Because we are living, because we have an epidermis and are constantly fighting against what attacks us, the rhetoric of borders and integrity speaks to us immediately. Without understanding what is desirable in Trumpism, we will never create an alternative imagination.
Making the flesh of a country visible
However, there is another way to “talk about America” and France. But this other story is much more difficult to tell. Donald Trump's incredible talent as a storyteller would not be enough. Because we must succeed in making visible not the bark, the shell or the skin, but the flesh of a country. Being able to reveal what unifies it internally and not just what delimits it externally. “Patriotism is love of one’s own. Nationalism is hatred of others,” wrote Romain Gary. These “isms” have gathered dust but the question remains: what do we have in common?
However, it is not certain that we know how to answer it today. By centering the political offer on societal problems, category demands, intimate experiences and identities, the formula for our solidarity becomes obscured. Each singular demand tends to claim priority and we struggle to find an overall project which unites the causes by prioritizing them. Kamala Harris did not run a “woke” campaign, but these themes lingered in the air and stuck with the Democrats.
However, speaking to a voter means first seeing him as a citizen and not a Black, a Latino, a woman or a homosexual. It is revealing not what it East (his tastes and his origins which cannot be negotiated) but what he does for others and what others do for him. Cohesion is the product of action and all the interactions that firmly anchor us to the collective. As long as we do not know how to put words (and the right ones!) on the social contract in order to discuss it seriously, Trumpist software will retain its advantage.
