This summer, we went for a walk with Patricia. She needed to get some fresh air. She is 94 years old, has lived in the same small house for over sixty years, west of Detroit, Michigan. She lost her immediate memory, that of the last days, of the last hours, but not of her life. That day, the easiest way was to go to the alleys of Fairlane, a former property of the American industrialist Henry Ford. This vast mansion on the banks of the Red River with a park all around has long been open to the public. The local Versailles.
Fatigue coming quickly, we had to find a bench. The closest one was in the rose garden, easy to distinguish, since a life-size bronze of Henry Ford and his wife Clara contemplating their roses, occupies the right side. Patricia stiffened. 1 meter from the bench, she looked coldly at the statuary couple and said: “They hated us. » We ? “The people of Detroit. Those who worked in their factories. » She didn't move. She had to sit down but she didn't want to be near them, just like they would never want to be near her.
Today, Patricia does not know that Donald Trump the billionaire has been elected president of the United States once again. She has already forgotten it. But suddenly his memory seems the strongest of all. More solid than those of the countless workers in Michigan, the neighboring states of Ohio or Pennsylvania who believed that Trump was interested in their fate, more solid than those of the voters of Missouri who, while voting for the Republican candidate, demanded, through a local referendum, an increase in the minimum wage which was only included in the Democratic program. Also more solid than that of Kamala Harris, who spoke of Trump as an anomaly. “It’s not us,” launched the Democratic candidate during her last meeting. And yet, yes.
A country obsessed with conquest
Trump is not an aberration in the American landscape. It is even the pure product of it. He didn't invent anything, unlike Henry Ford or Steve Jobs, built his legacy into the golden towers of real estate and television in the 1980s, but it's enough to embody success. And she is the driving force of this country obsessed with conquest. She, the dream of gold prospectors and all the populations who came here in search of prosperity. She, who is responsible for very rich people having their names inlaid in capital letters in every room of museums, as well as on the pediments of hospitals. She, who finances and contains democracy with millions of dollars. Again and again it drips onto the huge billboards that line the highways where lawyers with superpowers promise to defeat the adversary, whoever they may be.
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