The Soul of America
How do you build the soul of a country? "The soul of America". To the soul of America appealed Joe Biden's campaign. How do you sew a nation? How can you get up day after day and still believe in your politicians when you are taught to hate them? How can you build a common project? What society can be free from hate? What can you give me an urn that I don't give myself with my work?
All these questions distress and despair millions of people. That is why Donald Trump and his populism scorched the United States in 2016. The rise of populism is based on the emergence of social tensions and ruptures that are always linked to complex processes of transformation. It is the age of identity struggle. The American dream has been shattered. The indices of poverty, inequality or racism have broken the idea of the world prevalence of the USA. Populism is always linked to the involvement of leaders like Trump and the assumption of platforms like the parties of these fanaticisms. Many will not explain how the Republican Party is now abandoning Trump's election fraud theses after bringing him into the White House in 2016. The reality is that they are now facing a split because the seed of right-wing populism has been supported by 74,223,744 votes, paying for the polarisation of society. The Republicans have filed suit to have the electoral fraud in several states investigated, thus supporting the president's conspiracy theory. The Republican Party, like those who have minimised the influence of a populist at the helm of a superpower, is complicit in the degradation of the US political system.
As Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky explain in 'How Democracies Die', the democratic system will not end with armed coups d'état as we envisaged in the 20th century. In the 21st century, in the name of anti-politics, it will be the delegitimisation of institutions, the disqualification of those who do not think as I do, the rejection of the rules of the democratic game as the result of elections, and the targeting of the media with accusations of promoting fake news.
The assault on the Capitol was intended to rob the American people of the opportunity to answer those same questions. To destroy the legitimate mandate of the ballot boxes that had decided to curb Trump's racism, denialism and isolationism. No one speaks louder and clearer than the citizens. When they attack democracy, they attack our way of life, our frustrations, our hopes. They attack the Capitol. They attack everyone. They assault themselves.
Those characters of "white America" who burst into the Capitol like a raging mob breaking windows and looting lecterns carry the flag and destroy it. In the age of the meme we tend to believe that we are in possession of the truth and that the rest are just madmen whose boredom leads them to follow the dictates of a character like Donald Trump. But we can no longer argue that the populists will disappear with the arrival of Joe Biden.
It is not only a question of the United States; all the world's democracies, like Spain, are suffering from the advance of populism due to the support of centre-right parties. The Trumpeters who disrupted Congress' ratification of Biden's election victory believe they are doing their country a service. They firmly believe that they must save the US from the evil interests of the political class, which is conceived as an elite; that electoral fraud has been committed; and that Marxism, socialism and all the isms want to take control of the country. They acquire their arguments from web pages that we can qualify as fake news. They are mostly extreme right-wing followers and white supremacists. Among them is Yellowstone Wolfe, the man with the horns, who belongs to QAnon, an extreme right-wing group that believes that several Democrats are behind a paedophile network and against Donald Trump and his followers.
We witnessed the attack on the world's largest democracy in disbelief. Mike Pence, who refused to reverse the election result, has broken with Donald Trump while the shadow of a swift impeachement or the application of the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office for incapacity falls on him. Precisely because of his proven ability to strain American society. Much to our surprise, a YouGov poll states that 45% of Republican voters approve of the assault on the Capitol.
How could we have believed, under the illusion, that Trump would be a bad memory? How much has democracy deteriorated? Trump's actions have been vital in fuelling populism, but it would be a grave mistake to ignore the feedback from his supporters to always take a step further.
How do we build the soul of a country? How do we get it back? Perhaps the only lesson we can draw is the unanimous and unwavering defence of democracy. The need to protect it from those who want to destroy it, from those who profit from the polarisation of societies, from the delegitimisation of institutions, from those inside or outside it who denigrate our political class with unworthy actions. May journalism be able to reflect on and point out those who contribute to whitewashing extremism, those who weaken our democracy. It wants to assume their faults and mistakes, it wants to take action and impose itself against tyranny. It wants to go beyond making fun of the Trump supporters of the world, it wants to report on their questions and help find the answers.