This summer we went for a walk with Patricia. I needed to get some fresh air. He is 94 years old and has lived in the same small house for more than sixty years, west of Detroit, Michigan. He lost his immediate memory, that of the last days, of the last hours, but not of his life. That day, the easiest thing was to approach the alleys of Fairlane, former property of the American industrialist Henry Ford. This large mansion on the banks of the Red River with a park around it has long been open to the public. The local Versailles.
Tiredness came quickly and we had to find a bench. The closest was in the rose garden, easy to spot, as 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, he looked coldly at the statuesque couple and said: “They hated us. » Us ? “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 billionaire Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States again. She has already forgotten. 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 destiny, more solid than those of the voters of Missouri who, voting for the Republican candidate, demanded, through a referendum local, an increase in the minimum wage that 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” the Democratic candidate launched during her last meeting. And yet, yes.
A country obsessed with conquest
Trump is not an aberration on the American landscape. It is even the pure product of it. He didn’t invent anything, unlike Henry Ford or Steve Jobs, he built his legacy on the golden towers of real estate and television in the 1980s, but he is enough to embody success. And she is the driving force of this country obsessed with conquest. She, the dream of gold seekers and all the populations that came here in search of prosperity. She, who is responsible for very rich people having their names embedded in capital letters in all museum rooms, 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 lining the roads where super-powered lawyers promise to defeat the adversary, whoever it may be.
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