A PROPOS DU CONGO !

Il n'y a pas de colonialismes heureux.

L'histoire du Congo, de Leopold II a l'independance (et apres), est une enumeration d'exploitation et de vexations qui ont contribue a creer une mythologie du mal.

Le roi des Belges vient d'assumer publiquement ce lourd negatif. Il est remarquable que ces regrets aient rencontre un large appui dans la classe politique et dans la population. Cela constitue un indicateur de maturite existentielle. Il est remarquable qu'en Belgique, pays fracture, en deconstruction permanente, il reste malgre tout une culture d'approbation et d'indignation collectives. 

Reste a voir comment cet acte, en marge de l'anniversaire de l'independance de la Republique Democratique du Congo,  sera suivi de mesures plus tangibles, voir meme de reparations et restitutions agrees par les parties concernees. 

Il faut que la convalescence beneficie de la reflexion et de l'equite. Sans doute le propos du roi Philippe contribuera-t-il a favoriser le grand rapprochement qui n'a que trop attendu. Le president Congolais Felix Tshisekedi sera un interlocuteur exigeant mais juste. Le Congo le merite, la Belgique peut faire mieux.

WHAT WOULD SPENGLER HAVE SAID ABOUT THIS CURRENT WORLD BREAKDOWN ?

The larger picture of our future outlook is overtaken by a myriad of repetitive arguments. The Covid-19 is turning the page of the world as we know it and we are adrift on a Medusa raft, with no captain, and no Gericault to take a snap shot for eternity.

It becomes deceptive to witness or hear a myriad of comments, fake news and trivial pursuits, while the hard consequences of this pandemic are reduced to trivia and statistics. The needed enlightened political scientists or philosophers are almost absent from the discussion. The future of so many, who risk losing their livelihood, becomes ad naseam the fodder of play- back debates. Unfortunately, the total breakdown of macro and micro political institutions remains mostly the taboo in the room. A succession of failures and unconvincing betterments are supposed to act as placebos. Most governments look foolish. Some, in the first place the Trump administration, are immoral.

The future requires major engineering. Individual states will have to review how to balance decentralization, which went too far, with early centralized control. The new challenges (climate, health, hybrid warfare, perverse forms of racism, rise of the ultra-right, environment) need efficient, aggressive therapies early on.  Existing multilateral clusters have become voyeuristic onlookers, unable to arbitrate between opposing self-interests. The re-opening of the borders in the EU is already a sham...

It is time to realize that there is currently no end in view. Even if the pandemic could be brought to a standstill (when?), the social/economic Armageddon is here to stay. A major depression is coming.  Governments still resort to mostly "paternalistic" band-aid policies that fail to cure the disease. Unemployment will increase,  more low end jobs will be hard to come by, social/medical ills will multiply. In Europe the EU lost the battle for hearts and minds. The UN feels irrelevant. NATO's former ambition to create a renewed mission statement is extinct. Trump killed America's role in the world, besides presiding over the Corona killing fields of his own making. 

In this non-heroic stalemate of fools, the world is like a patient in the emergency room. There is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt who could lift the world out of the nightmare. Leaders are too selfish or too inconsequential. At this stage, individual governments had better concentrate on getting out of the slump first. The rise of a nefarious Right might further infect the body mass if  proper treatment is not applied fast. If countries continue to indulge in French-type 4th Republic policies, the arsonists will set the house on fire. After all, there is no de Gaulle in view either. 

Probably we will soon have a new Houellebecq novel which will  yet again set the record of our descent into hell right. It has been said that nothing dates like excess but now we are entering the age of rage, a civil boiling point that will be hard to contain if the proposed remedy does not live up to the frustration. George Floyd was not a perfect man. His murder  redeemed him and made him the torch bearer for an existential awakening.

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT and BLACK LIVES MATTER

It is difficult to imagine a more timely statement for the current mood than Basquiat's" defacement" painting, related to the death of Michael Stewart in 1983 who died from injuries incurred while in police custody in New York City.

Western societies are reeling after the images out of America obliged them to review their own anomalous past and current denials. The soft revisiting of the colonial times, the cautious admittance of past "mistakes" are no longer enough. Cotton balls do not mute the screams.

The blatant and the indirect racial slurs and patterns of behavior (so rampant in the bourgeois West) are totally out of place and time. History will have to be adjusted to facts rather than be an auxiliary to a perverse faulty discursive narrative.

Art was able to make clear statements wherein the horror no longer needed subtitles. Goya, Picasso, Warhol, Gerhard Richter don't need translation or commentary. 

The racial malaise today is related to many causes, be it slavery, discrimination or colonialism. It is difficult to come to terms with evils that were part of the "past normal" before they became the "current scandal". The American founding fathers had slaves. Whole societies were built on discrimination by law. Colonial exploitation was seen as a pedigree.

In Europe, the figures of Cecil Rhodes and Leopold II stand out among their many unsavory peers. No colonial story is a happy one. The past must nevertheless be re-examined and reparations should be considered in a multilateral agreed-upon fashion under UN supervision.

In Belgium the statues of Leopold II are becoming the targets of protest. However it is clear that a few vandals are trying to infiltrate protest and hijack the bona fide grief of the many. This cannot be tolerated and should be dealt with accordingly. The sound of broken glass has a very bad historical echo and protesters should stay safe from perverse associations.

What happens with the overabundant statuary of Leopold II is a matter of common sense--weighted by decency and historical accuracy--not by numbers. 

EEN ANDER BELGIE ?

Er beweegt iets in Belgie. De Covid 19 crisis heeft secundaire gevolgen.

Recente ontwikkelingen  hebben geleid tot een bewustwording van een gevaarlijke bestuursfaling. Het Belgisch model werkt niet. Het multiplicator effect van kieskringen, besturen en Excellenties heeft elke geloofwaardigheid ingeboet. Belgie is internationaal overgekomen als de evenknie van Brussel, inconsequent. Dat eerste minister Sophie Wilmes er toch nog in geslaagd is om de toestand ( zij het op ongelijke manier) te beheersen verdient alle waardering. Zij is Snowwhite , omringd door de 7 absurde dwergen, die de Belgische puzzle moeten voorstellen.

De partijen die nu het confederalime aanbevelen verdedigen een onhoudbare allegorie. Zij bekennen vooral kleur in hun cultuurvoorstel. Zij willen een "allochtoon" Vlaams verhaal  officialiseren dat een eng, reducerend provincialisme bevoordeligd. De "Servische"vleugel van de N-VA (Homans, Demir en Co.) en Vlaams Belang bevinden zich duidelijk in een soort Heimat fantasie, die een  regressief Vlaams epos voorstelt. Voor deze strekking stelt Belgie een belegerd Sarajevo voor. De PS /SP and de Liberale zuil zien het anders...

Een opklaring kan inderdaad komen uit de PS/ SP en MR, die nu een aantal taboes proberen uit de weg te krijgen . Dit houdt niet in dat men terugkeert naar een unitair model. Herfederalisering en deconcentratie a la carte moeten wel kunnen worden doorgelicht, over de hoofden van een aantal dubieuze belangen heen.

In de Morgen spraken Luc Tuymans, Tom Lanoye en Tom Barman over de teleurgang van de beschaving in  het populistich DNA binnen rechts Vlaanderen. De cultuur wordt er gedegradeerd tot folklore met een regionale kleur. Vlaanderen vakantieland begint gevaarlijk de weg op te gaan van een soort familie Trapp saga met xenofobe accenten  ! De zangfeesten worden uit de oude doos gehaald terwijl de wereld kiest voor hip hop en rap.

Het wordt een hete politieke zomer. Belgie moet zijn beleidsformule afslanken. Het status quo bevriest een verstandelijke stagnatie die alleen maar de belangen dient van een rechts  gedachtengoed in Vlaanderen en van een absurd bestuur in Brussel. Vroeger kwam de vernieuwing uit Vlaanderen. Nu komt ze misschien opdagen uit een onverwachte hoek, vooral uit frans sprekend Belgie en uit de SP/ PS/ MR. Het wordt uitkijken naar een Georges Louis Bouchez - Conner Rousseau / Paul Magnette axis... De versleten, falende politici moeten eindelijk  een rationeel alternatief overwegen  ... "it is over " ! Het is tijd voor een sobere, efficiente herschikking !

TRUMP AND THE BIBLE

Moses carried the Ten Commandments. Trump appropriated the Bible. He crossed Lafayette Park in full Fuhrer mood, after  the peaceful protesters had been dispersed, military style.  Surrounded by the usual crowd of the blind and the faithful, he embraced law and order, yet again putting himself, extemporaneously, in the center of the narrative. 

His "silent majority" bluff might work out after all.  His base prefers the flexing of the muscles over the soul searching of a country in shock. If Trump's behavior is nauseating, the weepy reaction of the Democrats is often unconvincing. Black lives deserve a better script.

The reality is that the racial fault-lines in America run deep. The occasional appearance of a healer--Presidents Johnson, Clinton, Obama, Dr. Martin Luther King--or a man with better intentions--George W. Bush--gives some hope, but too much bigotry and prejudice remain standing in the way of upward mobility or social harmony.

This current episode has repercussions worldwide. The "American Dream" is seen as being on life-support, entering the final phase. The bankrupt casino owner of Atlantic City and his mafia entourage have killed the American saga. 

The world at large does not do that well. Other populist Golems proliferate. Europe has problems of its own. The immigration fiasco (with the exception of Germany) is a stain which appears to becoming structural. Nevertheless the original six founders of the EU are trying to come to terms with the situation.  

Europeans are also asking themselves if the alliance with the US is still worth the expense. There is nothing that compels solidarity or empathy with an American administration obsessed with self-aggrandizement and devoid of cultural and historical empathy. The days of the Nixon/Kissinger pax Americana, cynical but sophisticated, are long gone. 

The growing divide between the EU and the US leads to a  dangerous breaking point. An alarm bell should ring when divergence starts to take the form of a snub. Europeans have to come up with an alternative instead. Americans are not the first to have made the wrong choice.  Sobriety recommends that the "we are different" is a better argument than the "we know better". There is a tide in world affairs, after all. Europeans should pause, concentrate on their own priorities and be on hold. In case the American culture war makes a further turn for the worse, a readjustment can still be considered. It is better to be aware of what might be coming  rather than to to be unprepared. 

If Trump & Co were to be re-elected, new drastic unilateral decisions might be expected. I doubt that they would be arriving after a previous early warning courtesy call. They will be rude by habit, pathological by nature. Imperial America was over-extended. Trump's provincial America will be further under-extended. Better be prepared for worse things to come if the current American mindset perdures. The Entente cordiale between the US and Europe might well become a bygone.