Le Cirque du Soleil, American style
A French journalist’s view of the conventions in Milwaukee and Chicago
Adrien Jauime: From hot dogs to Orwellian darkness
I bought a copy of today’s Le Figaro at a tabac store in Vence this morning and spent a couple of hours reading just one article.
It was a two-page spread by the newspaper’s veteran Washington correspondent, Adrien Jauimes. The title was « De Milwaukee à Chicago, les deux conventions on mis en scène les fractures américaines. » From Milwaukee to Chicago, the two conventions stage the American fractures.
Here is a paywalled link:
With help from Apple Translate on my iPhone, I was able to photograph and translate the article as needed. I started it at a café in Vence and finished here the dining room of my friend Flip Morse’s villa.
I had hoped a close reading of the story would reveal the journalist’s preference in the Presidential election that will take place in 70 days.
Instead, I found a beautifully written piece that began with humorous bits—food is the same at both conventions: « Hot dogs et Cóca-Cola pour les républicains, Pepsi-Cola et hot dogs four les démocrates »—and ended darkly.
Jauime noted how, between the major addresses and wildly varying tastes in music, each convention made use of « le Jumbotron » to portray the other party’s nominee in sinister images that were booed by the thousands of attendees.
He compared these moments to the « minute de la haine » (minute of hate) in George Orwell’s novel 1984. In the book, it’s actually two minutes of hate, not one, in which party members are required to watch a film depicting enemies of the party, particularly one Emmanuel Goldstein, and to express their hatred.
“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hâte was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in,” Orwell wrote. “Within thirty seconds any pretense was always unnecessary.”
“Les deux camps sont désormais réunis par la peur,” Le Figaro’s correspondent wrote. Both sides are now united by fear.
And so it follows that the campaign slogans of 2024 literally call for combat.
The Republican convention echoed Trump’s fist-accompanied words that he shouted after the assassination attempt—“Fight! Fight! Fight!
Harris embraced as her motto, “When we fight, we win!“
For an American in peaceful Provence, it’s a sobering view with worldwide implications. Or, as Le Figaro’s writer put it, « un spectacle planétaire. »