LE PAPE EN BELGIQUE

La visite du Pape en Belgique s'est déroulée dans une indifférence polie. 

Le Premier Ministre Alexander De Croo a heureusement mis les points sur quelques "i" qui situent be pays réel.

Il eut été judicieux que la famille royale se montre plus distante. Le pays est pluraliste et sans doute est-il devenu  majoritairementl laic. Il faut espérer que l'image de feu le Roi Baudouin ne devienne l'enjeu d'une récupération périlleuse.

Les propos du pape dans un pays ou les églises restent vides sont apparus souvent déconnectés des réalités. Ils étaient plus proches de Trump que de la charité.

MARCH 14 1939 REDUX , SEPTEMBER 27 2024

Dr. Emil Hacha, Czech State president met with Hitler who informed him that German troops were marching towards the Czech border. Under inhuman pressure Hacha fainted and had to be revived by injection. Early morning he had to place the fate of his country in the hands of the Fuhrer.

Yesterday, September 27, Trump met with President Zelensky in Trump Tower, another photo-op showing Trump on his most unappealing side. The Ukranian president looked uncomfortable and visibly marked by war and pressure. He must have thought that with "friend"s like Trump, he no longer needed enemies.

Hitler knew history, Trump is ignorant. Otherwise they are equally unpleasant.

The closer the presidential election comes, the more ominous the times we live in become. Difficult situations have been abundant in the past, but there were leaders who inspired and who lifted people out from becoming desperate. Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, Nelson Mandela were able to save their people from the collision of the tectonic plates. Today rogue leaders steer the same plates without a moral compass.  Zelensky is not tall like the MAGA king but he is still too large for his Russian nemesis to ignore.

It can be said that of all evil leaders, Trump is the most dangerous, since he has zero moral, historical or factual fiber. His lies and insults know NO borders. Putin & Co. are unpleasant and vicious but they know very well where the transgressions lead them. Trump is clueless or just oblivious of precedent.

If he were to win, the West had better run for cover and America for shelter. The current General Assembly of the UN gives a clear indication that we have entered the final agony of multilateralism. An aging Biden had the right words, again, but the noises elsewhere deafen the pertinence of a feeling that in the current circumstances feels hopelessly passé. Should we return to Spengler?

A PROPOS DES GARES A BRUXELLES

La Belgique et les gares... Du meilleur ( Anvers) au pire (Bruxelles) en passant par le contemporain (Liege).

Les gares du Midi et Nord sont des "égouts". Mème les trains, à l'étroit dans la jonction devenue trop étroite, gémissent.  Les chancres urbains autour s'étendent, sans que qui que se soit ne s'en émeuve. Le grand nettoyage épisodique à l' intérieur laisse le désastre à l'extérieur inchangé. La déterioration continue. Le voyageur qui entend arriver dans une capitale, va à la rencontre d'un enfer crasseux, voir mème hostile. 

On entend que plusieurs communes sont impliquées et que les travaux du metro fantôme ralentissent toute intervention. On dit que des démolitions de batiments vides( depuis toujours) sont prévues, qu'un bureau police sera installé et que le comfort des utilisateurs sera pris en considération (tiens). En attendant il faut attendre dans les courants d'air et essayer de trouver un taxi dans le terrain vague qui est supposé être une aire de stationnement.

On dit , à juste titre, que celà effraye autant l'homme d'affaires que le voyageur stressés, qui comparent leur misérable arrivée à d'autres situations dans les pays voisins.

Les "reonnaissances" du terrain par plusieurs ministres restent symboliques aussi longtemps qu'il n'y a pas de projet mobilisateur. Bruxelles, souffre déjà d'une réputation"crasse, brutalisme, pavés et petits travaux". Il est temps de tourner  la page . Les commentaire de W.G.Sebald dans son roman "Les Anneaux de Saturne" font mal parce qu'ils sont pertinents, hélas. Baudelaire a ses disciples.

THE RIFLE THAT DIDN'T FIRE.......fortunately

While Trump played his usual golf, he was stalked by an individual armed with a SKS semi-automatic rifle. The would-be shooter left a couple of bags on the fence which surrounds the golf course. A security guard noticed and he was arrested in due course. He has a somewhat blurred, contradictory record and is under arrest.

That he could get so close, carrying an assault weapon shouldn't come as a surprise since in certain states of the Union people walk their guns like their dogs. As could be expected, the MAGA crowd went ballistic and yet again nuance was the loser. President Biden called Trump and showed that his diminishing more persuasive powers did not come at the price of his responsibility as president and...gentleman. So did the vice-president.

The Republicans who are on the defensive try to capitalize on this incident, accusing the Democrats for the weaponization of the political discourse. This is ironic coming from the MAGA  Stormtruppe, who have taken the last remnants of a democratic  discourse hostage. There is no real Republican party any longer. Trump likes to give the role of Cruella de Vil to women he feels close too:  Kellyanne Conway, Sarah Huckabee and now Laura Loomer, probably the worse of this unattractive deranged lot.

Whatever the outcome of the elections, the future looks grim. There will certainly be an ugly aftermath. The MAGA crowd will fight if they lose and destroy if they win. Justice (with this Supreme Court) will be under attack, since Trump will still be a convicted felon. One way or another, all elements are put in place to contest, break or otherwise attack by all means till the "deep state" is defeated.

November will be gloomy, whoever wins. The Electoral College game is the cherry on the MAGA pie. The coming winter of discontent might as well be a season to beware of.

LES FORMATIONS EN BELGIQUE

Après les élections d'aucuns espérènt des formations rapides. Seuls les Wallons y sont parvenus. Flandre,Bruxelles,Fédération Bruxelles /Wallonie (c'est quoi ?), Fédéral attendent...La Belgique n'arrive plus à comprendre cet assemblage de pouvoirs, de paliers et de ministres, en surnombre. Les négotiateurs cherchent la quadrature du cercle dans une incompréhension générale. C'est à pleurer...

Tout le monde défend sa parcelle tandis que l'ensemble - finance, économie, défense, environnement, climat- qui devrait mobiliser une créativité "aérée" recule devant des priorités souvent sous-régionales.

Le Premier Ministre, en affaires courantes, boude. Bien que personne ne regrette son gouvernement, il a été une personnalité appréciée. Il lui manquait pourtant le savoir faire de son père.

Le formateur aura difficile à trouver des personnalités pour occuper des responsabilités-cléf  pour les Finances, l'Economie, la Défense, la Santé, les Affaires Etrangères, l'Environnement, entre autres. Il faut espérer que les chefs de parti n'interfèrent pas trop dans la composition d'une équipe qui doit prioritairement répondre au chef de gouvernement. L'impétuosité  de Gerorges Louis Boucher doit être controlée. Le pays n'est pas Mons.

Il est paradoxal de voir Bart De Wever dans le rôle de rassembleur. Il a pour lui l'intelligence et l'autorité. Encore faudra-t-il qu'il assume une dimension internationale ou mieux qu'il la réactive. Depuis Spaak et Dehaene, la Belgique a perdu sa crédibilité. Le choix de personnalités intellectuellement créatives pour occuper  des fonctions stratégiques est primordial.

Le modèle qui a été imposé au pays est aussi absurde que couteux. Le formateur qui porte pourtant une part de responsabilité dans ce "brol" est paradoxalement le mieux placé  pour en corriger les égarements.

TRUMP / Vance / CATS and DOGS

Trump's last "trip" into some Lewis Carroll-type of fantasy is relentless. His narrative has become so grotesque that more serious observers start to wonder if there is, perhaps, a strategy lurking in this pool of relentless madness.

The MAGA crowd loves it. The Republican leftovers shun it. The Democrats try to make sense of his view of America, wherein illegals feast on dogs and cats (and ducks) that are stolen from the god-abiding citizens in the heartland. His equally bizarre running mate J.D.Vance is busy imagining some Orwellian fantasy society divided in sociological strata of cat ladies, singles, grandparents, illegals, with specific tasks, allocations or often drastic punishment.

Trump has a soft spot for the charms of Orban. Le Pen starts to sound and act almost rational in comparison. It is tempting to consider his verbal outings as fodder but there might be a strategy in this. As much as Robert Kennedy Jr. pretends to have been victim of a worm that got in his brain, Trump unleashed legions of earworms in the midst of his braindead MAGA crowd. His flock doesn't react to the Antony Blinken/Michel Barnier style. Neither have unflattering outings by lonely Republicans have any effect. The image of the sinner descending his gilded escalator sticks with the believers.

Kamala Harris still considers herself the underdog. She is right because the feeling of joy and relief is not something that affects the terminally sick, who cling to fraudulent prescriptions, god and guns. Trump has been compared to Hitler. Wrong, the Fuhrer was intelligent and the evil he orchestrated was chillingly efficient. At the onset his fans were found in all government circles in Europe and the USA. Trump's bombast is more Mussolini-like although the Duce, till Munich, showed a historical (flawed) short-lived sophistication. Trump is a narcissist who will never inspire art or literature. No need to look elsewhere for his image than in the gutter.

The French have a tradition of critical vivisection. Today's Emily in Paris gives a totally fake image of a society lost in clothes, cholesterol and not amusing bons môts. The sex comes easy, after all that is supposed to be as French as the baguette. There is another France that specializes in the nouveau: from Beaujolais, cuisine, to philosophes.  The political, often brilliant, bitchy commentators reduce Trump to an American amuse-bouche, that is as indigestible as the American meal that will follow. Maybe, but the ache will not disappear with an Alka Selzer.

Trump is a man of the past, with a Hugh Heffner problem, a gaudy taste and a humorless family out of an Addams Family sitcom. If he were president again, the world might as well run for cover. His major announcements are frightening and his Freudian obsession with "strong" leaders betray more insecurity than self-confidence. He cannot stand Kamala Harris because she is all he is not:  fun, smart, cynical, creative, American in the tradition of Ernst Lubitch, Billy Wilder, Lauren Weisberger, Gore Vidal.

There is hope for cats and dogs after the elections. The cat ladies and grandparents will breathe, childless couples will no longer be stigmatized. People will feel free to walk their own path. America can regroup...maybe.

KAMALA HARRIS ' MASTERCLASS

Yesterday's debate was almost cruel, leaving Trump reduced to his usual fodder of lies.

Obviously America is "no country for old men". The previous debate became Biden's nightmare. This last debate left Trump an old man, unable to recognize the "traps" the Vice-President had in store. It is not hard to find out what rattles the ego of a self-obsessed neurotic individual who forgets the "lay" of whatever stands before him, as soon as he senses that the image of himself might be under attack.

Kamala Harris appeared the better prepared, the rightly informed, blessed with a sense of humor that slipped here and there into sarcasm. Since his inauguration eight years ago, Trump continues the same old story line about immigration and the decline of America. He is unable to enter introspection or a soliloquy since he became the warden of his persona.

The Vice-President talked for an American audience, knowing very well that the world at large was listening in. She projected a fierce assurance and a clear commitment, marking a return to the classical, experienced diplomatic toolbox, in full cooperation with allies. Trump couldn't resist another gaffe, bringing his "romance" with Orban to the fore. His illusions regarding his dealings with Putin are almost endearing.

Europeans will swap their sighs for an ah of relief. Others are on notice that America is back to normal. Taylor Swift had better hire more body guards...

If the trend continues one might hope for a Harris/Walz win in November. What will the MAGA commandos do? Given Trump's deranged mindset, it is better to prepare for the worse scenarios.

One should not forget that Biden is still president, fortunately. In every scenario he can be counted on for a gracious exit or for a muscled control,  so that things don't get out of hand. Most of all he should be thanked for a finish line where there are more achievements than failures.

HADJA LAHBIB ...HISTOIRE BELGE

Les tribulations autour de la désignation du commissaire Belge à la Commission de l'UE apportent une nouvelle fois une autre péripétie à la trop longue liste de gaffes, dont ce pays a le monopole.

Madame Lahbib, ministre des affaires étrangères, désignée, était déjà oubliée, avant mème de devoir quitter une fonction dans un Ministère qui ne l'a jamais appréciée. Il est vrai qu'elle reste tête de liste MR pour les élections communales à Schaerbeek.

Georges-Louis Bouchez président du MR a commencé son trajet politique en se faisant passer pour une personnalité providentielle. On a vite remarqué qu'il était surtout remuant et brouillon. Il a néanmoins réussi à désenclaver la Wallonie de l'étreinte socialiste, responsable des problèmes structurels qui ont enfoncé la région dans une stagnation permanente. Il eut peut-être mieux fallu qu'il se calme et qu'il règna sur Mons, plutôt que de prétendre être le "faiseur" à Bruxelles.

Bon, voilà Ursula van der Leyen obligée de trouver un portefeuille pour une candidate qui n'a pas l'étoffe. A l'instar d'autres partis, le MR est devenu anémique. La mouvance libérale a pourtant compté  des personnalités hors pair dans ses rangs. Armand De Decker était sans doute le dernier grand libéral. Didier Reynders, grand sacrifié, est une personnalité remarquable.

Déjà on oublie qu'il y a encore un Premier Ministre et un gouvernement. C'est dire combien l'ingratitude sévit.  Si Alexander De Croo est déjà gommé , Madame Labhib n'a jamais existé. 

Ce choix peu providentiel est une nouvelle preuve du provincialime des chefs de parti en Belgique qui n'arrivent plus à envisager un ailleurs autre que leur intérèt propre. Au demeurant leur influence et pouvoir vont à l'encontre de la lettre et de l'esprit de la constitution.

Dire que la Belgique a compté dans le passé des personnalités d'envergure, type Dehaene, laisse morose. Il faut que la relève se manifeste et que Thomas Dermine ne s'enterre pas à Charleroi...