America. Группа авторов
murmurs: “You’ve come because you love Jimmy, correct?” Correct. She immediately gives us a guided tour. A few personal effects of the town’s famous child are displayed in glass cases: baby clothing, hand-written notes, drawings, letters, props from his movies. This somewhat laughable exhibit ends up being sublime and deeply moving.
Next, at the intersection of Adams and Vine, we look for the old school of the little genius, but we find nothing but a pile of rubble. The school no longer exists; it has just been demolished. Fans sometimes come to steal a brick, as a kind of lucky charm. S., who notices my disappointment, tries to make a joke: “It’s like the song by Isabelle Adjani: ‘you’re in a state near Ohio, you’re feelin’ low.’”
We finally head to the cemetery. It is vast, but nothing points to the grave, which is minuscule: a simple stone set on the grass next to a gravel walkway, alongside so many others, unimpressive, with two dates, the year of his birth and of his death. A few small pebbles placed on the top of the stone as an offering to the deceased, a faded bouquet of flowers, some potted plants. That’s all. We leave. My heart is aching.
As we approach Ohio, my thoughts slowly drift back to politics. I think about the fact that this is one of the famous swing states that gave Trump victory. In 2008 and 2012, Obama won it easily. But in 2016, the majority of the state went to the billionaire: the Republican candidate beat Hillary Clinton by nine points. He was dominant throughout the entire state, except in the three main cities: Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. The reasons for this about-face have been explained at length: this is the Rust Belt, the industrial region that was bled dry by the economic crisis and where people are finding it difficult to change jobs. The outcasts from the steel industry and coal mines naturally turned to the person who claimed he could save them. The farmers are also having trouble making ends meet and are repelled by the elites who don’t care about their fate: Hillary was a turn-off to them.
And, contrary to what we might think, enthusiasm for Trump has not waned. In Bridgetown, on the I-74, where we stopped for coffee, Michael, a forty-five-year-old longstanding Democrat, attracted by our French accents to the point of starting up a conversation, confirmed this: Trump is still appealing here. He tells us that in Youngstown, in the north of the state, a city that symbolizes the blue-collar working-class community almost to the point of caricature, twenty thousand people have just given a triumphant welcome to the president. Ordinary people, who call themselves patriots, who do not understand the stubbornness that rules their hero, who continue to find him different, “refreshing,” who still believe in the myth of “the true America that is suffering from the arrogance of Washington.” “These people exist, and they haven’t changed their minds,” Michael laments. “And yet, they will be the principal victims of Trumpism. Look at what is happening to Obamacare. If the Republicans manage to do away with it, these people will be very vulnerable.” I point out to him that that latest attempt to repeal it failed again a few days before. “They’ll try again. Trump is the kind of person who never gives in. And he isn’t interested in reality.”
It’s a return to reality, in fact, as we enter Cincinnati. We immediately realize we are in a close-knit community, where the black population is very large—nearly one resident out of two, according to official statistics. If it was pioneer country in the past, with time it has become more unassuming while remaining a home for immigrants and a center of industry. It prides itself on its impressive suspension bridge (not advisable for people who get vertigo, like me), and Fountain Square lies at the heart of the city.
Not very far away, on the corner of Fifth and Walnut Street, there are a handful of people waving signs that say “Black Lives Matter.” A young woman who notices my curiosity comes over and asks me whether I “support them.” I ask her to explain. So Melissa tells me about Samuel DuBose, a forty-three-year-old black man, killed two years ago by Ray Tensing, a twenty-five-year-old white police officer, when he stopped DuBose’s car. Tensing pulled out his gun and fired at close range because DuBose looked like he was about to drive off. DuBose was unarmed, and the cop normally wore a T-shirt with the Confederate flag on it under his uniform. The officer immediately pleaded self-defense, except that the video footage taken from the bodycam he was wearing radically contradicted his version of events. The first trial that took place resulted in a hung jury. A second trial ended in May 2017 with the same result, so the prosecutor has just decided to drop the case against the officer. “And so,” Melissa tells me, “you can kill black people with impunity in this city, in this country, risking nothing! We’re here to say that this is unacceptable.” Fewer than a dozen people are demonstrating. Melissa is preaching in a desert. Racism still has many happy days ahead. It remains the tragic failure of the Obama era.
Otherwise, life seems rather peaceful in this place. Happy, too, sometimes. The Below Zero Lounge sells blue and green cocktails, and when evening comes, drag shows feature performers with names like Mystique Summers or Divine Cher. S. and I sing karaoke, trying to perform “Finally” by CeCe Peniston, which turns out to be impossible. We are applauded for our “charming accents,” an elegant way of making us understand that our nationality is obvious and that karaoke is not for us.
Two days later, we’re back on the road heading to Kentucky, to the west of the Appalachians, the state that marks the boundary between the North and South. It is especially famous for being the birthplace of American whiskey.
On the radio, they are reporting the firing of the White House Director of Communications, the blaringly noisy Anthony Scaramucci, who had only been appointed ten days before. Ten days during which he had gotten the president’s chief of staff to resign and spoken with such dirty language that certain newspapers didn’t think they should quote him. (I have no such inhibitions: he said, “fucking paranoid” and “suck my dick.”) The general consensus is that chaos reigns in the White House. There is a blazing sun.
We stop in Carroll County. No one here is interested in the madness in Washington. Here, the subject of conversation is Jesus Chavez, fifty-six, a small business owner who runs a maintenance company. Chavez refused to pay a plumber he had just hired for a small contract, threatening to report him to the Department of Immigration on the grounds that he might be an illegal immigrant. The plumber went to the police and reported the blackmail. Chavez was arrested and put in prison for human trafficking. In brief, the worst of capitalism and the best of racism joined together in a single act, although some people seem to think that Chavez wasn’t wrong.
We don’t hang around. Even more so because a sign at the side of the road proudly proclaims that Kentucky has the greatest number of guns per capita. Frankly not very reassuring.
(Something funny: A little farther along, there is another sign, an ad this time, that catches our attention. An ad for Spotify. Scanning the news and reminding everyone of the Muslim Ban, the musical streaming service found a credo: “When people can’t travel, music will.” These two different Americas were only ten miles apart. Unless they’re actually the same America.)
A priori, Tennessee does not seem much more welcoming than Kentucky, when you remember that the state was one of the principle battlefields of the American Civil War, and that the Ku Klux Klan was born here in 1865, a result of the Confederate defeat. And when you also know that the very conservative Southern Baptist Convention dominates thinking here, and that Trump received 61 percent of the votes in 2016. And when you find out that just a few days before, a judge in White County suggested a deal that was at least unique (and probably unconstitutional) for people in jail in the county: thirty days taken off their jail time if they agree to have a vasectomy (for men) or to go on hormonal contraceptives (for women).
To avoid depression, we’re better off remembering that Tennessee is also the birthplace of country, rock, and the blues. And that Memphis, one of the two great cities in the state, is the home of Graceland, where Elvis Presley found eternal rest. And besides, commemorations are in preparation, for the King left this earth exactly forty years ago. Done in by too much alcohol, too many drugs, too much of everything, he ended life bloated, ridiculous, tragic. But here, you don’t make jokes about Tennessee’s idol. You speak of him with reverence. Warren, in his late sixties, wears worn-out cowboy boots and is having a few pints of beer at the bar. He asserts, with the look of someone who knows for sure but isn’t allowed to say how, that Elvis is, “of