Lance Armstrong : a metaphor for America

     There was much indignation and outrage when the seven times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong was deprived of its titles and was imposed a lifetime ban from the sport by the US Anti-Doping Agency. A self-styled hero and survivor from cancer, Lance Armstrong has been hailed an ideal role model for many years, fulfilling the American public's need for heroic figures. Now that the myth is destroyed, a new picture is emerging: the incredible success story of a carefully designed organization that masterminded many procedures in order to fool the attention of the testing system in order to create a myth, a living legend. This story reminds us of the faultless sophistication of Hollywood movies; it also reminds us the phoney factories that some proud communist guides could show to gullible western visitors in the Soviet Union of old; it is also reminiscent of the doping programs systematically imposed by East Germany to its athletes. This estrangement from reality is a quite worrying sign: that America has sold its soul and inner strength to a system of lies and deceit that actually restricts its own potential rather than developing it. 

Indeed, it seems that in our world of simulacres where truth and falsehood are intrisincally intermixed, where the only thing that matters is the adequate formatting of the 'real world' persons and events into the two-dimensional format of television or of the Internet, it does not matter much, after all, whether heroism is acquired through effort and honesty or by an extravaganza of special effects ranging from Photoshop to biocybernetics. However, as Abraham Lincoln once said, you cannot fool all the people all the time, and the fabric of illusion has to crumble at some point, leaving all those who believed in it bitter and disappointed.

As usual in those circumstances, public indignation was directed towards Lance Armstrong. With some reason, given the extent of the fraud and the lack of empathy Armstrong exhibited towards his infuriated supporters. However, in spite of its evident guilt, Armstrong obviously endorsed the traditional role of a scapegoat. In the comparative history of religion, scapegoats are a well attested phenomenon whereby a person carries on its shoulders the guilt and the sin of a community. Naturally, the members of such a community are all the more indignated by the scapegoat as it carries, in fact, its own failures. The scapegoat serves as a mirror where the crowd can contemplate itself, for the better or more frequently for the worst. It is then ironic to see infuriated mobs attacking isolated public figures whose only sin is, after all, to have adopted the rules of their game and to have followed them to their most extreme logic.  

Besides his own real lies and guilt, Lance Armstrong must then be seen as he really is: a metaphor for America. The very word "Armstrong", indeed, eerily sounds like an alternative name for it, as it remembers us of the biblical passages concerning 'the strong arm of the Lord.' It is perhaps not a coincidence that Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon, and that he died the very same week that Lance Armstrong was convicted. A strong arm for enforcing the long enduring ideals of freedom and prosperity - this could be the definition of America, of which Armstrong would be a metaphor in shortcut. It is a sociological, almost metaphysical postulate, that everything that reaches public consciousness reflects the current state of the Nation, and this scandal is no exception.

Indeed, the number of similarities between Armstrong and America is striking, in the sense that America is more and more becoming a fake, at least compared to the ideals it is supposed to follow. For lack of time, I can just but sketch a few arguments in support of this idea:

1) Civil Liberties

First of all, America has posed for many decades as the leader of the free world. Indeed, the struggle for civil rights has given good fruits. However, the simultaneous rise of technology, bureaucracy and security risks has led to some serious encroachments to civil liberties; there are many, perhaps too many, ressources on the Internet and elsewhere presenting them, and I will leave it at that. Hence a worrying discrepancy between the ideals and reality.

2) The 'War on Terror'

A diplomacy is not only an instrument to preserve national interests abroad and to ensure good relations with allies. It must also be a tool to convey and enforce the ideals a country is supposed to embody. In the case of the  "War on Terror", the US Diplomacy has tried to apply the same old politics as in the past, relying to much on the military at the expense of a more general approach. It tried to revive to some interesting old methods: to invade a country led by an authoritarian regime, and to implement democracy, prosperity and human rightst. The only problem is that this policy works only in a restricted case of countries, i.e. those led by secular authoritarian regimes, and not, for instance, for Irak and Afghanistan. While many Irakians were relieved by the fall of Saddam Hussein, they were also appalled at the sight of a bloody civil war which knows no end. As for Afghanistan, the Talibans are gaining in strength and popularity. Those half-successes (or failures) are indeed the result of an ill-advised conception of 'nation-building', which despises the cultural and religious factors as much as it does not provide adequately for the betterment of material conditions. Moreover, it seems that war itself has become more and more spiritual (bellum spirituale), and that America is simply taking no notice of it. In short, the US Diplomacy and Military are simply out of synch with the current state of the world, in spite of the hundred of millions spent (or wasted) by the American universities to provide a correct account of the world situation. They are inebriated by their past successes, and just implement the same old techniques with some fringe tactical innovations. As Gen. Welsey Clark put it: if the only tool you have is a big hammer, every problem looks like a nail. I must add that I have much respect for the US military, and that the much needed reforms must be implemented first within this institution. The big hammer must become a Swiss knife.

3) Arms and violence. 

I, for one, am strongly in favor of the Second Amendment supporting the right to bear arms. It is so distinctively American that it cannot be suppressed overnight; it expresses the American values of independence and civism since the militias of the Independence War. But statistics remains alarming, as everyone knows.

For instance,129,817 shops are legally recognized firearms vendors (Source), while there are 36,569 groceries (Source) in America. Drawing a comparison with Switzerland, where the right to bear arms in the context of a militia army is enshrined in art.58 of the Swiss Constitution, Swiss firearms (2.3 millions) have caused 241 deaths in 2010, mostly suicides (222), slightly less than in 2008 (239 suicides on 259). It then takes 121.052 firearms in Swiss for a murder.

By contrast, the US firearms roughly represent 270 millions units, for 11.078 homicides by guns in 2010. The US ratio is then 24.372 US firarms for a murder, roughly five times less. While we have originally the same political context, i.e. the principle of a militia army, the right to bear arms for personal and national defence, the background sociology and ideology of the United States makes it a more violent society. In the wake of the Newtown killings, which have by the way a symbolic meaning nobody has really seen, it seems that both the pro and the anti NRA are wrong: the right to bear arms is indeed a distinctive mark of the US, and must not be abrogated except to gain popularity by demagogic means; the problem is much deeper, and consists in an general imbalance in the American psyche which is much more difficult to correct.

4) The economy: the US economy is still the first in the world. But until when? Some say 2050, other 2030, other again 2016. the newspapers: as time passes by, the deadline becomes closer and closer. And will then come the time of India, Brazil, Nigeria, a possible Arab Federation, and so on... 

And this economy is founded on quite shaky grounds. There are exactly zero mobile phones that have been manufactured in America. From December 2007 to December 2009, the US economy lost around 89,000 manufacturing jobs every month. In 1979, manufacturing kept nearly 20 million Americans employed - compared to 12 million now. 

And of course there is the debt: 16 trillions, a figure that has doubled during the two last presidencies, and that is now larger (104%) than the US economy itself. 46% percent of the publicly held debt are held by foreigners, and 8% by China.

And there are the famous credit derivatives which have transformed the world financial system in a gigantic casino. Those credit derivatives (which are, roughly said, titrized insurances on speculation) represents the insanely irresponsible figure of 1.5 quadrillion dollars, many times the planet's estimated GDP. They have caused the downfall of Bear Stearns, Countrywide, Northern Rock, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Merrill Lynch, and Wachovia; they have deeply shaken the financial basis of J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York, Mellon, Deutsche Bank, Société Générale, Barclays, RBS. Those derivatives, "financial weapons of mass destruction"(Warren Buffet) are at the heart of the current crisis and may cause the world financial system to collapse overnight, causing the biggest economic crisis the world has ever seen, surpassing many times the 1929 crisis.

5) Another sign that America has become a joke is the relation to religion. America is supposed to be 'a nation under God.' American leaders pledge an oath on the Bible. But, for instance, let us read Acts 12:20-25, where Herod is struck by God's angel for not having given glory (praise) to God. How many US leaders have really given God glory, even by merely paying lip service? And I will not even bother to mention some Jesus' sayings such as "turn the other cheek" or "you cannot serve both God and Money."

In fact, the rift between secular studies and science on the one hand and the religious population has been growing year after year; moreover, atheism is on the rise to unprecedented levels. This latter fact is very worrying and is a sure sign that something wrong is under way: beyond the secular / religious dispute, it shows that America is gradually losing faith in herself, and that her collective dream is somehow at threat.

My guess is that something has been missed in the 2000s (for instance, solving the conflict in the Middle East), and that America will perhaps pay the hard price for it. Or even before, perhaps in the 1990s, when the fall of the Soviet Union immensely relieved the country at the expense of its awareness and discipline. 

In short, there is now a growing discrepancy between the current state of America and its image as well as its ideals. To fill the gap and to artificially maintain America's image and power, many short-term fixes have been found, such as a massive debt, fiat money, reliance on China and Japan, huge military expenses. Those very unsound policies are nothing else but the political equivalent of Lance Armstrong's elaborate doping program. We are left with a worrying question: is Armstrong's fall from grace a prelude to America's downfall?