Reflections of a stormy petrel

This is the first of my long-meditated series of articles about the deficiencies and corruption of the contemporary political system. I shall begin with American politics, for several reasons: because the largest number of LJ readers are American, because even those who are not have a deep interest in things American, and because - in my view - most people are more nearly wrong about American politics than about any other. Most Europeans, for instance, and many Americans, however little they may know about European politics, will have a perception that Berlusconi and Chirac are scoundrels and that Zapatero is an extremist; and those perceptions will be correct so far as they go. But they will also have a perception that President Bush is a religiously-motivated, dangerous and aggressive authoritarian who is out to squash American constitutional rights and international cooperation as far as he can; and this is as grossly and absurdly wrong as it gets. I report with astonishment that a lecturer in the University of Tubingen (one of the world’s leading universities) called George W.Bush, a member of the Methodist Church, a “Fundamentalist”, and did so as if the thing were too obvious to discuss. To anyone who knows anything about American religion, this is fantastic, and it gives us an idea of just how false the perception of America is in Europe. The corruption of the international mass media industry, after all, is itself part of the story I am going to try to tell. But let us begin with the American party system.

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