Out of the Cage

Tom Nairn

• After the Empire: The Breakdown of the American Order by Emmanuel Todd, translated by C. Jon Delogu
  Constable, 288 pp, £8.99, July 2004, ISBN 1 84529 058 5
• Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power by George Soros
  Weidenfeld, 207 pp, £12.99, January 2004, ISBN 0 297 84906 9

In some ways, millennium absurdity has not yet ended. Although the Dome reached oblivion in record time, a deeper dimension of fever, wild surmise and unhinged ‘radicalism’ has remained, greatly intensified since 11 September 2001. Its future was prepared by the non-election of George W. Bush in 2000, equivalent to the failed coronation of a pope in 1000. Simultaneously, the persistence of 1990s neoliberal science fiction (Homo economicus etc) provided some conceptual continuity for the usurper’s regime. Then, on the back of America’s reaction to the atrocities, teleportage was guaranteed to the planet of eternal terrorism, homeland security and the axis of good. All that was missing was an experimental test for this kingdom come, and now it has been supplied by Mesopotamia.