CONNECT: So, no weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, Donald? My, my, what a shock, awesome, really! Not that it matters, of course. Frightening the electorate by demonising the enemy is a well-tried way to get the public behind you. Even outrageous lies, such as those whispered by the Ku Klux Klan about black people's "animal instincts", can be most effective.
In fact, in the summer of 1923, the KKK claimed more than a million members. The outfit's then head honcho - its Imperial Wizard - was a dentist named Hiram Evans. Originally a social club formed in 1866, the Klan rapidly degenerated into anti-black terrorism and was disbanded in 1869. It was revived in 1915 by William Simmonds, a preacher.
By the time of Simmonds's revival, the Klan was adding new targets. It still loathed blacks, of course, but in violent "defence" of white, Protestant supremacy, it also, after the first World War, targeted Catholics, Jews, socialists, communists and foreigners.
"The Klan," wrote Evans in 1926 in the North American Review, "has come to speak for the great mass of Americans of the old pioneer stock. The mass, it must be remembered, has to be distinguished from the intellectually mongrelised 'liberals'."
The America George Bush represents includes practically all the traditional KKK states. It is the Sunbelt minus California: the old Confederacy plus the mountain states and the prairie. It has roughly half the population of the US. Such is the Bush administration's aggression and clannishness that it can't be easy being an "intellectually mongrelised liberal" in the US in 2003.
Certainly, the Democrats seem afraid to tackle Bush. Perhaps they understand American history and the fury of the forces opposing them. They may, recalling the hard Right's sordid witch-hunt of Bill Clinton - an attempted political lynching, really - be wise to lie low. On the other hand, they may be simply cowardly.
Then again, it could principally be a matter of timing and now is not an ideal time for any intellectually mongrelised liberal to tilt at Bush. Problem is, of course, that closer to the November 2004 US presidential election, Bush, in order to woo any waverers, might decide to target another country in his "war on terror". Iran is being warned now.
Bush has already attacked Afghanistan, Iraq and, through legislation, not arms, the United States itself. All of this has been done in the name of "democracy", a euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism. The US Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, allows the government the right to tap phones and computers and spy on people. The FBI now has power to seize records of citizens' library borrowings and book purchases.
Cliff Carter, a former Night Hawk of the KKK once declared: "all hyphenated groups, whether they be Negro-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Catholic-Americans, Italian-Americans or whatever, must become American-Americans or leave the country. The Ku Klux Klan is an American-American organisation."
George Bush's administration wishes to be the most American-American ever. It is not, in fairness, the Ku Klux Klan. But its closeness - its geographical oneness, its leader's fundamentalist Protestantism, his gang's conviction that it owns America, its distaste for "intellectually mongrelized liberals" and its attitude towards "foreigners" - ensures that a whiff of the KKK's spirit, albeit diluted and less atavistic, pervades American power at present.
Consider the loathsome patronising of Iraqis. The attitude that tells Iraqis they have been "liberated" and that, of course, they are civilised people, well able to govern themselves - with, you understand, a helpful nudge or two in the right direction - is eerily reminiscent of the attitude of Dr EP Pruitt, former Grand Dragon of the Federated Klans of Alabama.
In a 1954 speech in Georgia, Pruitt proclaimed the KKK's abiding altruism: "the Klan don't hate nobody," he said. "In fact, the Klan is the good nigger's best friend. If the nigger will devote his energies to becoming a better, more useful nigger . . . he will reap the rewards of industry, instead of the disappointments of ambition unobtainable!"
Pruitt, with his vile vocabulary and obnoxious condescension, was particularly keen that blacks did not vote.
"Let the nigger be wise in leaving the ballot in the hands of a dominant, sympathetic race," he said in the same speech. The largely successful effort to keep blacks off the voting rolls in Florida, in order to favour Bush, strikes a ringing note.
In one sense, America's civil war never really ended. The losing South seethed and begat the likes of the Ku Klux Klan. The resurgent South uses some of the KKK's techniques and, with the help of the events of September 11th, 2001, begat the current administration's agenda. It's true that Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell are black and close to Bush. Neo-conservative Jews are influential too.
But a defining trait of the current White House is a proprietorial attitude towards America and, increasingly, the world. "We have produced a sane and progressive conservatism along national lines," wrote Hiram Evans. Eight decades later, his words strike another ringing note. The US, you have to fear, is being lynched by lies embedded in its own unresolved history.