However the European experience of this is decidedly mixed.  It can just as easily lead to Fascism and ever greater wars as the ruling and middle classes seek to destroy the momentum for revolution within by creating and engaging with enemies abroad who are scapegoated as the cause of the malaise.

When I was much younger and would discuss politics, many people of my acquaitance would slag the USA off for its behaviour around the world and its treatment of people in those countries. I always felt it was worth mentioning the awful way that America treated its own people, "it is brutal towards its own, how can it not be brutal to others ?". A comment that brought grudging acknowledgement, although not a toning down of opinion.

Now I look at the way the USA treats its own and it seems worse. It's not just Katrina, it is the casual brutalisation of everyday contact with the police, the beatings and taserings. Not just of black people as of old, but of white people, women, older people. Of people who are demonstrably of no threat whatsoever, suspected criminals or even those reporting crime.

Like I have said of the treatment of Padilla, they don't do it cos they think it's legal, they know it's illegal and they're showing you they can do it and there's nothing you can do to stop them nor any redress you can seek.

The laws that are passed that render life just that little more precarious, less bearable. The ones that increasingly draw a line between the just about getting by and those who have more than they need.

Healthcare that is increasingly denied the moment you seem to need it.

The elite of America has declared war on its own citizens, it is eating its young. This is not so much fascism as the sate that germany was in during the last few months of war with Hitler railing against how the german people failed him and that they should be punished. Citizens being executed for any defiance or even attempted self-preservation.

A society gone mad. That is the USA. So tormented it is eating its own flesh and blood domestically and throwing lives onto an oil-fuelled pyre abroad to satisfy the bloodlusts of ancient gods of greed and domination.

I have terrible fears of where this goes. But as the film says "There will be Blood"

keep to the Fen Causeway