Collectively, we are in thrall to media - because they deliver to us many of the psychic goods we crave, and we know no other way to live.

So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

Right now, we have no possibility of politics because we have a one-party state.

I am concerned about how to reverse the process by which a fundamentalist right and a corporate elite were able to seize power in the United States.

The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism.

Who of us does not recognize that the life we live, however larded with brave talk about values and thought and ideals, is not actually a life dedicated to immersion in the endless torrent of images, songs, sounds and stories?

A century of convulsive change leaves huge demographic gouge marks.