Democracy

We should remember what it felt like one year ago, as the ability to recall it emotionally will pass and it is an emotional memory as much as anything else. It was a moment rare in a democracy's history. The feeling was palpable--to supporters and opponents alike--that something important had happened. America had elected, the young candidate promised, a transformational president.

It always made me yawn when Olympics boosters claimed the Winter Games would be a defining moment for Canada. How foolish of me. They were so right.

Stephen Harper's cynical decision to use this stunning international showcase to impose an entirely alien despotism on Canada's long tradition of democracy is truly a potential turning point.

The more I read the newspapers in the U.S. the more despairing I am about Americans ever being able to sort out the terrible dilemmas their corporate government has gotten them into. The extent of the misinformation, lies and sheer journalistic incompetence is overwhelming and when the media is consciously complicit in the government's lies and overtly supportive of its imperial ambitions, the chances of democracy working approaches zero.

A conversation with Gore Vidal unfolds at his pace. He answers questions imperiously, occasionally playfully, with a piercing, lethal dryness. He is 83 and in a wheelchair (a result of hypothermia suffered in the war, his left knee is made of titanium). But he can walk ("Of course I can") and after a recent performance of Mother Courage at London's National Theatre he stood to deliver an anti-war speech to the audience.