Imperial America : reflections on the United States of Amnesia / Gore Vidal

Includes index.

State of the union : 2004 -- The privatizing of the American election -- The day the American empire ran out of gas -- A cheerful response -- Armageddon? -- Notes on our patriarchal state -- The national security state -- The state of the union : 1980 -- The second American revolution -- We are the patriots -- Interim report : election 2004.

Following the publication of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and its sequel Dreaming War, Gore Vidal was described as the last "noble defender" of the American republic, America's last "small-r" republican. In Imperial America, the conclusion of this landmark trilogy and his most devastating exploration of contemporary America yet, Vidal observes that there's something suspicious about the "ever reckless Cheney-Bush junta." They have created the Department of Homeland Security, the USA PATRIOT Act, and embarked upon a series of wars in pursuit of the world's oil reserves -- to the extent that they seem not to care about "the decent opinion of mankind." Bush's apparent invincibility, and what he might or might now know -- especially about those new "black box" voting machines being installed all over the country which seem to swing votes to the Republicans -- is one of the central themes of Imperial America's opening essay, a mordant, magnificent, and witty "State of the Union" for the election year (and beyond).