LONDON: “Me, anti-American?” said Tariq Ali to a hall packed with book-loving Californians at the Los Angeles Times book fair the other day. “Not at all. I am against the rulers of America and the people who elect them, but not against the dissenters.” It was a slightly odd thing to say about a democracy but still, no doubt flattered to be included with the dissidents, the audience expressed its approval in loud applause.

This was a distinctly Tariq-friendly audience, attending a panel discussion on the uses of American power. They didn’t like their government either, or the people who elected it. When Chalmers Johnson, a lugubrious professor dressed in black, recited a list of all the bad things US governments had done since the beginning of the 20th century, I could hear people around me going “Yess! Yess!”, in the rapturous, almost voluptuous manner of true believers at an evangelical meeting.

I had just been reading an article about the poet of black power, LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka. One of his poems, an incitement to kill all white people, contains the following words: “Up against the wall this is a stick up!” At a reading in 1967, the summer of love, a young white man jumped up at the words “Up against the wall” and began to scream: “Yeah, yeah, kill ‘em, kill ‘em all!”

The gentlemanly Ali is not Baraka, of course, and the book- loving Angelenos were not as mad as that young man. But there was, none the less, something curious about the way they lapped up every bit of US rhetoric like a cat enjoying its catnip. God knows there is enough to criticize about America. But why take such ecstatic pleasure in a litany of one’s own country’s wickedness? It was as though people were casting the Great Satan out of their souls.

Partly, it has to do with a large degree of national self-absorption. It has often been remarked upon how most Americans know little beyond the borders of their own country, or even their own state. There is, indeed, something eccentric about a president born into the most privileged class and educated at one of the best universities who never bothered to visit Europe. But the assumption, common among Tariq’s dissenters, that America (or the CIA) is behind every evil in the world, from Saddam to the Palestinian suicide bombers, from massacres in Africa to poverty in Asia, is just as parochial. True, America is a superpower with imperial reach, but it is not responsible for everything.

Perhaps some people feel guilty about being so much richer than most of the world. A certain amount of self-flagellation might help to sooth the itch of that burden. Then there is the question of class. Officially, American society has no system of class. The pursuit of money has replaced most human endeavours as a way to achieve standing and respect.

Culture, too, is mostly a commercial enterprise in the US and thus designed to appeal to the maximum number or people, which means, as often as not, the lowest common denominator. American democracy, like pop culture, is aimed at mass appeal. People choose their leaders - as they choose the brands of their clothes or breakfast cereals - through advertising, spun to suit their tastes and fit their dreams.

However, in the populist hurly-burly of American cultural and political life, the book-loving intellectual, or those who aspire to that, will feel a little marginalized, a little beside the point. This might afford enough reason for resentment. But this resentment can also become a self-regarding mark of superior status, of a kind of upper class, if you like. Money, as everyone knows, is vulgar. It is chic to disapprove of America, not only of its rulers or those who elect them, but of the idea of America itself.

Another member of the panel at the LA Times book fair, the writer David Rieff, put the dilemma with great clarity. He said that the US was undoubtedly an imperial power, and like all imperial powers, it has much blood on its hands. But great powers can do good too. If you are being massacred in Burundi or Iraq or Kosovo, the US can intervene to save lives, but every intervention also strengthens its imperial reach. The question is whether this is a price worth paying.

Ali gave an honest answer. Imperialism was bad at any price. “Yess!” went the people around me. Rieff had few friends among the book-loving folks of LA. But, sad to say, nor do the people in Burundi. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.