In a scene in the latter half of the original British TV series "Traffik" (1989), an Afghan heroin supplier shows a Pakistani buyer - a poor poppy farmer suffering from the government's crackdown on the heroin trade - how to make heroin. It is a deceptively simple process, although drawn-out; a little like making whipped cream out of milk, with a fork.

They spend a night in the barn, churning the mixture by hand and swapping secrets of the trade. The Afghani explains how he is able to produce heroin while a war is waging around him. "The Americans are crazy," he says, smiling the irony. "The CIA helps us to fight the Russians. The D.E.A. - they say it was created to destroy us."

"America is never a problem so long as it is fighting itself."

Well, things have changed since the 1980s. The Russians are gone, the CIA is back with a vengeance, and the poppy fields are endless tracts of dust. Back in September, George W. Bush told the world: "either you are with Us, or you are against Us." For the moment, America is at peace with itself, and at war against them.

The more you think about it, however, the harder it is to accept: the idea that there is an 'Us' is as narrow-minded as it gets, the sort of thing you would expect from a joker like Bush. It's the idea that there are only two sides, and just one of them is right. Empire and Jihad. Good and Evil. Us and Them.

Does 'Us' really exist in this sense? The United States is a big country, home to a very large and diverse population. It doesn't take much to realize that 300 million people cannot be summed up in one way of thinking. If everybody in America is Us, then a much bigger war has already been won and the little battles over things like oil have only just begun.

For five months El Presidente has pushed his bi-polar philosophy on the whole world. At home, at least, he has had an easy time of it: the press swallowed the pill without asking any hard questions. Where's Timothy Leary when you need him?

Which brings us to the notion of 'the country at war': what country? There is no sign of what they used to call a war effort. Nobody around here seems to be making much effort. There is no collaborative push on the part of industry to meet the needs of this new war - unless you count zero-point-zero per cent financing. Stock prices aren't rising.

All the effort is going into tolerating George W. Bush and his interminable smirk. Even when he is talking about war and evil, Bush has that little sparkle in his eye, like he's remembering the time he grabbed his wife's ass on national television.

Eventually, Bush will lose, because his will shall turn out to be stronger than that of the public; 'Us' will only be able to stomach him for so long. When that time comes, things are going to get tough. In Bush's world of Empire and Jihad, it's getting increasingly difficult to know who the good guys and bad guys are.

In his own philosophy, George W. Bush is on the side of the Empire. He may stand for America, but he represents something very different. This is also true of the Pakistani poppy farmer; he could easily be painted as an agent of Jihad, but his main concern is a lot easier for most of Us to identify with: a family that needs feeding.