A GREAT deal will be written this week about the mindset of post- September 11 America, but it's a safe bet that few commentators will notice that on the second anniversary of the awful terrorist attacks on New York and Washington DC, the best-selling book in the United States, Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair And Balanced Look At The Right, written by a comedian called Al Franken, begins with the following paragraph: "Although I write this book in the spirit of dispassionate inquiry, I cannot expect my critics to respond in kind. My right-wing detractors will doubtless tell you that I'm an 'obnoxious prick', a 'smug asshole' and a 'clear and present threat to our national security'. I will not stoop to dignify such calumny with a response, except to say that Condoleezza Rice should watch her mouth."

Franken's book is important; not because it's hilarious - though it is - and not because it provides endless source material for anyone seeking to make the case that George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft are responsible for the most disastrous US administration since Nixon's - though it does. No, Franken's book is important because it is a smash hit.

In the past 10 days, 75,063 Americans have shelled out $24.95 for 377 pages of Al Franken at his anti-Bush, anti-Rice, anti-Republican, anti-Fox News (which, incidentally, tried and failed in court to stop the book being published) best. This is especially noteworthy in this week of all weeks, when it will be said countless times in television studios and newspaper comment pages that the destruction of New York's Twin Towers marked the birth of an uglier America - a case made almost universally in Europe, and to a lesser extent in America itself by such disparate souls as the internet gossip-peddler Matt Drudge (on the libertarian right) and the actors Tim Robbins and Johnny Depp (on the liberal, Hollywood left).

The phrase du jour is "the new McCarthyism", a neat journalistic inflection which casts post-September 11 America as a country where freedom of speech and political dissent are no longer tolerated. Franken's wonderful book and the reception it has received from the US public suggests that a snappy journalistic turn of phrase and the complete picture aren't always compatible.

That isn't to say that Bush and his cohorts haven't tried their cynical best (or should that be worst?) to take the American public's horror at what happened two years ago and turn it to their political and ideological advantage. At home, through the odious Patriot Act, they have sought to erode freedoms afforded to all Americans by the First Amendment of the US constitution. As the always excellent John Sutherland wrote in The Guardian last week, the ways in which the US has become a "palpably less free society" are many and varied; from the increased hassle at airports, to the powers granted to the police to search through library and book-buying records, to the rounding up and fingerprinting of the 44,000 people who have emigrated to the US from Arab and Muslim countries.

At the same time as Attorney General John Ashcroft (a religious crank who abstains from dancing as a matter of theological belief, incidentally) pushed through this piece of quasi-Orwellian legislation, the White House used the post-September 11 mood of patriotism to introduce a ruinous economic plan which has singularly failed to revive the economy. However, it did (according to one calculation) give the millionaire members of Bush's own cabinet a combined tax rebate of some $80 million (£53m).

Abroad, it need hardly be said that the Iraqi adventure, both in its preparation and execution, has turned the US into an international pariah. Johnny Depp spoke for millions around the world last week when he told the German magazine Stern: "America is dumb. It's like a big dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you, aggressive." However, he did not speak for the majority of Americans, not least because he has chosen to live in France and decided to air his opinions in a German magazine, at approximately the same time as the gross receipts for his latest movie passed the £165m mark. George W Bush's policies have ruined the lives of many people. Johnny Depp is not one them.

Tim Robbins, on the other hand, has suffered at the hand of this White House. When Robbins, who has a long and distinguished record of liberal activism, stood up at the Venice Film Festival on Tuesday and said that Bush's post-September 11 agenda had created a "culture of fear" in the US, he deserved to be taken seriously. After all, he was speaking from personal experience.

The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, occupies a special place in American life and to have your contribution to the national pastime recognised there is a tremendous honour. In April this year, Robbins and his wife Susan Sarandon were due to be feted for their co-starring roles in the baseball-themed movie Bull Durham. That is, until the invitation was withdrawn. The hall's president Dale Petroskey, a former assistant press secretary to Ronald Reagan, claimed the couple's anti-war remarks were endangering the lives of American troops, at that time amassing on the Iraqi border.

The irony-free loopiness of Petroskey's explanation for the snub makes it hard to believe he was once employed as a teaboy in the White House, never mind as a press secretary. "In a free country such as ours, every American has the right to his or her own opinions, and to express them," he wrote in a letter to the couple. "We believe your ever public criticism of President Bush at this important - and sensitive - time in our nation's history helps undermine the the US position, which ultimately could put our troops in even more danger."

So every American has right to free speech, as long as Dale Petroskey - a personal friend of George W - doesn't object. No wonder Robbins was angry and no wonder, five months later, he remains angry enough to denounce the country he loves from a stage in Venice. Yet while sympathising with the actor, it's also important not to the forget the outrage that greeted Petroskey's actions, and from both ends of the political spectrum. American sports journalists aren't exactly known for their progressive outlook, but what they lack in liberal beliefs they make up for in linguistic imagination. Looking back at the coverage, it's hard to believe there are so many different ways of saying "the man's an idiot". Meanwhile, 28,000 members of the public wrote or e-mailed the Hall of Fame to complain, forcing Petroskey to make a public apology to Robbins and Sarandon.

To all intents and purposes, the hall's president is finished as a serious figure in American public life (quite an achievement for someone in his elevated position, believe me). Robbins, meanwhile, continues to flourish, both as an actor and a political activist. True, he remains a hate figure for Rupert Murdoch's mendacious media empire, but even the American right has been forced to concede that in voicing his anti-war, anti-Bush views Robbins is merely exercising his patriotic right to express his political beliefs.

It's not just Robbins and Franken who are giving the lie that a new McCarthyism has taken permanent root in the US. There are dissenting voices to be heard everywhere in American life, from the Oscar-winning documentary maker Michael Moore, to the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, to Critical Mass - a protest group comprising thousands of cyclists who clog up the streets of San Francisco once a month to "reclaim" the streets - to the presidential aspirant Howard Dean, who in a couple of months has gone from no-hoper to the front-runner in the race to become the next Democratic candidate for the White House.

Dean owes his meteoric rise to his willingness to articulate the view held by a growing number of Americans in the aftermath of September 11: that the Bush White House has gone too far. The US's humiliating climbdown last week over UN involve- ment in post-war Iraq is not just a recognition of the mess the American troops now find themselves in, it is also an acknowledgment that with an election on the horizon, the American public is becoming restless.

The mood has changed, or rather it is returning to its pre-September 11 equilibrium. Hence Bush's poll ratings are abysmal; hence the demise of preposterous figures such as Admiral John Poindexter, the former Iran-Contra criminal who was put in charge of the the Office of Information Awareness, a Pentagon-inspired scheme to spy on the lives of ordinary citizens via the internet. Also gone is John Ashcroft - if not from office, then at least from sight. The attorney general, once the central figure in the post-September 11 "war against terrorism", has been judged by White House strategists as too scary to be allowed out in public.

Even the Supreme Court, with its inbuilt Republican majority, has sensed the shifting social and political tides, recently returning "liberal" rulings on affirmative action (meaning educational institutions will to an extent be allowed to practise racial preference) and consensual sex between homosexuals (overturning a previous ruling that states could punish homosexual sexual activity). Over the next year the higher US courts will hear a number of challenges to the the Patriot Act brought by civil liberties organisations. It would be no surprise if many judges concluded that the First Amendment is far than more worthy of their support than the political extremism of John Ashcroft and his ilk.

Of course none of this will matter to those on the European left, for whom anti-Americanism is fixed political ideology. In a perverse way, the conduct of Bush's White House over the past two years has fulfilled their wildest dreams. It confirmed every slogan they ever chanted. The rest of us, meanwhile, can take heart that American history and politics move on and that just as the old McCarthyism was replaced by the civil rights movement, the so-called new McCarthyism will be followed by something more enlightened.

If there is anything to be learned on the second anniversary of September 11, it is this: don't give up an the United States just yet. The lunatics may have temporarily taken over the White House, but with any luck, come November 2004, they'll be back where they belong: in the asylum.

Lawrence Donegan's new book, Quiet Please, is published this week by Yellow Jersey Press, £10',

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