For President Bush, fat is a federalist issue

It turns out that President George Bush is prepared to confront at least one big issue. Last week, he delayed making a speech about his vision for the Middle East and failed to respond to suggestions that the right of habeas corpus had effectively been suspended. Instead, he launched a War on Obesity. Apparently, 61 per cent of Americans are overweight. It is their patriotic duty to go easy on pizzas, said the President. "If you're interested in improving America, you can do so by taking care of your own body."

His remarks have already been criticised for being insensitive and unpardonably fattist but, having just spent a few days in America, I can confirm that the whole lard-arse issue is live and waddling.

It can happen anywhere; that sinking, drowning feeling when a whale in human form lowers its bulk, with a mighty sigh, into the seat beside you on a plane, bus or train, but no one can deny that this unpleasant experience occurs more often and more spectacularly in America than anywhere else. It is a big country and one where people like to eat big, but the problem goes beyond bigness, sometimes to the tune of several stone.

Yet the news that airline companies have taken the bold step of suggesting that someone large enough to take up two seats might pay for them is causing quite a fuss. Lawyers have become involved. An organisation called the International Size Acceptance Association has been lobbying the press, pointing out that the dimensionally challenged are more frequently discriminated at the workplace than those of so-called "normal weight", are less likely to win a child-custody battle or be selected as a juror. A fat lawyer called Sondra Solovay, having been deemed by South-West Airlines to be a two-seat person, has declared war on fattism in all its forms. "Some day this will be seen for what it is: the next stage in the struggle for civil rights," she says.

America has always been a strange and fascinating country but right now it is becoming not only stranger but also more alarming. In the Oval Office, and across the media, earnest discussion is made of the moral rights involved in the size issue. Meanwhile, the destruction of real civil liberties tends to be regarded as being of marginal interest, if not actively unpatriotic.

The case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, the second US citizen captured in Afghanistan, has for example caused little concern outside civil liberties groups, which are routinely described in the mainstream media as of "the far left". Unlike John Walker Lindh, the other American fighting for the Taliban, Hamdi has been deemed insufficiently American to deserve a trial or access to legal advice. Asked whether this decision did not represent something of a watershed in that it allowed government to suspend habeas corpus for one of its citizens without explanation or appeal, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, remarked breezily that it was up to lawyers to think about what he called "these niceties".

The niceties are adding up. The internment of up to 1,200 people, described by the administration as "aliens", often held for months in solitary confinement, again without access to lawyers, has barely troubled the media. The sacking of a professor of Middle East origin from his post at the University of South Florida for unacceptable remarks in a TV interview has been accepted as an inevitable by-product of the War against Terror.

Meanwhile, the FBI has been using the USA Patriotism Act to accelerate its surveillance activities, not only over what citizens write in their e-mails but what books they read. Two years ago, an independent bookseller called Tattered Covers was contacted by its local District Attorney's office and informed that it was about to receive a subpoena from the Drug Enforcement Agency who required access to a customer's sales records. When the bookseller argued that the request violated First Amendment rights, a judge authorised a search warrant.

In the subsequent legal battle, it was pointed out by the American Booksellers' Foundation for Free Expression that once booksellers are forced to turn over information about their customers' reading habits, then what is called the Chill Factor would inevitably kick in. Not only would material deemed unacceptable not be sold by bookshops, but it would also not be published. As one author said: "There are few countries where you can't get into trouble for what you read, and the US appears to be falling from that shortlist."

Yet, in spite of the objections, over the past few months pressure has been increasing on the big book chains, including Borders and Amazon, to release information – about what their customers are buying and reading – that could be of use to the authorities.

The attitude of the mainstream media to what might elsewhere be regarded as erosion of civil rights seems to be that, during the War against Terror, all bets are off. Last week, the New York Post published an editorial attacking The Washington Post for daring to publish information that the National Security Agency had intercepted messages on 10 September last year that included the messages "Tomorrow is zero hour" and "The match begins tomorrow". Quoting the wartime maxim "Loose Lips Sink Ships", the NY Post argued that by leaking this information to the press, unnamed members of Congress had acted unpatriotically. "The leakers may have won political points against the administration – but they also endangered military and intelligence personnel in the field... They need to stop."

The optimistic voices, who argued that, for all the horror of 11 September, at least awareness within America of international politics would increase, have proved to be woefully inaccurate. If anything, the country is more insular, entrenched and self-enclosed than ever it was. With the exception of events in the Middle East – widely portrayed as an extension of the War against Terror, waged by Israel – foreign news is ignored on television and in the press.

The mood of national truculence and paranoia is expressed not only towards Mr Bush's axis of evil but against foreigners generally. Non-Americans are perceived as being unable to understand or appreciate America, are pusillanimous and unreliable in its great crusade. On the internet, in the letters columns of newspapers, patriotism is expressed with a new and unapologetic brutalism.

"So our wonderful 'allies' France and Germany refuse to co-operate with us in the Zacarias Moussaoui prosecution because of their opposition to the death penalty," a Mr John Woodmaska wrote to the New York Post on Friday. "I have a solution to this impasse: Put a bullet in the back of the head of Moussaoui and send a bill to the French and Germans for the cost of the Marshall Plan and 45 years of protection from the Soviets." Other correspondents took the same line, one of them summing up the prevailing mood with the words: "If this is what we can expect from our 'allies', maybe we're better off doing this thing alone."

To an outsider, however sympathetic to the great national trauma America has suffered, these developments, and this national mindset, are deeply worrying. As it fights "this thing", whatever that might be, the land of the free is moving toward isolation, xenophobia and a creeping form of totalitarianism.

terblacker@aol.com