Critics of what is termed American imperialism have not yet tumbled to last week's electrical blackout as ammunition for their arguments about the dangers of the One Best Way. But a perfect metaphor it almost is, writes John Waters
A system of interconnected though ostensibly independent power plants collapsing in cascade because their vulnerability is dictated by the condition of the weakest link provides an apposite symbol of a civilisation which promotes the global spread of political power on a similar basis.
That the sole surviving superpower can be returned to the 19th century by the equivalent of a blown fuse reminds us that civilisation and progress bring with them a hidden dependence which grows in direct proportion to the hubris of the civilised.
The US national grid might be described as a technological representation of the ideas of Frederick Taylor, the godfather of scientific management, whose philosophy has shaped nearly a century of western industrial expansion.
"Taylorism" is, according to one definition, "the application of scientific methods to the problem of obtaining maximum efficiency in industrial work or the like". Taylor implanted on the industrial consciousness of the West an obsession with time, efficiency and value, which has long since rooted itself also in the western political mind.
The US national grid epitomised his ideas: maximised profitability by dint of minimised inefficiency; precise mathematical calculation of demand and an almost superstitious avoidance of waste.
The word "cascade", which has been used in what appears to be an almost poetic depiction of the collapse, is actually a technical term denoting a particular form of electrical circuitry: a set of electrical components connected in series.
It has become, in the past few days, a source of global consternation that the national grids of most western countries are based on the same principle as a set of Christmas tree lights. Interlinking generators distribute electricity over the widest possible area in response to varying demands in different places at different times, but which require all units to be active for the whole to function.
Since deregulation, the US grid has reduced its spare capacity (i.e. waste) to between 3 and 4 per cent, against a previous figure of 15 per cent, but the means of achieving this has left the grid vulnerable to unpredictable surges, such as seems to have precipitated last week's collapse.
So, yes, an almost perfect metaphor for the downside of what Francis Fukuyama depicted as the "end of history"- the adoption of US-style liberal democracy as the highest possible form of political, social and economic organisation in the world.
Those who warn of the imminent ubiquity of American imperialism are not necessarily wrong. Democracy, bricked into a Tower of Babel, may yet become as vulnerable as electricity under conditions of maximised demand.
Nowadays we speak the word "democracy" as we once spoke of "Christianity": a denotation of almost impeccable virtue. We insist and count upon it, and yet are rendered vulnerable to its weaknesses by its efficient indulgence of our capricious demands.
A US energy specialist was quoted in Saturday's London Independent as speculating that last week's power crisis might have been caused by " something as mundane as a squirrel getting into some switching gear".
Likewise, the vulnerability of western democracy may be dictated by its own striving simultaneously for both efficiency and reach. But the squirrel here is not some blundering interloper, blind to the consequences of his presence and mischief. Rather, it is the very efficiency of democracy in delivering freedom and prosperity that renders it vulnerable to a collapse that seems, for the moment, as counter-intuitive as a week ago did the idea of New Yorkers having to bed down on the sidewalk because their civilisation had gone to sleep.
Fukuyama, in his flawed but indispensable book The End of History and the Last Man, wrote: "Experience suggests that if men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation, they will struggle against the just cause . . . And if the greater part of the world in which they live is characterised by a peaceful and prosperous liberal democracy, then they will struggle against that peace and prosperity, and against democracy."
His observation provides an insight into the otherwise perplexing hysteria of the response of much of western society to a necessary piece of global housekeeping in Iraq. The ennui of a society in which ideals have become impossible is the equivalent of the squirrel in the fuse box. Democracy, we imagine, like air-conditioning and hairdryers, will always be with us. The idea that it is invulnerable from inside and out is the harmless-looking rodent that may yet be the undoing of a civilisation based on taking its own freedoms for granted.