Thetitle of this book is intended as an elementary IQ test for the

reader: if the first association it generates is the vulgar anti-communist

cliche-"You are right-today, after the tragedy of twentieth-century
totalitarianism, all the talk about a return to communism can only be
farcical!"-then I sincerely advise you to stop here. Indeed, the book
should be forcibly confiscated from you, since it deals with an entirely
different tragedy and farce, namely, the two events which mark the
beginning and the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century:
the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the financial meltdown of 2008.
We should note the similarity of President Bush's language in his
addresses to the American p�ople after 9/11 and after the financial
collapse: they sounded very much like two versions of the same
speech.
Both times Bush evoked the threat to the American way of life and
the need to take fast and decisive action to cope with the danger. Both
times he called for the partial suspension of American values
(guarantees of individual freedom, market capitalism) in order to save
these
very same values. From whence comes this similarity?
Marx began his Eighteenth Brumaire with a correction of Hegel's idea
that history necessarily repeats itself: "Hegel remarks somewhere that
al
great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice.
He
forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.'" This